Prepare to Board! Creating Story and Characters for Animated Features and Shorts

Packed with illustrations that illuminate and a text that entertains and informs, this book explains the methods and techniques of animation preproduction with a focus on story development and character design.

Story is the most important part of an animated film-and this book delivers clear direction on how animators can create characters and stories that have originality and appeal. Learn how the animation storyboard differs from live action boards and how characters must be developed simultaneously with the story. Positive and negative examples of storyboard and character design are presented and analyzed to demonstrate successful problem-solving techniques. Artwork from an international array of students and professionals supplement the author's own illustrations. Three never-before-published interviews with well known development artists and a comprehensive glossary are also included.

Currently teaching storyboard courses at Sheridan Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning, Nancy has worked  as a supervising animator, director, character designer, and storyboard artist in six countries. She has taught beginning and advanced animation, character design, storyboard, layout, animation history, and gesture drawing at the college and university level since 2000. A graduate of the Character Animation Program at the California Institute of the Arts, Nancy worked in development and as a supervising animator on several Disney features including A Goofy Movie, Hercules and Treasure Planet. She was nominated for an Annie award in 2000 for storyboarding Little Angelita for Disney and won a Cine Golden Eagle in 1984 for her personal film Your Feets' Too Big. Nancy is a member of the National Cartoonists Society and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. In recent years she has illustrated two children's books, Duffy and the Invisible Crocodile and Basil Bigboots the Pirate for Australian writer Patricia Bernard in 2004.