Where Stories Come From

...Hello : )

CTN was a blast, I had alot of fun walking around and asking people where they get their ideas from. Most of the people had pretty similar answers, I'll try to jot some of them down here later.

One common factor all the visual development artists, animators, producers, directors, etc etc, shared was that everyone consistently took an active interest in looking for stories within themselves (personal experience) or from the world around them. Everyone seemed to really value staying "inspired". They traveled, stayed connected with other artists, went to coffee shops to watch people and sketch their way through life.

At one of his workshops, one of the animators summed up the need to seek out ideas with a couple sentences:
"Live! Get out there! You'll get more out of living outside than watching movies all day in your room."

Which is what Patrick Osborne did.
Patrick Osborne is the director of "Feast", an animated short film preceding the showing of Disney's latest feature Big Hero 6. The last day of CTN ended with a theatrical showing of both at the Walt Disney Studio Lot, and as part of the introduction to that final evening Patrick Osborne spent a few minutes explaining where he first came up with the idea for "Feast", what was involved in researching the idea and gathering enough reference to plan the shots before even beginning to animate the short.

I was surprised by how organized and deliberate his process was, and how much meticulous planning was involved, that his presentation made me realize that good ideas don't just come out of nowhere and good storytelling is never an accident!

I feel like explaining his idea-to-story-to-cinema process pretty much sums up most of the advice that all the other artists gave through the entire 3-day CTN weekend, so I'll try my best to repeat what he said.
Some of the quotes below are from interviews I found on the internet, written down much better than i can repeat, but still simliar to what Osborne said at CTN.

IDEAS

First, he mentioned that he jots all his ideas down in a notebook (and now a note-taking app) before he forgets them.

Before he submitted his ideas to the studio he dug through his notebook, started with 29 different ideas he liked, and eventually narrowed them down to three.

"One of [John] Lasseter’s things is that you need three ideas.  You have to pitch three ideas, to not put all of your eggs in one basket and to show the breadth of who you are, as an artist"

One of his ideas came from filming every meal he ate each day for a year, during 2012, using this phone app:

(Click on the link for better quality than the embedded video)

1 SECOND EVERYDAY APP DEMO

"I’ve been using this app called “One Second of Your Day,” where you record your life in one-second clips, and I’ve been doing it for about two years.  I did one of my life, and I did one of meals.  There was something interesting about the dinner one, and I thought it might be cool to see if I could use it in animation to tell a story through food and through dinners"

This video was a few minutes too long too upload so here is the link:

KURIYAMA PRESENTS: 1 SEC EVERY DAY

(It's really interesting!!)

"In the middle of the project I decided to dig out my old sketchbooks to figure out were it had come from as it been sitting in my head for a while. It was a sketchbook in 2006 with a list of dinners in it, which go from a single guy’s dinner, to impressing someone on a first date, through the simple dinners of comfortable dating, what romantic meals are like or the break up meal is. Just the idea that you could tell a life story just through the plates, I thought maybe it would be a live-action thing, or an illustration project, but you never know what any idea will turn out like. So they go on a list I have, a note taking app on my phone of potential ideas I could use in the future. When the option to pitch comes up you think if there was a dog in that meal thing it could be interesting. Then I played with a video app, recording a second a day with that idea in mind and it sort of cemented that maybe there was something there, in telling the story through quick edits, and it kinds of developed organically from there into what you see now."

From his recordings of food Osborne noted that there was something unique about watching videos of food versus just looking at pictures of food. People are taking pictures of their food all the time, but not as many will record videos of what they eat. He realized from his videos that the emotional appeal to food wasn't just looking at it but also the background music/voices/atmosphere in the videos. 

As soon as he submitted his 3 ideas, he received a call a week later to "pitch" his story before the Disney shorts studio panel. 

Developing a PITCH

I was impressed by how organized and well-prepared Osborne was before he pitched his idea to the Disney shorts panel. He even had a visual flowsheet of all the characters that showed how each character related to the others. It was a very clear, simple mind map on a single sheet that helped put the entire short in perspective. I wish i'd taken a picture...the best example of what it looked like is photos from a book called "Drawing Ideas" by Mark Baskinger, below.

Develping a pitch also involved:

• Paintings of story moments to "get" the idea

"When you start designing the characters, it’s nice to put them in little moments because you can start to understand them, visually.  You can really see the life emerging and the relationships forming."

• Pitch boards
• 5 minute concept sketches

• appealing character sketches

Back when I was in training, Pat asked if I could help out with some early  sketches of Winston to be used for an idea pitch for Feast to Lasseter

---BOBBY PONTILLAS

STORY & VISUAL DEVELOPMENT

Once you got the go-ahead on the short, where did you start?

OSBORNE:  The first thing I did was to bring on Jeff Turley as production designer.  We wanted it to be colorful and full of energy, so Jeff went out to explore and do things that were exciting to him.

The imagery created for the film is absolutely beautiful, what sort of research went into development?

Jeff: One of the first things I did was talk to a food stylist about how they design food, what makes food interesting and delicious. They said to position it for the shot, to make the design aesthetically pleasing for the camera, and that natural light was important for the food; If it is in dingy light it gives the impression that food isn’t edible. Another thing was to make sure the ingredients were really recognisable and separate, that was a really surprising thing that they do. They take tweezers and organise pieces of a hamburger, and move things if you can’t see them and are meticulous about how you see food, that’s what makes you drool.
So that was important, also the research of lighting, really great photography, cinematography, videography. We made sure that we only put the things that complimented each other – lens effects, dots, graphic shapes that can be overlaid in the image. The feeling of light was important for the story; We wanted to make sure we tied the emotional appeal of a certain type of lighting to the story.

PROBLEM-SOLVING

"We had a small panic moment where we were promising all of this amazing graphic storytelling and cinematography and light, and we were starting the layout and hadn’t planned it.  So, we had this emergency two-hour lunch/drawing session with Jeff Turley, the production designer, and Josh Staub, the effects supervisor, to figure out what every shot was actually going to be.  We went through every shot and drew it in a simple black/grey/white value structure that guided the emotional arc of the story."


During story development, the producer felt like something was missing form what Osborne had originally promised during his story pitch, and asked Osborne to re-evaluate his process.

"Go back and put the heart back into the story."

So Osborne returned to his desk, watched his original video references all over again, and realized that food was always in the center of activity in all his recordings. He went back to the studio and decided to put food literally in the center of every shot.

As an animator thrown into the world of story for this, what were the biggest challenges in coming up with the story?

OSBORNE:  "The story was entirely a challenge for me because I had never professionally storyboarded.  I had only done it in college.  My first professional board was shown to John Lasseter, which is not something you should do.  That was entirely the challenge for me, in learning this process.  John knew what Jeff Turley’s work is like, but he didn’t know what my story was going to be like.  Every meeting we had, John would be like, “That part is beautiful.  I can’t wait to see it when it looks like that.  The story just needs to work.  You need to do something to make this work.  It’s not good yet.”  That happened several times.  It’s the most nerve-wracking thing, ever, to jump into that.  And I had to communicate to a group of story artists what I was thinking in my head.  That was a new thing, too.  It’s really fun to see the translation.  You get a lot out of bouncing ideas off of them.  Jim Reardon, who was the head of story on Wreck-It Ralph and Wall-E, was assigned to me as a mentor, and it was immensely beneficial to have someone who’s gone through it many times, there for advice and to help out with what the notes from the meetings really meant."

TEST SHOT (You already know this but i'll just write down what he said anyways):

• value structure
• storyboards
• layout
• color keys
• animation planning
• blocking
• dailies
• sketch notes
• sihoulette design
• final animation
• special effects-------> 
• Live Air! -->click for HD PREVIEW of Final Product (you have to watch Big Hero 6 to see the full short)

This turned out longer than i thought. Thank you for your patience! In a short summary, here is what i learned:

• ideas don't come out of nowhere
• so....if an idea pops into your head...WRITE IT DOWN! You will forget.
• Also, one of the best ways to improve your idea is to bounce it off someone else.
• once you decide on a good idea....
• RESEARCH RESEARCH RESEARCH, and what you find will give you even more ideas and help clarify the idea you started with
• RECRUIT the people you need to design the right look and feel for the project with solid concept art in the beginning phases, so that everyone on the production team understands what the story is about
• If something feels off or things aren't turning out as planned, go back to your original reference and RE-EVALUATE. 
• Good storytelling will appear seamless and feel effortless to the audience, but the process is anything but easy. 
• Expect a struggle. But stick with it, because the end product will be awesome. 

Thank you for your time : )  Fist Bump HD

~eM_kiM