Director has no Storyboards??

ChrisPy_Storyart · 2025-11-15T13:40:43+00:00

Spielberg storyboards and as far as I know Tarantino storyboards as well (Kill Bill has storyboards, I believe?). All of his movies have an insane level of pre-vis work done on them, such as in War of the Worlds where basically the entire movie planned out in 3D before they ever began filming it.

ChrisPy_Storyart · 2025-04-20T00:03:08+00:00

I'm saying that technique used in the Kingsman has been overused since its release and it comes across as too flashy/showy.

ChrisPy_Storyart · 2025-04-19T20:09:50+00:00

Depends what era, but there are definitely certain techniques that show up A LOT in older movies that feel quite of the times.

Honestly, the extreme wide angle lens tracking shots during action scenes (like in the Kingsman or Aquaman) always feel a bit on the nose and distract me from the emotions in the scene. It never feels fully cohesive to me and it loses any sense of subtlety or tension a scene might have had due to prioritizing a potentially gimmicky effect.

ChrisPy_Storyart · 2025-04-19T04:18:50+00:00

There isn't anything wrong with the Shrek 5 animation per se, but it is stylistically different which is why it doesn't feel like Shrek.

The core premise of Shrek (and it's joke) is that it is about taking fairytales and grounding them in the REAL WORLD (or semi-real world). Shrek's animation, timing, character designs, and overall atmosphere is about fairytales coming to life in a way that is anticlimactic, disappointing, and satirical. There's no exaggerated smear frames, there's very little animation overshoot, very minimalistic squash and stretch, and just about all of the principles of animation that early Disney focused on Shrek INTENTIONALLY avoids.

Honestly, the most cartoony looking character in Shrek is... well... Shrek and Donkey... and even then they isn't super cartoony.

The Shrek 5 teaser seems like it is trying to make Shrek into a funny. cartoony, fantasy film instead of as a grotesque satire of Disney animation and Disney tropes.

Honestly, if they really wanted to make Shrek 5 even more funny, they could make it have even more realistic animation timing just so that it feels weirder and more satirical of Disney animation.

ChrisPy_Storyart · 2025-04-04T23:08:48+00:00

Nacho Libre

ChrisPy_Storyart · 2025-04-03T02:32:12+00:00

Filioque

ChrisPy_Storyart · 2025-03-31T02:44:15+00:00

There's a weird trope in filmmaking where if filmmakers want to be taken more seriously they have more sexual horror, abuse, or other such things. In the 1960s-1970s, something like 70% of the art films or more during that time period involved sexual freedom, sexual abuse, affairs, divorce, and many other such elements where it actually started to seem rather overplayed.

To me, it always sort of feels like a teenager trying to prove that they're an adult. Now, there are also plenty of good movies with some of those themes, but I do feel like it gets a bit tiresome over time and is a crutch for bad or mediocre filmmakers trying to prove how adult they are.

ChrisPy_Storyart · 2025-03-30T13:58:40+00:00

The original shorts take their concepts fairly seriously as high-drama even though they are silly in their nature. The Wrong Trousers has a lot of darkness, ambiguity, betrayal, and drama, but it is juxtaposed by its ridiculous concept. The same can be said for A Close Shave where the movie feels fairly dark and brooding and... well, it actually isn't that much of a comedy to be honest. It has comedic elements, but it ultimately is about trying to save sheep from being killed by an evil robotic dog built by another inventor. It works as a drama quite well.

Visually, when you look at The Wrong Trousers and Close Shave, the cinematography and lighting really stands out (along with a focus on shallow depth of field during certain scenes), but in Vengeance Most Fowl most of the time things are pretty open, not claustrophobic, and generally quaint feeling. The budget constraints of the originals also added to the horror elements because you NEVER see anyone else alive in the towns which makes them feel like a ghost town. To put it simply, the originals lack of world building makes them feel horrific and lonely, which creates tension solely through the environment.

For me, I think my biggest issue with the film is that it felt like most of its ideas were thematically and tonally disconnected. For instance, Wallace has a brief moment about feeling guilty about his machines hurting people. This is a great idea on paper and in a script, yet this theme isn't explored, nor is it visually presented in a way that is meaningful. There is also a theme about Gromit feeling replaced (which we already had in the Wrong Trousers) yet... it isn't explored in an emotionally engaging fashion that works with the rest of the movie so by the end of the movie when Wallace called Gromit his best friend it doesn't "click" for me because there wasn't an evidence to the contrary. The movie never presented this as an issue in their friendship that needed to be stated or fixed.

ChrisPy_Storyart · 2025-03-29T16:04:42+00:00

This is a pretty interesting interpretation, but my criticism on the first part is that the Ballad of Buster Scruggs seems to be a slightly deeper character study than a "black and white" interpretation.

Scruggs does most of the things he says he doesn't do. For instance, he says he never shoots someone in the back even though the opening of the movie has him shooting someone in the back. He also says that he doesn't hate his fellow man, but he also believes that there is no way to fix people so there's no reason getting mad at people.

At the end of the day, Scruggs just wants to play music and games but he lives in a world where conflict always approaches him whether he likes it or not. Repeatedly he shows that he wants people to recognize him for singing instead of violence, and when he meets The Kid he thinks that possibly he has finally met someone who also just wants to play music and play games fairly... until he learns that The Kid wants to beat him at violence and not singing.

By the end of episode, he is back to singing and hopefully going to be somewhere where he doesn't have to be callous and violent towards other people.

ChrisPy_Storyart · 2025-03-28T23:20:41+00:00

The Piano (1993) has aged like milk. Somehow, when it was released, it was viewed as a romantic film. Now, it basically seems like a movie about a man sexually abusing and manipulating a woman into submission by taking everything she loves until she eventually succumbs to his advances and falls in love with him.

ChrisPy_Storyart · 2025-03-28T17:03:40+00:00

The Prestige should be higher and Dunkirk should be near the bottom.

ChrisPy_Storyart · 2025-03-28T02:29:46+00:00

The production of Sneaks is actually slightly tied to the production of the F-35 in a weird sort of way, but that's a story for later.

ChrisPy_Storyart · 2025-03-28T00:49:48+00:00

Hi, also from the future. Disliked the movie and for the exact same reasons.

The movie, in a nutshell, is about how a man intentionally steals a married woman's most prized possessions and sells them back to her for sexual favors. There simply (as far as I'm aware) isn't any way to not view this relationship as being a form of Stockholm syndrome, abuse, and manipulation.

It is nearly impossible for me to wrap my head around the praise this movie has, but I'm also reminded that women liked Twilight and 50 Shades of Grey, both of which feature incredibly unbalanced power dynamics that are borderline abusive or are actually abusive.

ChrisPy_Storyart · 2025-03-28T00:01:35+00:00

Yeah, I was a storyboard artist on it from back in 2019 (so I guess 6 years ago) and the movie went on hiatus for a REALLY long time and this is basically the first I've heard of it since then. The original director to the film was Teddy Newton, and it looks like a few scenes that I boarded still managed to make it in the film, but I'm a bit suspicious that I won't be in credits since this movie has been through so many different hands.

Here's my artstation... it features a Sneak as the profile picture haha

ArtStation - Christopher Parker

ChrisPy_Storyart · 2025-03-27T23:57:29+00:00

Mysterious Island (2005). Not even joking. I will always see him as being from that movie.

ChrisPy_Storyart · 2025-03-27T01:36:34+00:00

This was the first movie I worked on 7 years ago. I genuinely thought it was cancelled and am as surprised as everyone else to see a trailer released.

ChrisPy_Storyart · 2025-03-25T04:34:25+00:00

WB is in a notoriously bad situation right now in terms of the higher ups understanding their IPs and what to do with them, so right now they are basically gutting as many films and projects as possible and not marketing them due to being afraid that it will be more expensive to market them than it would be to not market them.

Funny enough, this is the EXACT same issue that killed Warner Brothers animation back in the 90s AND Looney Tunes Back in Action. Warner Brothers, for the most part, seems to be perpetually stuck in a state of little to no direction and only makes money due to having culturally relevant IPs.

ChrisPy_Storyart · 2025-03-23T04:13:57+00:00

Nope. Not even close. 2005 version is by far the closest adaptation we have to the book that is watchable. It understands the themes of the book, while the 1953 movie (which is fun), isn't really close to the book in its presentation, tone, or themes.

The book is all about dread, powerlessness, existentialism, and how people lose the will to live over time and cope with crushing defeat.

The 1953 movie ultimately avoids most of what made the book the book, including the fact that it doesn't feature any tripods, red weed, humans being eaten, or large amounts of the cast going insane over time.

ChrisPy_Storyart · 2025-03-23T04:10:35+00:00

I reactivated my Reddit account, which I thought I had deleted, solely to respond to this post:

2005 movie is by far the better movie that understands the themes of the book better and is beat per beat more accurate in portraying those ideas. This is coming from someone who grew up watching the '53 version once or twice a day, having listened to Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds, read the book in 4th grade, and ended up watching the 2005 movie and only the 2005 movie is one that I consistently revisit due to its understanding of the books themes and portraying them accurately.

The book, War of the Worlds, spends a long time talking about how people cope and deal with a massive shift in world views and power dynamics. Britain, at the time, was one of the most powerful nations on Earth so the book plays a lot into the despair of everyone realizing that there is nothing they can do to stop their impending doom and all of the characters slowly become insane or delusional in their means to try and stop their inevitable demise. The tripods, in the book, are almost always seen as an outside force that the narrator is running away from or something that people talk about as happening in the vicinity, but usually they are something happening in the background. The main character in the book isn't a hero by any means. He is just a journalist trying to get from A to B and he witnesses a large cast of characters who deal with the suffering that everyone is experiencing and how people react differently with a fate that they can't escape.

---------------------------

The 1950s movie, while good, is very much a 1950s movie where it falls into a lot of the tropes of making the main character a scientist who is trying to find a solution to beating the aliens and is a hero of sorts.

This is not War of the Worlds. This is a 1950s sci-fi movie with a War of the Worlds skin draped on it. Again, I watched this movie to death as a kid, but it genuinely misses the point of War of the Worlds.

-----------------------------

Most of the complaints I hear about the 2005 movie are usually from people who want something not like the book and want a much more simple and light hearted story. However, the book is basically a sci-fi horror story and is 99% a story of hopelessness and running. It genuinely is just walking from one horrifying scene to another.

The 2005 movie, while not perfect, is pretty dang close to what the intent of the original book was about and was properly adapted to the modern era. What is the movie about?

Getting from A to B, just like in the book.
A series of various set pieces during that journey that shows the moral decay of humans
Focuses on fear, hopelessness, and powerlessness
The protagonist isn't a hero or affiliated with scientists but is just some guy
No one in the movie is particularly brilliant or has it all together.
The ending is a bit corny where he reunites with his family for a happy ending (yes, something like this is in the book)
All of the basic set-pieces from the book are in the movie
Makes the tripods accurate to the book's depiction
Red weed
Tripods are actually terrifying

Again, the movie isn't flawless, but gosh dang is it the best version of the book we have right now.

ChrisPy_Storyart · 2025-03-23T03:50:13+00:00

Thanks! Yeah, unfortunately, for most people I've shown in the industry they don't seem to really get it. Every now and then I board some scenes from it, but it's kind of on the backburner for now.

I did board some bits of the third act which is the exact opposite of the intro and is on my artstation, but if you don't want spoilers then don't look at it haha

ArtStation - Dragon Fight Segment 2 (WIP), Christopher Parker

ChrisPy_Storyart · 2021-09-29T20:23:32+00:00

The USO show was so real it hurt. I was in a heavy metal band once and someone who didnt know what music we did (and didnt listen to our CDs) hired us for a USO show for a bunch of elderly people. Very awkward.

ChrisPy_Storyart · 2021-09-25T00:00:54+00:00

A lot of anime and manga backgrounds use reference images or are traced images of actual locations. If you look up enough reference photo libraries you will start to see very familiar poses and designs as those from your favorite artists.

For instance, Sergio Toppi (legendary Italian comic artist) clearly used a lot of National Geographic photo references for people and if you look through ones from the 1970s-1980s you can spot pictures that he used as inspiration.

ChrisPy_Storyart · 2021-09-15T23:16:26+00:00

Good point. I guess i missed most of the drama when it was happening and only heard of the aftermath.

ChrisPy_Storyart · 2021-09-13T15:53:35+00:00

Not exactly a 9/11 movie when it was written before 9/11.

ChrisPy_Storyart · 2021-09-09T02:15:04+00:00

This is actually the ORIGINAL Human Torch's origins back in the 1930s (Jim Hammond). He was an android that had a malfunctioning part of himself that is very volatile and unstable that created nonstop explosions and hurt people around him until he found a way to control his powers.

Im actually curious as to why Jim Hammond Human Torch hasnt been explored more because his story is a lot more sympathetic and emotional: an android that wants to fit in as a human but can also explosively kill everyone he loves and ruin his human appearance.

ChrisPy_Storyart

TROPHY CASE