Stories of Boards! Boards of Storyboards!

Hey Everyone!

It's been busy here at the workshop as we have begun working on the storyboards for the forthcoming animated feature film project. This film is called Space Cadet and is based on my graphic novel of the same name. It will be produced by Ginette Petit and Michel Pradier at Outsiders Films with Executive producer Nathalie Bissonnette. The beautiful screen adaptation of the story was created by the marvelous Mylène Chollet. 

I am currently working on the storyboards with the insanely talented Lillian Chan. I met Lillian several years ago when I was recruited to contribute some music to her film Jaime Lo, Small and Shy.

Since then we've always kept in touch and collaborated whenever we could. She created several animations and visuals for the Space Cadet Headphone Concert. And we always thought it would be wonderful to work together on a bigger project someday!

Well the time has finally come! 

Here's Lillian actually drawing the very first board of the project. I thought I'd get this photo to commemorate the moment!

We have enlisted Lillian to be the production the designer of the film and Corinne Merrell to be the Art Director. Here they are discussing some design ideas for the projcet. (although this photo makes it look like they are just in a staring contest...LOL)

The script contains some other robot characters that are not in the original book, so besides helping with the boards, I get to design some robots and robot tech which is one of my favorite things to do! Here are some concept sketches of a "charging station" for the robot.  Looking forward to seeing this actually moving in the animated world:

This first set of boards is what we call a "first pass" so please be aware that the final boards will be much more refined than this. But the goal of this exercise is to board out the entire script, look at some possible camera angles/moves, and figure out some of the composition and timing of each shot. 

Ruby was interested in the process of making an animated film and so we're telling her all about the different steps. She wanted to help tack the storyboards onto the boardwall.

We were also scanning each board and putting it into a video session so we can make an early animatic of the film. This will give me a ballpark idea of the duration of certain scenes and allow me to get started on the musical score.

Corinne is also designing some of the sets for the scenes, Here's her floor plan for the apartment where the main characters live. 

Here's Lillian in deep concentration...

Here are a couple more first pass boards. 

So we've been having fun furiously drawing and dreaming up a funny, poignant and elegant way to animate this script. Gonna need to pick up some more blue lead pencils!

It's been a productive week! First pass boards for the first 15 pages of the script are done. We have a great start and will continue through the summer. More updates to come! Thank you for your support!

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