Fan Art Friday: Rent

'To days of inspiration,
making something out of nothing,
the need to express,
to communicate…’
~La Vie Boheme, Rent

About a year ago, I went to an animation workshop lead by a storyboardist from Disney. I had a great time and learned a lot, both with regard to character design and the talent (good and bad) of students accepted into animation programs.

One of the things I learned was that professional storyboard artists often draw their storyboards in Sharpie. He explained that this was because Sharpies have a reasonably consistent flow and produce a very deep black which is hard to achieve with any other kind of marker. A simple little factoid, really, but to me it was a revelation!

It made so much sense!

You see, up to then I could never quite figure out what the artists used to achieve the expressive bold lines in the storyboards I had seen in books. I had guessed (and tried) a number of materials that I thought would achieve that effect, ranging from black colored pencils to charcoals, none of which I was particularly happy with.

But the idea of drawing in permanent marker seriously freaked me out. What if I made a mistake? I didn’t like the idea of having to redraw everything every time I made a careless stroke or smudge. It took me a little while to realize that the point was not to create a perfect drawing, just one that captures the moment and moves the story along. Story boards are far from the final product and will be redrawn and refined any number of times.

Energized by this session, I wanted to draw something…anything. The problem was, I was lazy and didn’t feel like coming up with anything new or original.

Fan art to the rescue!

Listening to my Broadway playlist on shuffle I found Tune Up #1, the opening narration to Rent playing: “December 24^th, 9PM, Eastern Standard Time….”

That would work – preexisting dialogue and narration that could easily be converted into some sort of storyboard or comic. A quick Google search brought up the full libretto, and the result of this experiment is below. I didn’t get any farther than this opening monologue but I was happy with how it came out and I ended up a lot more confident about playing with permanent markers.