To start this rotation off, we were tasked to draw a quick 1-panel sketch inspired by one of the three prompts given in the class presentation, and I chose to draw someone running away from something, more specifically a person running from a large monster.

From the introductory presentation and the time limit set for this assignment, I learned that it is important to be able to draw storyboards quickly and with clarity. At first, it was hard to come up with anything so suddenly and I ended up staring at the blank paper for a bit to brainstorm, but sketching out a thumbnail helped a lot more in visualising the idea quickly. It was also fun to experiment with perspective and the size contrast between the two characters.

Building on training our ability to draw quickly and loosely, we went to the Tate Modern for some observational drawing. One of the challenges I expected (and did encounter) was being worried about people looking, but thankfully the feeling dissipated quicker than I thought, and it helped that there were friends next to me.

My first task was to sketch out lots of faces. People moved by very quickly, and to get their faces on point would be impossible, but since the point of this exercise was to draw quick I focused on immediately getting an idea of the general shape of the subject first then the rest of the details from memory, which ended up being pretty effective! Sometimes I tried to draw the face I saw from a different perspective as an extra challenge and for practice. These sketches would probably come in useful for future reference for face shapes.

Next, I changed locations and worked on the task to draw events that were happening around me as well as the environment. I had a bit more time to sketch what I saw this time, and tried to do a variety of actions I saw from static ones (like someone idly standing around) to ones with more action (like skateboarding). The more action there was, the faster I drew out my lines to both capture the event itself and the energy of the movement. I didn’t have much time left for the environment sketch left, but I attempted to keep it simple yet legible as to not be too invested in adding details. If I had more time I would have liked drawing in a more dynamic perspective with perspective lines and to also make the shapes clearer.

Based on these location sketches, our next assignment was to create a 3-panel storyboard that shows a complete narrative. I was mostly inspired by the urgent feeling of the woman with the phone, the skateboarder, and the green and yellow post-its I used to cover up some mistakes since it reminded me of a traffic light. The story I came up with was of someone who wanted to give another person a gift, but couldn’t reach them because of the red light. A skateboarder came by and helped deliver it instead.

I hoped to use perspective and values to tell a fluent story and direct the viewer’s attention towards the most important elements of the scene.

For the final outcome, we were given a prompt of boarding an argument or meeting between two people, and I chose to use two of my pre-existing original characters.

Overall, I found that perspectives were incredibly helpful in conveying not only the point-of-view of the narrative but also the emotion and the flow of an action, and I reminded myself to vary them to make each shot impactful in its own way. Since there were also many panels that needed to be drawn, I learned the importance of shorthanding my characters to make the workflow a lot quicker and smoother.

Final Outcome