Animation &Animation Artifacts &Hubley &Story & Storyboards &Tissa David 17 Mar 2008 07:46 am
Upkeep Board
- I spoke a little too quickly last week when I promised to post the storyboard for UPKEEP, Hubley’s short film for IBM. I seem only to have three pages of the board, and I’m posting them here.
The story tells the history of the maintenance guy, for this client, IBM. When the first stone-wheeled cart breaks down (square wheels don’t work), the mainenance man comes in and cuts off the edges to give the world the first round wheel. When the loom goes crazy, the maintenance guy enters to fix the macinery, making it easier and smoother to weave. (Love blossoms in this sequence.)
The entire film is told without dialogue. Its soundtrack is a score by jazz great Benny Carter, and it was prerecorded. The film was animated to
___Xerox Model of lead character_______ it and the animation was edited by Faith Hubley.
___drawn by John Hubley______________The animation was done by Phil Duncan, Tissa
___________________________________David, Jack Schnerk and Lu Guarnier.
Again, I have only these three pages. They’re photostats made from the storyboard drawings pasted to black flint paper and reduced to 9×12 size. Originally, John did the drawings on pads of paper (4×5) cut to size. The drawings he chose to include were tacked to the wall in his room. This is where he’d present the board to his client.
_________________(Click any image to enlarge.)
Here are a couple of the Layouts for this sequence.
_________A drawing by John Hubley of the assembly line BG.
_________Tissa turned this shot into a pan so that we’d end on the lead girl.
_________The loom goes haywire as Tissa blocks out the scene.
_________Tissa shows the girl watching the guy at work.
_________John’s drawing of the serviceman repairing the loom with Tissa’s touchups.
__John draws the serviceman waiting for the girl at the end of the day – with flowers.
on 17 Mar 2008 at 12:12 pm 1.Emmett Goodman said …
This is so enticing. Lately, I have been wishing for a non-YouTube way to watch more of John and Faith Hubley’s work. Are there any DVD’s out there with the Hubley’s work (particularly from this period), Mr. Sporn.
on 17 Mar 2008 at 12:30 pm 2.Michael said …
The Hubley dvd’s are out there. Unfortunately they’re mostly out of print and have to be bought through 2nd vendors. These are immediate ones to locate. All include fetaure pieces with the shorts.
The Hubley Collection – Volume 1 includes:
Windy Day, People People People, and Moonbird
The Hubley Collection – Volume 2 includes:
Cockabbody and Zuckerkandl
and my favorite, because it includes many of the classic shorts,
Art and Jazz in Animation: The Cosmic Eye includes:
The Tender Game, Eggs, Urbanissimo, Harlem Wednesday,
Adventures of an *, Of Stars and Men and The Hat.
on 18 Mar 2008 at 6:56 am 3.slowtiger said …
Did the artists at Hubley’s really work directly from these layouts? I would have been killed if I ever presented such a “sloppy” sketch for a layout in my studio days – everything had to be cleaned so it could be presented to the client. Of course I can imagine that this kind of loose definition of a scene only works within a smaller team, with artists who know and trust each other.
This is so far from the process of refining, presenting, and approving every step in development that is common in bigger studios. I wonder if there’s a way to work in this relaxed way even in a big project – I would like that.
on 18 Mar 2008 at 8:14 am 4.Michael said …
These were John’s layouts. I’ve given you Tissa’s version of some of them to show that the process cocntinued with her. The storyboard told a lot, and John drew many of these just prior or during a meeting with the animator to show what he wanted.
From this same film, he gave me a scribbled drawing of the interior of a cathedral Long Shot. I had to have him tell me what the image was before I tried to clean it up for the animator. It made it fun for me. He trusted the people he hired to be able to do what he wanted without spoon feeding every step of the way.
I try to work in a similar way when I work with other animators. The storyboard becomes important (not that it’s ever more clean than John’s presented here.