Earlier this year I had the pleasure of working with the talented director Emil Khar on a whiskey commercial. Emil has a real flair for cinematic storytelling without relying on dialogue, which, as a storyboard artist, I really appreciate. It’s always so much more interesting to tell a story in pictures without words, because it engages the audience’s intellect and observational skills, draws them in deeper, and generally transcends language and cultural barriers, by appealing to common human themes that everyone relates to. And with that, here’s the boards. Enjoy.
I love drawing these kinds of weathered, hardened characters.
And here’s a link to the finished video. In this case, Emil used a voiceover to reinforce the story, and tie in the branding, which helped a lot. Nice work Emil!
Last year, on Halloween, I boarded the DSW commercial that is airing right now (early March, 2013):
This commercial was a lot of fun to work on, and also very different, because I was up close and personal with the production, and in this case, it was a real treat. I received the scripts via email and a meeting was scheduled at the London the following morning. The London is a fancy hotel in Hollywood and I’d wanted to check it out anyway since I heard Gordon Ramsey runs it. So I was excited.
Although not asked to, I did a bunch of rough drawings just so I would have something to show them. I remember the last commercial I did with the DSW folks, I had to meet them totally unprepared at Chateau Marmont (another fancy Hollywood hotel), and that was so stressful, because I had to do rough drawings, in pen, in one of those goofy huge comfy chairs while eating a fancy lunch and ten people looking over my shoulder. Nightmare. This time would be different.
The commercial would both be shot at Fox House, which is a famous house that I had never heard of until then, which also happens to be down the street from my parent’s house in Chatsworth, where I grew up. I did some research, and it has this cool 60′s vibe, and is the former home of Frank Sinatra. Very cool! The plot is: a cool couple arrives at a birthday party and everyone dances. That not a lot of storytelling but it was easy to grasp the visuals- so I got to work.
Next day I met with them at the London. The producers were all familiar to me and I remember them from the last commercials we did. I presented the rough boards… and everyone was pretty happy. I was expecting a slaughter and instead I basically hung around and got complimented. I made a couple of rough changes and then was invited to lunch at the rooftop restaurant. That’s about all the work I did that day
Feeling good today!
Rooftop @ The London. Lotta smog that day!
Next day I met them all at Fox House. I followed the directions and arrived at a house I had always been aware of, since I grew up so close to it, but never knew anything about and never suspected I would visit someday. The house is stunning. The pictures don’t do it justice.
Walkway to the House
Everyone reviewing my storyboards
And everyone loved my boards. No changes needed yet. Was invited to lunch again, but politely declined and instead surprised my Dad at home, and took him to lunch instead.
Then headed back to the London, base of operations for the production. Their meeting space had expanded will all kinds of wardrobe selections and actors were being cast next to production assistants scrambling to put together the pre-pro book, which is a binder for each member of the crew, which contains my storyboards paired with the script, among other things.
I set up my station, made about an hour’s worth of rough changes, and that was it. Even though all of my drawings were very rough, they were happy with everything and were done with preproduction. They were shooting the next day.
Job well done. Pat myself on the back. And on the way home, I saw one of the best sunsets I’ve ever seen.
Well well well, Its been almost a year since I worked on these Old Navy spots and so it’s probably ok to talk about them now. For those of you who don’t watch TV (the only excuse you might have for not seeing these ubiquitous commercials), these Old Navy commercials were for their early spring sale offerings and they are, as you might expect, kinda kooky! As all good Old Navy commercials are. What’s interesting about this project is that, with 5 spots being shot and worked on simultaneously, the line between pre-production (where my storyboards are made) and production (when they actually shoot the commercial) started to blur. It happens occasionally, but it’s not ideal, since its kind of like planning the battle while you are fighting it! More on that later.
I started work on these storyboards sometime during Xmas season in 2011. I remember working (while sick with a cold!) on roughs for these on Xmas day. I’m sure my dedication was appreciated but in the end almost all of that early work went into the trash can. While this was the biggest job of my career, it was also the most stressful. There are always outside factors that necessitate storyboard revisions, but the most damaging factor is the script change, and this job had many script changes, making it very hard to show passion for my work. I love to make sure my boards are lookin’ good, but if you know the boards are likely going to be changed the next day, what’s the point? Pride, of course! But it really only goes so far before you have to start just cranking them out. Hence, you may notice, that some of these frames don’t have my usual finesse to them. The other major factor with that was our telescoping production schedule- everything was due yesterday.
It got to the point that pre-production for one spot had abutted with the production on another spot. Meaning while we were planning and storyboarding the next spot, the directors were at the studio shooting the spot previous! So we production artists had to move onto the set itself and make our own little workstations so that we could be near the directors while they were absolutely too busy to give us more that a few minutes each day. Very stressful, because communication is so important, and there was very little to be had. But we persevered and relied on our experience and instincts and we did a great job in the end! Its funny how you can look back fondly on a job that, at the time, drove you bonkers!
So here’s a commercial I worked on back in April. I usually like to wait a while before I consider it “safe” to discuss a project on this blog, because, well, it’s not a good thing to release production artwork before the commercial airs! And even though I didn’t see this one air, I know its fair game after so many months if my own clients are posting the finished commercial on their website reel. So, here we go.
Here we see a Caveman, clutching the original hand-held device, a stone wheel. He’s amazed with his creation and sets it to roll … ah, the beauty of it. As it rolls, we track along with it, until it bumps into a wooden wheel, which takes off in turn. And as it goes we see the “evolution” of the wheel, as it were, from stone, to wood, to iron, to rubber, to… what else? The digital scroll wheel of the new Superpages app! Naturally.
And now I’ll discuss some of my artwork- First off, cavemen are fun to draw, and very forgiving, since they need to look all scraggly and ugly anyway. And I loved drawing that brief glimpse of his facial expression- like watching his baby take his first steps. But you know what are challenging to draw, and you wouldn’t suspect it necessarily, are wheels! Wheels are tricky to draw because they are so regular and round and perfectly geometric. A wheel consists of no less that one perfect circle nestle concentrically within a larger perfect circle- and if there’s a spoke or hubcap involved, you must add even more circles.
Most artists would either just draw a crappy circle, or use a “shape” tool to make an absolutely perfect circle and substitute that for a drawing. Using shape or pen tools is useful but I personally feel that they look too computer generated (since they are) and are therefore unsuitable in a otherwise hand-drawn image. So that’s no good. Luckily Painter (the program I use) has a nifty “align-to-path” stroke feature that allows me to essentially trace the circle shape in a single stroke – kind of like using a compass or protractor to trace circles in geometry class. It gives me the perfect roundness and also the variation in line weight and stoke feel that I need in my drawings. So that’s how I make my wheels look so good.
You’ll also notice that the spokes of the wooden and iron wheels are blurred when they are spinning. That’s super important and a lot of artists make that mistake- if the car is moving, you don’t draw the spokes on the hubcap, nor the tire treads, since they both will blur when the wheel spins! If you can see the spokes on a wheel, that makes the wheel look like it’s stationary. Anyway you can tell when a storyboard artist just traced a picture of a car when he doesn’t bother to attend to details like that.
It’s a goofy little commercial but my boards on it were great. I can say that because they match the final product so well. That’s usually the best indicator that I did a good job. If you watch the final video you’ll see what I mean. Click the link below to view!
For my part, I’m kinda over drawing iPhones, iPads, and Facebook this-n-that. They all feel the same to me.
Something New: I’ve decided to remove generally commenting on these posts. Just getting wayyyyy too much spam and it was discouraging me from even doing this blog. Jesus christ, over 4,000 posts advertising Ugg boots of all things. Rot in hell you spammers. I might bring back commenting someday but for now it’s gone. If you would like to contact me, you can email me (if you know my email-its not hard to guess), facebook me, or click the Contact button on the upper right , you can even leave a reply there or contact my agent.
Earlier this year I worked on a Honda commercial that featured hockey stars Nicklas Lidstrom and Corey Perry. In the spot, the athletes leave the sports arena and head to their Honda Pilot. Once inside, they are shocked to find hundreds of hats falling (as happens when an athlete scores a hat trick; 3 goals) on their car, out of nowhere. They deduce that the fans approve of their choice in vehicle, as neither of them had scored a hat trick that night. As a stinger, an octopus is the last to fall on their windshield, which apparently is some kind of inside joke.
Here’s the storyboards:
This was pretty straightforward. I enjoy drawing athletes, due to the dynamic poses found in sports, but in this case it was more like drawing celebrities, since the drawings had to have a likeness, and that’s often challenging. I also enjoy drawing cars because they look fairly impressive in my current rendering style. I’ve had to draw the Honda Pilot on a few commercials, so I was familiar with the design.
But what was really interesting about this project was that I used Skype to communicate with the director. Since it was a new client, it was very helpful to use the video chat function to get that personal connection and gain his trust. And I also used the screen sharing technique to show the director my rough sketches as I was drawing them. That was surprisingly helpful since he was able to give me instant feedback. It can be stressful to have a director “looking over your shoulder” as you draw, but in the end it saves valuable time. So thanks to these newfangled technologies we were able to work really well together.
So here’s the finished commercial. The boards match pretty well, although I can see now that the director adjusted the angles to create a more voyeuristic/docu/candid feel. They may have intended this to seem like a “viral” video…I didn’t know they wanted that, but now that I see it, it works for the spot.
So, I’m sitting at home watching Mad Men, one of my favorite shows, and during the commercial break I see one of the commercials I worked on recently! For those of you who don’t work in commercial production, it’s really a treat to see a commercial that you worked on, aired randomly, when you are watching TV. To see it while you are watching one of your favorite shows is a double treat. So when I saw my NASDAQ commercial air during Mad Men, I was over the moon. I worked on these boards in February 2012, and saw them air in May, I think. They still run sporadically, and you may have even seen them if you watch AMC at all (I haven’t seen them on other channels yet). That’s the thing, had I not been following Mad Men on AMC (as opposed to Netflix) I wouldn’t have ever seen my commercials air! That’s why I pay for cable, basically To see my work in it’s natural finished state.
So these NASDAQ commercials were a little challenging but fun to work on. The challenge was, we were advertising a company whose business involves listing other companies in their stock exchange. Each of the two NASDAQ commercials featured 3 well known brands, so that’s like 3 mini commercials in one overarching commercial, times two. Each brand needed equal screen time and presence, but needed to be subordinate to the main brand, NASDAQ. Between two commercials, that’s 7 total brands, hard enough, but then you must realize that we need to also communicate with these 7 “clients” to make sure their needs are met. So it was very challenging to keep a balance with it all. As a result, the concept details were refined many times, and so the boards do look a little rushed, despite putting about three days of work into it. What you see are about 12 frames per spot; however I drew upwards of 60 frames for the project. So there was a lot of editing and refining. But I’m very impressed with the final outcome.
The first spot features Smart Technologies, Zipcar, and Hasbro. These companies all list on NASDAQ, hence their presence in the commercial. The story follows a day in the life of a young businesswoman/mother who relies on these companies to keep her life running smoothly. The link under the boards goes to the final commercial.
This second spot features Tesla, LPL, and Zynga. Same deal as before, only this time with a businessman, fairly typical day, running smoothly, thanks to the before mentioned brands. Click the link below the boards to see the final commercial and compare.
So, yeah, was on Youtube last night and saw something familiar- a Chevy Sonic spot i worked on a couple months ago, come to life! Here’s a link to the video:
A couple of months ago I met with a new client and worked on their DSW commercial for a couple of days. It was rainy then, as it is now… good day to write about it. So anyway I worked on this shoe commercial and it was actually pretty hard! I did like 60 frames in 2 days… almost 40 on that first day! So consequently, they are a little rushed (no shading or finesse) They needed a wide shot and a closeup shot of shoes for every scene and they had 3 spots to shoot. I did all three spots but only posted one of them here, they are basically the same commercial. I was happy to see these commercials when they aired a few days ago.
Here’s a fun series of boards. Kinda wacky. A “Monopoly”-obsessed man comes home and plays the lottery. His whole life revolves around monopoly… Some pretty funny visuals in here. I think I did a pretty good job of drawing the oversize monopoly pieces.
I have a couple clients who come to me for sketches to help sell their ideas for print ads. I’m happy to say these tend to be the kind of ads that are fun to draw- masculine themes, basically: beer, brawling, boobies. This time, the client was pitching an ad for UFC. Two fighters squaring off, the size of Godzilla monsters, looking brutal and violent, about to kick ass. Just two sketches.
At the time I was watching a lot of UFC and was excited about doing these sketches. I definitely still enjoy watching the sport.
