SYLLABUS W2020
TDGR 268- Special Topics in Design: Storyboarding & Concept Art
Wednesdays 1-3:50 pm
GH 321/GH18b/GH111
Instructor: Victoria Petrovich
Office GH 104
Office Hours: Wed./Thurs. 11-12 and/or by appointment
cell: 760-497-8241
[email protected]
No unexcused absences-*please contact me if you need to miss class
Special needs, schedule conflicts, etc.-please contact me to discuss and make accommodations
Syllabus is subject to change-please check website for updates. Any changes will be announced in class and followed with an email reminder.
A studio course that focuses on the design analysis, conceptual ideation processes, and practical applications of sequential and non-sequential visualization–commonly known as storyboarding. The course draws on historical, cultural, theoretical, and practical approaches to various multicultural forms of graphic storytelling including theatrical pre-visualization, devised work, filmmaking, animation, comics/graphic novels, games, and multimedia. Projects include manual and digital formats with no drawing skills required. Forms include non-traditional practices: 2D and 3D, single concept boards, multi-boards, and moving cinematic storyboards such as animatics, photomatics, and video montage. This is NOT a traditional cinematic storyboard class.
Required weekly viewing, exercises, reading/discussion, and project assignments form the framework for creating the final comprehensive visual storyboard project in lieu of a final exam. Class critiques of weekly assignments provide feedback for developing ideas and approaches, class participation is critical.
Class objectives:
• activate the elements of design and composition
• explore animatic//animation concepts as they relate to storyboarding
• employ framing devices and cinematic syntax to indicate a sense of time, place, and psychology
• integrate other cultural visual hierarchies and symbolism for richer storytelling
• study and apply visual metaphors to enrich our conceptual thinking and art practice
• create dynamic storytelling through iteration, framing, time, motion, and spacial transformations
A course website will provide course syllabus, assignment details, extended technical information, all required reading, inspiration, and links or examples from class discussions and assignments. Password given in class.
http://storyboard-conceptart2.weebly.com
Factors that influence grading: discuss breakdown in class
• Attendance (*no "unexcused" absences-please contact me if you need to miss class) 3 unexcused drops one grade
• Class participation
• Projects completed: each counts equally towards the total 100%
• effectiveness of storytelling aesthetics
• conceptual and technical daring
* makeup assignments
Course Texts: all reading links/ files provided below or on related webpages
see: Bibliography page-articles will be provided here or on the assignment page
• See materials list for class
Part 1-Visual literacy
Week 1-Course information/Introduction to storyboard forms
What is a storyboard?
Ideation strategies for storytelling in a visual design context
•Activity options: Zoom story construction; team building an ad (see Adbusters.com), current event/social issue project
•Read: Practices of Looking-Chapter 1 Images, Power, and Politics
•View: Dan Eldon, Adbusters, etc.
•Assignment: Journal page-Self portrait in a single concept board, single frame.This image should give us a sense of your character based on your answer to the question:
What aspect of your personality adds the most value to the world?
Use iteration, cropping, scale, etc. (photos, parts of photos, drawing, etc.) to create an inventory of images. Consider the elements of design and composition to emphasize/draw focus to specific ideas you want to bring to your audience's attention. Use props and environmental elements to enhance the storytelling aspects of your portrait. Monochrome or Limited specific color
No words!
>see Dan Eldon journal pages
https://www.daneldon.org/
Week 2-Symbols, Signs, Icons// Metaphor//Visual Metaphor
Activity: Environments in grayscale
Grayscale and visual metaphor exercises (from Arnheim) in class
See: Duane Michels:
I believe in the imagination. What I cannot see is infinitely more important than what I can see.
Photography deals exquisitely with appearances, but nothing is what it appears to be.
https://storyboard.cmoa.org/2014/10/duane-michals-telling-the-story-of-the-storyteller/
•Metaphor/visual metaphor reading assignment (chapter attached to Wk. 2 page)
View:
Corridors: http://kvadratinterwoven.com/whos-afraid-of-corridors
La Jete film (film using only still images); Carrie Mae Weems, Magnum stories (https://creative.magnumphotos.com/),
Read:
•Metaphor, Visual Metaphor, and Iconic Abstraction;
• Understanding Comics-Ch. 2 and 5; Visual Metaphor and the Organization of Cognitive Space
• http://www.stevenconnor.com/corridors/
Assignment
•Sense of Place-photographic essay project assignment. 24+ frames (see also the Internet Archives as a resource for images)
- Write a one paragraph description of a particular space and why it intrigues you. Based on this paragraph record this space at multiple times of day from multiple perspectives; assemble into a one page, multi-image sequence). Consider scale variance, cropping/framing, lighting, editing for dynamic storytelling
- assemble as a storyboard and use the images to tell us more about the space than was described in your paragraph
Week 3-Intro to the Monomyth//Hero's Journey
How does the content influence the form?
Activity: character design (Seal Skin)
• Arnheim conceptual squiggles
•Jungian archetypes
•View: Visual compositional hierarchies: Eastern & Western forms (note perspective approaches); scrolls, space, symbolism, etc.
Matt Mahurin, Marshall Arisman use of visual metaphor
•Topic Spotlight: Anime & Manga Iconography (option 1)
•Read: Scene Dissection–Human Fundamentals (Why Visual Composition is not distinctly Western or Eastern)
- Research a creation legend or myth to develop into multi-frame storyboards/determine who the HERO/HEROINE is
- OR.... develop Erik Ehn's Seal Skin
Week 4-intro to Graphic Novel forms
How does framing reveal story? Timing, suspense, tension, sound
Activity: visualizing SOUND
•Archetype/character boards due
•Visual metaphor drawing exercises (in class)
•Composition elements-Black Square problem exercise in class
•Read: An Interview with Brad Holland (note his comments on "style"); Understanding Comics Ch. 7-9
•View: TED talk with Dave McKean//The Architect's Brother//Arisman
• Visualizing SOUND
Week 5-Time & Rhythm: Temporal narrative storytelling
Time perception: How do comics and graphic novels create the passing of time?
•Time dilation
•2D/3D forms
•the infinity board-web based continuous narrative (how does it relate to Eastern scrolls?)
•View: storyboards that depict speed: methods of changing pace: slow and fast framing; abstract films
•Read: Ch.1 from What Do Pictures Want?-The Lives and Loves of Images; Understanding Comics-Ch. 4 Time Frames
•Myth research boards due (compilations of image sources you will use to create the storyboard); list of time shifts
Part 2-Visual dramaturgy
Week 6-Intro to motion and movement in still frames
•Creating motion with still images
•Legend/myth storyboards due (22 panels) in draft form as discussed in class
•View: TED talk- David Carson; Robert Wilson's storyboards;
•Read: Visit to a Small Planet: Some questions to ask a play–Elinor Fuchs
•Theatrical text/story discussion: student choice or assigned text
•Read and choose a text to develop into storyboards
Week 7- Visualizing the text
Theatrical text/script or Student choice story/project proposal
Read: exploring STORYBOARDING-Ch. 3 Fundamentals of the shot
•Production History-research, compile research image inventory into contact sheets
•Scene breakdown/action identification
•Location "shots"-list, provide images for each of the 5 scene's environments
•Intro, 3 interior scenes, and finale (including transitions between any connecting scenes -ex. Prologue into Sc.1)
•12 sequential panels based on
Week 8-Character development//analysis
•Character research collages-chose one major character to develop in a research board
•Animatic/photomatic techniques: stills into motion
•Tutorial in motion methodologies-move to GH18b
•Read: webpage on Kyle Cooper; research his work for discussion wk. 9; Iterative sketching
•View: The Tempest,
Character iterations: https://www.slideshare.net/adamoobyrne1/the-skillful-huntsman
•12 sequential panels, include the character within a scene and from various P.O.V.s (see Wally Woods 22 panels)
Week 9-Cinematics
meet in GH18b-Tutorial: non-linear editing options, assembling assets
•adding motion to your storyboards: animatics, montage, stop motion
•View: animatic examples, Structural cinema
Week 10-Editing tutorial session: Putting it all together
meet in GH18b
Continue editing : Animatic>montage>stop motion, depending on your approach
Week 11-Final projects due
Meet in GH321
Upload all required files into your folder in G-drive (before class)
Final project inventory:
•Location research board
•Character research collage board
•24 frame (min) sequential boards (for the 5 parts noted in Wk. 7, including transitions)
•Animatic transformation of static boards
•include any makeup assignments discussed with instructor
some optional texts:
Seal Skin-Erik Ehn
Invisible Cities-Italo Calvino
Venus-Suzan Lori-Parks
Smile at the Foot of the Ladder-Henry Miller
Invisible Man, prologue-Ralph Ellison
Shiv-diti Brennan Kapil
Hamletmachine-Heiner Mueller
Student suggestions:
Creation myths:
Polpo Vu
The Izanzgi & Izanami
The origin of life on earth : an African creation myth
...