Today’s blog from Chris Sanders goes to show that sometimes, when you want to get a point across, five hands are better than four: http://bit.ly/XZDkv6
In today’s blog from Chris Sanders, check out excerpts from the original hunting sequence in which Eep, Thunk, and Grug all wind up on the tusks of a speeding mammoth: http://bit.ly/WZmEaB
Rather than a deleted scene, today’s storyboard blog post from The Croods co-director Chris Sanders offers a peek at the first version of a cute bit between Eep and Guy that’s actually in the final film: http://bit.ly/XFIUV6
More “lost boards” from The Croods! In this installment, find out what Crood cavegirl Eep considers a fun date. http://bit.ly/XkGMBZ
Do you have a hankering to be a storyboard artist, or are you maybe just curious about the tricks of the trade? Today’s blog entry from The Croods co-director Chris Sanders uncovers more of the “lost boards” and includes a couple of tips on making your panels clear and legible. Take a look!
An update from Chris Sanders, co-director of The Croods:
The Lost Boards, Part 3
The Croods are a caveman family, possibly the last caveman family on a crumbling continent. They are what you’d expect, not the brightest bunch, with beginners’ minds. They only emerge from their cave every three or four days or so, and only in the daylight. By sundown they are back inside their sealed cave. The Croods cave is the only thing that stands between themselves and the super predators that rule the desert night. If their cave is their main survival strategy, the second is their pack behavior. They Croods are an extremely cohesive group, never being out of sight of one another. Ever. In a world with no hospitals or telephones, staying together is critical. The father, Grug, takes his role seriously, constantly checking up on everyone and herding them here and there.
Our film kicks off when the Croods lose their cave. Without the cave they will have only a few hours of daylight before they will have to face the night for the first time.
Read more on Chris’ blog here
An update from Chris Sanders, co-director of The Croods:
Crood Odds and Ends
I promise I’ll post finished drawings again after I get back to Los Angeles. For now I’ll continue to dig around in my drawing box. The first drawing is the start of some marketing ideas I was drawing up featuring Sandy and the big Macawnivore. We have a collection of animals in the Croods that are combination-creatures. In this case it’s a Macaw and a Saber-Toothed Tiger. We moved the teeth around so they face forward like tusks, and borrowed the parrot colors for his fur. He’s the only animal I designed – most credit for our wonderful creatures goes to Shane Prigmore, Carter Goodrich, Takao Noguchi, and Shannon Tindle. Takao would go the extra step and would model our characters, practically overnight. When he presented them he would typically reveal that he’d thrown in some rigging so that the creatures could do some rudimentary things like smile or move their legs.
I wish we could release our characters like we saw them on his computer screen. Before they were covered with fur they looked like collectible vinyl toys.
See more on Chris’ blog: http://bit.ly/W7MlFl
An update from Chris Sanders, co-director of The Croods:
The Lost Boards, Part 2
Something I forgot to mention yesterday, which is that observant readers might have noticed the big stone menu suddenly changed into a flat rock after the first few panels. I’m pretty sure that the flat stone menu came first, and then I decided that since it was a menu, it should look more like a menu. So I changed the first few drawings.
Anyway, todays offering is from the same sequence. In the opening minutes of The Croods we need to get an idea of what life is like for our caveman family. In early development days we had the men out hunting and the women gathering. This didn’t mean that the women had things any easier than the men. This was a little sequence where Eep is picking berries. The plan here was to have Eep doing battle with an extremely aggressive flytrap-ish botanical. Eep likes this sort of stuff, she’s probably the most aggressive and certainly the most fearless of the Crood family.
I draw these panels with a black china marker, which is a crude sort of drawing instrument – basically a giant crayon. It keeps things fast, as sharp detail is impossible. There are a mixture of finishes in this sequence. The first five panels are a second-pass over my initial rough drawings. Panel six, through thirteen are my first rough sketches. If I had more time I would have cleaned these up to look more like the others, but they are a good example of the sort of energy I want to capture in my drawings. Its pretty obvious I didn’t spend much time on them, probably less that fifteen to thirty seconds. A second pass will take more like three to ten minutes per drawing, depending on the complexity. Panel 21 took about ten, as I wanted to clearly describe how Eep was using her body weight and leverage to subdue the plant.
See the rest of the deleted story panels on Chris’ blog here
An update from Chris Sanders, co-director of The Croods:
The Lost Boards, Part 1
As I write this I am at Skywalker Sound in the Kurosawa stage where we are working on the final sound mix for The Croods. This means I have a bit of time to finally get this Blog going again – and not a moment too soon! Croods is due to be released on March 22.
I drove up from Los Angeles so I could have my bicycle here. On weekdays I ride from the inn where I stay on property, to the tech building and back again. On the weekend I punish myself by going into San Francisco and riding up hills till I barf. More on that later.
This morning I am publishing some deleted story panels from the movie. I have a big box of them – I’m still in the dark ages when it comes to boarding which means all of my panels are still on paper rather than in a computer file. This is a little series where Grug, the caveman father is getting ready for an early morning hunt with his son, Thunk. On the outskirts of their hunting grounds there used to be a massive menu, which I imagined had been there for generations. With only two items, it isn’t really much of a choice. After picking what they’ll be trying to find, Grug leads Thunk over to another rock. This one depicts all the things that they need to steer clear of – all the things that can kill them. There are more things in the Crood world that can hurt you than can feed you. Pretty much everything on that rock is in the movie, with the exception of the exploding cactus on the upper right of the painting.
I really miss the exploding cactus.
Then Grug and Thunk move on to choosing their hunting tools, which consist of either a stick or a rock – the idea behind all of this was to show how spare their caveman lives are. Grug and Thunk do a round of Rock, Paper, Scissors to determine who gets what, but since there is still no Paper or Scissors, they each choose Rock and their match ends in a draw. So in the end, Grug flips Thunk like a coin.
The only bit of this that survived was the coin toss, which is still in the film. Only instead of flipping his son, Grug flips his mother-in-law.
See the rest of the deleted story panels on Chris’ blog here
thanks. thank you so, so very much, dreamworks. i know this is what you do to make money, i know that this may not even come from your heart, i know that this may just be a product, an invention, an item for you to sell, but you have no idea how much you’ve made my spirit lift.
i used to talk to the moon a lot, especially when i felt alone. when i felt like there wasn’t anyone who’d listen, she was always there. it’s nice, to be reminded of this little hope, this little bright feeling in my heart, exists. i haven’t spoken to her in a while, haven’t went outside at night just to look at her beauty. maybe i’ll do just that next time she comes out.
i don’t really believe in the legends, the guardians that you’ve portrayed in characters, but i do believe in the feelings, the emotions that they represent. hope, wonder, belief. it’s what i believe you try to make - a physical representation of those feelings one can’t explain, one can’t prove, but one just feels. those moments of happiness, of fear, of trust.
what i’m trying to say is, thank you. you’ve made me happier in my heart, however pathetic it may sound.
it may never reach you, this thing i’m writing, but you have made the child in me come back. i thought i lost her, the imagination i had when i was a child, but it seems that she was only asleep. and i just hope that whoever you are, the dreamworks production team, any part that you may have taken in producing this movie, however small or big or important or not; you have made me believe in myself. you have brought back my imaginations.
thanks to you, dreamworks, and all related figures.
sincerely,
a child brought back.
To “A Child”…
You know, we all check out the Tumblr sites now and then to see what fans of the movie are up to; our producer Christina saw your letter and was immediately moved to share it with the rest of us.
I’m so happy that the movie connected with you and that you’ve found some meaning in it; it’s why we made it! It’s true, this is our job, but let me assure you: it comes very much from our hearts, and our love of these ideas and these characters. We wanted the movie to be very much about all the things the Guardians represent, but most of all, we wanted it to be about the thing you say you’ve found again: a child’s imagination.
That’s what drove all of us in the making of the movie. It’s why we all chose these careers and this life. The imagination I lived and reveled in as a child made me who and what I am. It gave me comfort, inspiration, and strength. It was my star to steer by. I learned that you can dream something, you invest it with some love and passion and there’s a way – no matter how unlikely – of making it a reality. It’s what let me believe I could become an artist, and then a film director when once it all seemed impossible.
Here’s another thing I’ve realized: that imagination never goes away. We may misplace it, or mistrust it, but it’s there, and it’s struggling to be free. I honestly think many people – maybe most — fight constantly to suppress their imaginations, to deny the child inside them. They conform, they live in fear, they become cynical. They think they “know”. They don’t remember how powerful it can be not to know — but to wonder and dream and come to a bigger kind of knowing as we search for what is real.
I know it all sounds a little lofty coming from the maker of a Santa Claus movie, but for me, for all of us, it wasn’t just a movie; it was our lives, the lives we lived both out in the world, and in our imaginations. I’m so happy that what we did touched you, and helped remind you of something you’d missed. Just remember it was never gone, and never will be.
So welcome back to it! (And have a little fun, as a good friend of ours would most certainly tell you.)
My very best to you, and thanks so much for your wonderful letter.
- Peter Ramsey, Director of Rise Of The Guardians
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