Framed Ink

From the animator and illustrator behind your favorite DreamWorks and Netflix films, this installment of the Framed series will instruct visual artists to set a scene’s emotion.

Learn how to make the audience feel the story while they’re reading the story. Using his experiences from working in the comic book industry, movie studios and teaching, Mateu-Mestre introduces the reader to a step-by-step system that will create the most successful storyboards and graphics for the best visual communication.

After a brief discussion on narrative art, Mateu-Mestre introduces us to drawing and composing a single image, to composing steady shots to drawing to compose for continuity between all the shots. These lessons are then applied to three diverse story lines – a train accident, a cowboy tale and bikers approaching a mysterious house. In addition to setting up the shots, he also explains and illustrates visual character development, emotive stances and expressions along with development of the environmental setting to fully develop the visual narrative.

Author Biography

Spanish born Marcos Mateu-Mestre is a visual concept, traditional animation layout, and graphic novel artist whose film credits include titles such as ‘Balto’, ‘The Prince of Egypt’, ‘Asterix and the Vikings’ and ‘Surf’s Up’ amongst others. With an extensive experience of twenty years in feature animation, working mainly for Dreamworks and Sony Pictures, he has also been teaching drawing, illustration and visual storytelling techniques for twelve years. His works as a film maker have mostly included both the design and cinematic aspects of film, taking care of frame composition, lighting and visual continuity of many key sequences in some major productions.