The Custom Thumbnail Reframing Tool
My custom thumbnail reframing tool was totally obsolete long before I invented it, and couldn’t possibly be of use to anyone besides myself. Everything I use it for can be done a thousand times more easily and effectively via even the most rudimentary digital means. But it pleases me to behold because it was begat by utilitarian necessity, and thus is humble and pure.
To use it, start with a storyboard thumbnail panel (drawn on a post-it), the framing of which is not quite right (1).
Now remove the post-it, and place it in the center of the reframing tool (2). Place the tool on a light box, under your blank thumbnail page. Now you can slide the tool and/or page around, looking for a more satisfactory framing (3). The 4 post-its permanently affixed to the tool let the image “float” in a uniform sea of yellow, thus tricking one’s eye into forgetting the original framing choice, clearing the way for a fresh “objective” decision, untainted by attachment to, or distaste for, the original framing. In practice, this sometimes effectively results in a reaffirmation of the original framing, which is totally fine.
Once you’re happy with your new framing, locate the red registration dots on the framing tool (4), and mark their location on your thumbnail page (5). Usually one mark will suffice (never more than two) since you’re generally not tilting the image, and keeping the edges of the post-it parallel to the panel borders during replacement is easy enough to eyeball. The tool has registration dots on all four corners, so you don’t need to worry about how it’s oriented. Now remove the drawing from the tool and replace it on the thumbnail page according to the registration mark(s) (6), and redraw your panel borders as necessary (7) (or, for a cleaner look, retrace the panel on a new, properly centered post-it). Reframing is complete.
The big limitation of the tool, especially compared to its digital analogues, is its obvious incapacity to resize an image. I usually end up, when my thumbnail draft is complete, with a handful of unsatisfactorily sized panels that I’ve marked “wider” or “tighter”, which I’m left addressing with a photocopier during the final drafting process. Oh well! Actually, as I’m writing this, I’m envisioning a “custom thumbnail resizing tool”, which would be a thumbnail panel border on a blank page, with the center of the panel cut out*, that you could hold closer to or further from the unsatisfactory panel to gauge a new sizing… but you’d still have to redraw a new panel anyway, so probably it’s not worth the trouble compared to just using a photocopier.
*Speaking of which, this is exactly what the first iteration of the reframing tool was. The “big breakthrough” was the context-neutralization afforded by the post-it ring.
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