Sole of a Hero

One of the ways we come up with stories on El Tigre is to think about the worst things we did as kids. This episode is based on the time I "borrowed" my Dad's Corvette...and forgot to remove the parking break.

Diligent observers will notice a big change from the beatboard to what wound up on screen. White Pantera's "Power Punch Pick" was originally written as a punch, not a kick. After the storyboard pitch, it became obvious that our boot themed hero should have a kick as his big move.

Fistfull of Collars

Okay, let's try again! Hopefully these will link to the larger photos!

A Fistfull of Collars features nods to two of my favorite Westerns. Taco's locket is from Sergio Leone's, "A Few Dollars More." The machine gun style cutting when Frida squirts the ketchup and mustard - is a lift from Sam Peckenpah's, "The Wild Bunch."

Visual Structure

Another benefit of the beatboard is it allows you to see the entire cartoon in a sort of outline form. This makes it a lot easier to control the visual structure – which is the storyboard equivalent of a story arc.

Bruce Block explains it much better in his book, The Visual Story, (which you really should go out and buy right now), but the basic idea is that as a story becomes more and more exciting, the visuals should get more exciting as well. The best way to create this excitement is through contrast.

It’s just like in character design, or any design for that matter:
variety = interest.
Several things that are alike, are going to be less interesting (or exciting) that things that are quite different.




When storyboarding, we have a lot of tools to create this variety with – and we want to make sure that we control them so that we can put the emphasis where we want it.

On Tigre we think a lot about on balanced compositions vs. imbalanced compositions, formal vs. informal shots, deep space vs. flat, and three dimensional character movements, vs. side to side.

To represent good people and safe places, we try keep things balanced and stable. The villains lairs we try to keep informally composed and unbalanced. Then when good and evil meet, we try to mix up the two to create maximum contrast – and hopefully interest.

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Guacamole

Magazines hidden under mattresses, kids with robot arms, projectile vomiting. "Guacamole" has a lot to like.

Beatboards

It’s a very hard to tell another artist what you want to see using words. So, one of the things I do as a Director, is a beatboard – which describes in pictures, how I’d like to see the key moments of the storyboard handled.

Black Cuervo was the first episode to go into production. Extra time was added to the schedule so artists could get used to drawing digitally. I got a little extra time as well, which is why this beatboard is the largest.