Iain McCaig is a Gnomon instructor, concept artist, and visual storyteller. In this DVD, he does his sci-fi interpretation of the “Little Mermaid” story by Hans Christian Andersen.
This DVD will be invaluable as a guide for filmmakers who would like to substitute the words (script) with images. You don’t have to be into drawing in order to take advantage of it although a semester of drawing in college definitely helped me.
As an exercise, you could get a few shots from your script and translate them into drawings (be it stick figures). You’ll be able to experiment with different compositions, angles, dark-light ratios, and so on. Are you doing a film noir or a comedy? It could be all there – even in a thumbnail format.
If you’re (like me) interested in the visual storytelling part but not that interested in taking your drawings beyond the storyboard level, you only need the first DVD from the series. Volumes 2, 3, and 4 deal with character design so they aren’t that much help. The first DVD, Visual Storytelling with Iain McCaig, is a must see.
Visual storytelling – this is something really new, isn’t it? The visual can deffinitely communicate more subtle levels than the written words. Hm, I should get the DVD.
I’m not sure it’s worth owning the DVD. At the same time, I don’t think they rent it in your local video store.
I find this DVD to be for the most part inspirational. I doubt in just 2 hours someone could reach Iain’s level of storytelling technique. What you do get is a better understanding of what professional visual storytellers and concept artists bring to the table.
While looking for samples of visual storytellers I came across a site that I think has examples of storyboards that is laid out quite nicely. http://www.frameworks-la.com. From the quality of this work, I would imagine it takes years to get to this level.