Alongside the work of the other company members, Nic has been drawing out some scenes and simultaneously devising a plot. These start life as a special sort of storyboard that takes into account the movement of the 2d puppets and other background elements.
Nic writes….
“As the sandbox of the paper cinema is open - this process is as much casting (characters, sets, props) than traditional film storyboarding - framing is loose. Everything needs bleed - natural edges, I am drawing the key frames - the beats, looking for where i can do two or more movements / reactions from a single character / drawing. Composition framing and movement are part of the devising process with the rest of the crew, we all start to find out how the piece wants to breathe as we mix in the music and the changes. This initial run is quick, just in an A5 notebook, biro and lots of staring into space ( classic artist behaviour laying under trees, on sofa’s etc - I am working honest ! ) running the story in my head from as many angles, then sketched down raw quick, half a spidery mind map and half exploded comic book - (hur .. humm …! ) nobody is going to see them, apart from the crew.
The next stage is me running to the crew shouting ‘I’VE GOT IT !!!’ in the mode of a clothed Archimedes, unfortunately despite my fervor the crew look through these books as if have been on a sketching holiday to Luxor with Dr Jones .”
It’s possible that just Nic, and Nic alone fully understands these sketches! Can you decipher them?
Here is a peek into Nic’s next sketchbook where he is refining the ideas from the storyboard into nearly finished drawings that will become puppets.
Character studies and colour tests for Gwen
“These are experiments to see if adding form with pencil shading will give the piece a softer and more jovial feel of rendering rather than the hard dark ink line of the noir world weary of the Scottish usurper - of our last show. There is always the question of weather to go into colour, maybe this is the time, maybe save time with inking the form, enjoying swaths of colour instead. But this always comes at a cost of our exposure levels on the live camera possibly revealing all handles, sticks, strings, edges and everything else taped together to bring out the magic - more experiments to do before decisions are made.. (also note Gwen having a third arm here this is not denoting her as a divine daughter of parvati, but trying to get two actions (keyframes) within one drawing) “
Nic then chose to produce these incredible scene illustrations to help give a sense of some of the narrative points.
“ With the sketchbook only readable by Nefertiti and me - it was important to make a series of images from the story to give the crew and audience an idea where we are heading. It felt great just to do finished drawings, getting to draw the background on the page - use shadows, silhouettes, blur and speed lines - techniques normally denied to me, in drawing for The Paper Cinema where everything is a separate element and there are no great shadows - fun, I wish to do more.
It is becoming apparent that with our previous long adapted narratives, there was always a text to support the story, that if we wandered or didn’t hit the beat with enough clarity the audience could be lost between Cawdor and Charybdis. Does that mean we need a secondary source for this original story - whether a graphic novel, zine or poster book. This would act as a key to the viewer - what do you think ? ”
If you would like to support our work, please consider donating the price of a coffee via our Kofi page here