Story Artist Demonstration: Drawing Life into Disney’s PLANES ~ #DisneyPlanesBloggers

The past two weeks I’ve been posting about my latest blogger adventure out to California. There I attended both the premieres for Thor: The Dark World and Delivery Man, but I also was able to spend some time over at the Disney Toon Studios! I was there to learn more about Disney’s latest home entertainment release… PLANES! Hopefully by now you’ve read my interview with director Klay Hall and producer Traci Balthazor-Flynn, as well as my experience with the Pre-Vis Department. Oh! Did I mention that PLANES is out NOW on Blu-ray/DVD/Digital Copy? Well… It is!

One of the presentations we attended was by the Story Board department on the process of animating a movie! We met with Dan Abraham, Head of Story, and Art Hernandez, a Story Artist. Both of them worked directly on PLANES. They explained how often they are given a script or concept of a scene to examine. The script will get broken down into chapters, where then each Story Artist will get three or so different chapters from the script to form into sequences from the movie.

In other words, the Story Artists take the written word and transform it into a visual.  They make a comparable conversion of the movie to set up a staging. They have to think and conceptualize where the characters are, what the locations look like, where is the camera in this story, etc.

Once the storyboards are finished, it’s up to the story artist to pitch the scenes for the film to the director and producers. So not only do the artists have to draw the characters, but often in their pitches, they have to voice them as well! This helps give the director, executive, producer, or whomever the artist is pitching to, an idea of what to expect in a specific scene. Dan and Art even gave us an example “pitch” of scene that introduces Franz from the movie. So hilarious!

Our Turn as Story Artists!

Now you may remember on my last trip out to Disney Toon Studios, I met with Art and attempted to draw Dusty. I guess fate decided to give me a second chance? Once again, Dan and Art gave us bloggers a little art lesson in how to draw the star of PLANES. And yes I still totally lack what one considers artistic ability. Art makes it look so easy!
They did take us step by step on how to draw Dusty. I was hoping since I had that one previous experience my Dusty wouldn’t come out too horrific! Like a good student, I made sure to pay attention. Yes, I was quite serious about drawing my Dusty correctly!
It wasn’t long till I had my finished product ready! Okay, so it’s far from the best Dusty around. However, it is definitely improvement over my last one. Checking out the other Dusty portraits drawn in my group… I think some of my fellow bloggers may have future careers as Storyboard Artists.
Want to see how the pros do it? Check out this cool clip below! They’ll show you how to draw a much better Dusty than me.

It was great to have another sneak peek into all the hard work that goes into make an animated film. Meeting Dan and learning from Art again about the process of storyboards really was a delight and a unique experience. It was just so cool to see the process first hand!

Be sure to follow the hashtag #DisneyPlanesBloggers to check out all the fun my fellow bloggers and I had while learning more about this Blu-ray/DVD release! Don’t forget to connect with PLANES on Facebook and Twitter!

Don’t forget to check out my PLANES Fruit Snack! It makes a great snack to munch on while enjoying a family viewing of PLANES!

While I attended an expense paid trip by Disney to the Thor: The Dark World Premiere and other events, all opinions are 100% my own. All original photos courtesy of Walt Disney Pictures, unless otherwise noted. All edits by me.