An Non-Spoiler Annotated Look at Scene 7A [Storyboard Sequence]

In preparation for the new year, the team and I are finally getting back on track with Journey of the Spark after a short hiatus due to ongoing conflict and animosity amongst the team. Even though I’ve been frequently answering questions here on Tumblr, I know you guys are itching to get some more behind-the-scenes material out there.

Well, in honor of the holiday season, here is an exclusive sneak peak at our next assignment for the film. Click on past the break to see it!

If you guys remember a few months ago, we posted a storyboard animatic featuring a scene from the film between Twilight Sparkle and Discord. Well now, we’re getting ready to fully animate that sequence. However, there were a few details that needed some serious improving such as camera angles and positions, you know, film-making junk =P

However, we didn’t want to just animate the storyboard animatic. We wanted to go one step further and animate the entire beginning of the scene as it calls for in the script. So let’s take a look at a few of the storyboards for Scene 7A. Also, giving credit where credit is due, these amazing storyboards are all drawn by Rogelio Gonzalez (AKA TetraPony).

In the beginning of Scene 7, we see Twilight crying into a water fountain found deep within the Palace Labyrinth of Canterlot Castle during the nighttime. You’ll notice that atop the fountain is a stone statue of Princess Celestia. Soon enough, Twilight looks away from the fountain and notices something.

Ignoring the first two frames of this next page, Twilight sees a darker part of the Labyrinth: an iron fence gate. It leads somewhere. Twilight begins walking towards it.

Now on this next page, notice the stage directions and arrows labeled on the drawings of Twilight walking towards the gate. The common practice with Storyboards is that they are meant to only give us (the filmmakers) a basic idea of how a scene is going to visually play out. Its the storyboard artist’s job to give us a general idea of how and where the camera is going to move in some cases. Whenever a storyboard session goes on, both the Assistant Director and I, along with the Animation Director, review these boards with the artist in case there’s an inconsistency or I want something different to better suit my vision.

So in these drawings, Twilight sees the gate and notices that it was just put in, revealing what lies behind it.

Its here that we are introduced to the tower previously seen in the animatic. But an interesting thing to note here are the black frames around Twilight and the white arrows again labeled on the drawings. This is going to indicate what you as the audience are going to see in the final cut when we animate this. Those frames indicate where the camera is going to move. So in the first frame on this page, the camera is going to pan from where Twilight is standing further up to reveal the massive scale of the tower.

The same thing applies to the bottom frames of this page as we see Twilight trying to push the gate open, realizing that its been locked and thus using her magic to open it. However, instead of the camera panning upwards, it’ll instead pan slightly to the left to reveal the lock and Twilight opening it.

So now, the giant fence opens and Twilight begins making her way closer towards the tower, a bit uneasy and frightened at her new surroundings. But going back a little bit, now notice the camera directions as the gate opens. Now, we’re gonna pan down from the top of the tower back down to Twilight. As Twilight walks from the entrance of the gate towards the tower, the camera will follow her from the right to the left.

Also, one visual detail that I love is the spiderweb seen overlaying the second part of the walkcycle, giving an indication to the audience that this part of the Labyrinth hasn’t been touched in ages. Often times, these are visual details found written within the script. For instance, this is what the script describes Twilight walking towards the tower:

As TWILIGHT walks towards the tower, fog begins to roll in. She sees a spider web attached to the hedges. A millipede crawls out from the hedge. TWILIGHT backs away, a queasy feeling befalling her.

So when descriptions like that are seen written in the script, that’s usually what gets drawn down onto the storyboards unless the team feels that something could be tweaked or changed.

So here’s a familiar shot. The shadow of Twilight appearing upon the door of the tower and Twilight gulping nervously as she prepares to step inside. However, here’s something different. Notice how even in the storyboards, the visual details such as shading, highlights, and shadows are still applied. Even in previous pages, details such as water and fog were illustrated as well. This is to help us visually understand how we’re going to achieve the cinematic look that we want Journey of the Spark to have. So details such as the shading on Twilight’s body as well as her shadow on the door are important.

So now we finally come to the last page I want to discuss. The big reveal. Another one of the key elements to the storyboards is being able to portray a mood in a minimalistic way. Being able to build up a scene visually and yet only let it be just a representation of what the scene is going to look like is a huge task in itself that requires a lot of talent. But you can see it very clearly here. The use of shading, shadows, and highlights allows for the reveal of Discord’s statue at the end to be relatively potent.

To explain the final page here, as Twilight walks into the tower, everything is dark. Since a majority of Scene 7 takes place at night, the moonlight will slowly reveal Discord’s statue perched atop the stone pedestal, giving the chilling reveal to the main antagonist of the film.

And that my friends is an in-depth annotated look at a storyboard sequence from Journey of the Spark. Hope you found it to your fancy and look forward to the fully animated sequence sometime early next year.