~Liz Storyboards~

Hey there! I'm a storyboard artist with a Bachelors in Animation Concept Development. I have a deep respect for the craft and hope to share that with anyone visiting this little corner of the internet! In this blog you can find current projects, process work, and little memes to hopefully inspire you with your own work! I hope you enjoy your stay ❤

[lizstoryboards]

Finally made myself a proper signature/watermark. I tested it on a variety of background colors to make sure it is legible regardless of what I put it over.

I've seen a fair amount of debate on whether or not you should sign your works. On one hand, an artist signature can be annoying to viewers, but on the other, they can connect someone who has never seen the artist before with more of their work! After a few times of this happening to me, I think I'm on the side of signatures and watermarks being a net-positive to both viewers and artists when done right.

Feel free to share your thoughts on these sort of informational artist signatures!

[lizstoryboards]

ROTTMNT is my current obsession so have a belated Halloween storyboard! (that's what I get for starting this project on Halloween night)

[lizstoryboards]

Recreating Lane's Character Sheet

Enjoy this little before and after of one of my characters, Lane! I am hoping to do some new boards with them once I round out the story and world building. Of course, got to build up that portfolio!

Original Design

Introducing the original Lane! While I was very set on a color palette, you can clearly see the level of details is quite frankly INSANE for a 2D animator to handle. As a general rule, stripes, fabric wrinkles, and details should be kept to a minimum when thinking in terms of 2D. At the time I made this, I wasn't sure what I would use it for, and was a bit in a rush to pitch my concept to my class. Clearly though, Lane needed a full re-design to work for 2D.

Ideation and Doodles

A lot of my concepts for the new Lane came from lazy doodles in my sketchbook and on my tablet. It's also where I got the idea for the art style of the series, comprised of curves that don't fear some pointy edges. (feat. Zwi the horse to the right, she may visit Tumbler next)

In one of my digital sketches, a little mistake happened where I left a little line under Lane's eye... Which instantly thought looked pretty neat! I did try to experiment a little with multiple lines or different positions, but a single line from the middle of the eye was what felt best.

Final Designs

Some small tweaks to the shape of the wraps and original colors and that bad boy is 2D friendly and raring to go! I'm pleased with how fun Lane is to draw now, and how quickly I can get sketches of them done! I hope to do some board work with them soon!

[lizstoryboards]

Easter Character Design Process

This little gal is Easter the bunny! Here is just a little about my behind the scenes process creating her to show what goes into one of my character designs.

Mood Board

I like to make a little mood board to get a feel for my character's personality as well as defining features I could use to create her appearance. I generally keep these for internal use since they sometimes incorporate other people's art, but I will show this one as an example since credit can be seen on the artworks I used. I use a mobile app called Collage Maker to create these boards since it works lightning fast to create an aesthetically pleasing board while I'm on the go!

Silhouettes

After defining a mood, I move on to silhouettes. Concept art is in part trial and error, so the more iterations the better! I like to experiment with the head first and then sketch some bodies for my favorite head shape. I don't always number my silhouettes when it's just me, but I like to add them when showing them to others so that I can discuss which I like without saying things like "the third one from the top right" and such, and when asking for feedback from my friends it makes their lives easier as well! For here, I went with head 7 and body 5.

Sketches

Next I go through and get used to the proportions I laid out for myself, anything from facial expressions to action poses. This character is very heavily reliant on body language so I mostly stuck to action poses. I choose one of these sketches to clean up to later use for color studies.

Color Studies

Last but not least on my list is color studies. I like to have an idea of the character's color even when I don't plan on coloring them so that I know environments to avoid putting them against or objects that they may look good with. For these I went with that nice light gray color as I want to add the ability in the story for the character to dye her fur with berries and plants. It's always important to think about the needs of the story!

And at the end, I come out with the final design! I plan to use her in some upcoming boards for a short story, but showing a bit of what goes into the characters can be informative and fun! I hope you all had some fun taking a stroll through the process or learned something new!

[lizstoryboards]

Hey there peeps!

This will be my first post to this new blog so I thought I'd introduce myself! I'm Liz, a storyboard artist graduated from SCAD, and I'd love to share some of what I do on here! I like to keep myself busy with projects both for fun and for my portfolio (you can find my site at www.lizstoryboards.com!) All of that process work will be found on here so I can discuss my thoughts and get some general feedback! Oh, and the little character in this image is my mascot, Ender! You'll probably see her around a fair bit, be that through panels, comics, or drawings.