Disney's Hercules Descent to Hades Storyboards

These are storyboards from Disney's Hercules, the descent to Hades sequence. These were completed using watercolor on watercolor paper and charcoal on story pads around 6x9 inches. I loved working with charcoal because you could get such moody effects. The downside was that the mood got all over me and my clothes. It was also hard to correct mistakes or add fine details when using charcoal. It might be cool to start in charcoal, scan it and then work digitally over it.

Below you'll see some full size panels and a complete 4x8 presentation board.

Enjoy. (CLICK TO ENLARGE)

Here are some of the full size samples. As usual for the process, I created several versions of this sequence fine tuning and refining the story. Unfortunately, as beautiful as it was, most of it was passage work and needed to be condensed. Travelogues do not work well in narrative films.

Directors, John Musker and Ron Clements chose James Woods to play Hercules. Before that they auditioned Jack Nicholson for the part. He came in looked at the storyboards and pulled out a lighter to act out the part. It was eerie.

Before the age of digital art, we used to present our storyboards on 4x8 foot cork boards. The story panels were pinned to the boards. I have no idea how many fingers were pierced making all of those animated film. This was yet another version of the sequence.

Treasure Planet storyboards and visual development

Here's some visual development art from Disney's Treasure Planet. I used acrylic on illustration board. It was fun to explore a science fiction world. We called it visual development. When did it become concept art? So am I a "concept artist?" Darn, I just printed new business cards...

Storyboard panels from the Cosmic Storm when the star goes supernova. I completed over 200 acrylic paintings about 6x9 inches for this sequence. 

Hercules Kidnap Storyboards

Here are some storyboards from Disney's Hercules. In this sequence, Pain and Panic sneak in to kidnap the baby Hercules. Their stealth mission leads to a lot of pain and panic as they sneak in disguised as a Trojan rocking horse baby gift, . This was a fun idea to take something that might be a normal baby gift  and transpose it into the story world of Greek mythology. An innocent rocking horse became a sinister gift concealing dangers. It was also fun to explore the characters letting the rocking horse cause pain when it... (Well, you'll see.) 

I use Comic Life software to assemble the storyboards and add the speech balloons and titles.

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Byron Boulder Storyboards

 Byron Boulder was a show that unfortunately was never made. It could have been a great show? It was kind of like the Flintstones.

It was created by Sprite Animation. It had wonderful CGI character style created by Patrick Awa. It was really fun to storyboard on.

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Winnie the Pooh's Word Hunt Storyboard

Meanwhile... Often a director will cut to another thread of the story to keep the audience on the edge of their sear. I won't have enough time to write another post tonight, but I will post some storyboards from a Winnie the Pooh educational DVD series. The layout and speech balloons were added using Comic Life.

Enjoy. (Click to Enlarge)

Dark times during RIO

Found some old storyboards from RIO. This is the lowest moment in the film. Jewel is captured and Blu is headed for Nigel's trap.

Enjoy. (CLICK TO ENLARGE)