Final Project: Research: Stephanie Alexander
The next artist I decided to research is Stephanie Alexander, because I think she is not only a great artist, but also shows her story development on her website. I think, before I create my own storyboards, it is really good to look at idea development of other artists.
Stephanie Alexander is an animator born in Texas, but currently lives in California. Stephanie has attended Laguna College of Art + Design in California. (Alexander n.d.)
Stephanie created a lot of videos with BuzzFeed Videos. Those videos include for example draw offs or drawing someone just by hearing their voice. These are a great way to see how an artist, like Stephanie Alexander, develops her drawings from beginning to end. I found watching those short clips really interesting and inspiring. What I have noticed is that Stephanie, just like Dermot O'Connor, who I researched in my previous post, builds her characters out of simple shapes. This would go under O'Connor's second foundation - Strong Design. I think it is really interesting to see two artists using the same rule, that means the rule works for more than just one person, so it would probably help me develop interesting characters as well. Here is one of those videos, where I could follow the work process of Stephanie Alexander.
I think, videos like this one, can be used as a great way to learn, even though the main purpose of this particular video, was probably simply entertainment.
As I mentioned before, Stephanie Alexander is not only great at drawing characters, but she develops whole stories. Right now, she works for Oddbot Inc. as a storyboard revisionist for the Muppet Babies show. "A storyboard revisionist is responsible for re-drawing and improving the artwork for rough storyboards to make them on-model and ready for production." (Concept Art Empire, 2020). That means, that a storyboard revisionist is a kind of support for the story board artists, the revisionist needs to make sure the storyboard style fits with the vision of the particular project.
I am soon to be creating my own storyboard, therefore understanding the process and looking at storyboards is very important for me at the moment. I am going to create a separate post on storyboarding in general, however now I am going to look at some storyboards and beat boards created by Stephanie Alexander.
I am familiar with the term storyboard, however I have not heard of beat boards before, therefore I decided to look it up first. "In a screenplay or teleplay, a beat is a moment that propels the story forward and compels the viewer to take stock of what could happen next." (MasterClass, 2020). For what I understand, a beat board is a set of beats, so the moments that tie the plot together.
Here is a beat board created by Stephanie Alexander.
I think this beat board is very interesting, other than of course very vibrant and appealing characters, it shows the story. If the beat board is created to show main points of the plot, I generally should be able to visualize this story in my head and I can surely do that with this one. In my opinion a good beat board is sort of storytelling, because it should allow me to know what the storyline is. After analyzing this, I came to the conclusion, that creating a beat board is very important for an animator. It helps to remember what scenes are the ones to stress and highlight in the animation, while being in the middle of work, it might slip the artist's mind. I am very glad I have researched that, because now I know I also need to create a beat board for myself.
Next I decided to look at actual storyboards. Storyboards are more detailed than beat boards and they have a lot more images in them.
This is a link to a video storyboard - individual frames of the storyboard, put together in a reel.
https://vimeo.com/stephanieart/an-early-spring-story-reel
What I have noticed about this storyboard, that I thought was important to keep in mind, is the fact that all characters and the background is pretty much developed. the characters are not stick figures, but already build with personality and appeal. Also what storyboards are, is the actual frame I could potentially use in the animation, therefore the camera angle, the zoom and all that technical detail needs to be exactly as I want to have it in my animation.
The storyboard should be a reminder of what I am creating and what angles, zooms or perspectives I want to achieve in which frames. It is not just to remind me what the storyline is. This is why I believe, there should be a lot of attention payed, when creating a storyboard.
I decided to look at one more Stephanie Alexander's storyboard.
This is a screenshot of a storyboard from Stephanie's website. Click here to access this storyboard from the website.
Once again we have developed characters and exactly specified background. Usually storyboards do not have color incorporated, however in this one, there is a lot of blue added, which I think shows the atmosphere of the story. I think this is a good use of this color, because blue usually is used when talking about something sad, or showing a sad emotion. When I am following the storyboard with my eyes, I can tell there is something sad happening and the blue brings that emotion even closer to me, which I think is great.
I am very happy with my today's research. I have learned a lot and now I know better how to work on my project and how to create a good storyboard and a beat board. I did not know I even needed a beat board, therefore I think the research helped me even more than I thought it would and that is a great feeling.
Reference list
Alexander, S. (n.d.) Stephanie Alexander Animator and Artist, Available at: https://www.stephanieanimates.com/ [Accessed 11/11/2020]
Concept Art Empire (2020) What is a storyboard revisionist? Available at: https://conceptartempire.com/storyboard-revisionist/ [Accessed 11/11/2020]
Again interesting, informative and well executed !
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