This is a good summation of the animation style that influenced me to change my illustration style a couple years ago.
The cheeky but informative piece was created for an animation history class at Savannah College of Art and Design by Andrew Price, Zachary Zion, Rachel Schmieg, Kaitlyn Ritter, and Rachelle Holloway.
It’s funny—just yesterday I was thinking about looking for writing related material to post, since it’s an extremely important beginning step to animation, and just now my friend tagged me in a post on Facebook linking to this!
- #1: You admire a character for trying more than for their successes.
- #2: You gotta keep in mind what’s interesting to you as an audience, not what’s fun to do as a writer. They can be v. different.
- #3: Trying for theme is important, but you won’t see what the story is actually about til you’re at the end of it. Now rewrite.
- #4: Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.
- #5: Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You’ll feel like you’re losing valuable stuff but it sets you free.
- #6: What is your character good at, comfortable with? Throw the polar opposite at them. Challenge them. How do they deal?
- #7: Come up with your ending before you figure out your middle. Seriously. Endings are hard, get yours working up front.
- #8: Finish your story, let go even if it’s not perfect. In an ideal world you have both, but move on. Do better next time.
- #9: When you’re stuck, make a list of what WOULDN’T happen next. Lots of times the material to get you unstuck will show up.
- #10: Pull apart the stories you like. What you like in them is a part of you; you’ve got to recognize it before you can use it.
- #11: Putting it on paper lets you start fixing it. If it stays in your head, a perfect idea, you’ll never share it with anyone.
- #12: Discount the 1st thing that comes to mind. And the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th – get the obvious out of the way. Surprise yourself.
- #13: Give your characters opinions. Passive/malleable might seem likable to you as you write, but it’s poison to the audience.
- #14: Why must you tell THIS story? What’s the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That’s the heart of it.
- #15: If you were your character, in this situation, how would you feel? Honesty lends credibility to unbelievable situations.
- #16: What are the stakes? Give us reason to root for the character. What happens if they don’t succeed? Stack the odds against.
- #17: No work is ever wasted. If it’s not working, let go and move on - it’ll come back around to be useful later.
- #18: You have to know yourself: the difference between doing your best & fussing. Story is testing, not refining.
- #19: Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.
- #20: Exercise: take the building blocks of a movie you dislike. How d’you rearrange them into what you DO like?
- #21: You gotta identify with your situation/characters, can’t just write ‘cool’. What would make YOU act that way?
- #22: What’s the essence of your story? Most economical telling of it? If you know that, you can build out from there.
This is a still from an animated feature I’m working on called “Bobo The Grim Versus Candy Land”…
OK… I’m joking… This is really just a personal piece I did based on an idea I had for a comic book that I’ll probably get to in a couple years if that (too busy with other projects at the moment). I wanted to do an experiment. Animation is a HUGE influence on my work. So I tried to emulate that look with the characters colored flatly as if they were finished on an animation cel placed on a painted background. I’m pretty happy with how the experiment turned out and plan on doing more pieces like this.
A cool thing I got out of this is that it incorporates the style I’ve been working in for the past couple years with the style I worked in previously. This illustration melds my two styles in a way that makes sense to me. I hope you dig it.
