______________________________________________________________________
Hotel Transylvania - Prologue - Infomercial Version
This is one of many versions of potential opening sequences that I boarded as Head of Story on Hotel T and is, to me, still the most entertaining. In this version, the film began with Dracula's latest effort to boost business at the Hotel - an infomercial style commercial. We were preparing for a looming screening date, so the sequence was split up between a few of us to take a single pass at. I had the opening portion, which ends as he's about to describe the hotel rooms. The whole idea was built on a beat board concept with no script pages, so I wrote the dialogue for it.
Click here for a slideshow of the boards, or watch the video below.
______________________________________________________________________
Hotel Transylvania - Meet The Scheips
This take of the opening sequence features a human boy, Gerald, as our main character. He's an aspiring monster researcher, or "monster hunter", that we follow into the world of creatures populating the Hotel Transylvania. In this mostly thumbnail work in progress version of the sequence, we were attempting to begin establishing Gerald's character and goals, setting up that there's a monster wedding set to take place at a hotel in Transylvania, and showing that these days, monsters are more frightened of humans than the other way around.
Click here for a slideshow of the boards, or watch the video below.
______________________________________________________________________
Hotel Transylvania - Prologue - Journal Version
This final version of potential opening sequences also follows Gerald. Here, he's a nerdy, socially awkward monster enthusiast who's finally getting to live his dream of searching Transylvania for the real, live monsters that he's certain exist. The intent of the second half of the sequence was to establish the stark differences between what we think these classic monsters are like compared to who they actually are in our film. We did this through Gerald narrating vignettes from his monster journal's pages (designed and boarded by Chris Mitchell, so I did not include them here) contrasted with glimpses into what their real lives are like today. I've noted where the vignettes were originally placed with brief descriptions in the video below.
Click here for a slideshow of the boards, or watch the video below.
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs - Phoning In Goals
This sequence is from an early version of Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs, in which Sam Sparks works for Chips Calloway, an ultra-rich and famous Richard Branson-type boss who’s constantly out on some sort of an adventure. In this sequence, her reporting on the strange food storms in Swallow Falls has finally caught his eye.
Click here for a slideshow of the boards, or watch the video below.
______________________________________________________________________
Click here for a slideshow of the boards, or watch the video below.
______________________________________________________________________
Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs - Chips N' Guac
This surreal sequence is from an early version of Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs, in which Sam Sparks has been promoted to a full-fledged reporter. She now has massive, feathered reporter hair, and a doting entourage of personal assistants and make-up artists. But as her success has grown, so too have her problems, causing her to be less than excited about the situation. And she's about to realize that things are even worse than she thought...
Click here for a slideshow of the boards, or watch the video below.
Click here for a slideshow of the boards, or watch the video below.
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
This sequence introduces some of the new characters in the film, a group of pets known as “the Domestics”. These pets are dominated by a psychotic miniature poodle named Fifi who we soon discover has a serious axe to grind with wild animals. Fifi is also plagued by his less-than-refined and not-too-bright basset hound sidekick Roberto, but as the sequence progresses, we meet another character that makes even Roberto seem brilliant in comparison. Click the link in the title to view the slideshow.
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
In this sequence, Boog, Giselle, McSquizzy, and the ducks plan the rescue of Elliot, Mr. Weenie, and Buddy the porcupine from Pet Paradiso, the vacation destination of “the Domestics”. Click the link in the title to view the slideshow.
______________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________
For years at Sony Animation, board artists entering the story department were required to do “the ice cream test”. Simply put, you’re given 7 days to conceive, write, design, and board an approximately 100 panel sequence in which your character or characters are trying to get some ice cream, but encounter obstacles along the way.
This is my ice cream test, which I built off of the theme “don’t judge a book by it’s cover”. Since the 7 day deadline leaves very little time for refinement, I focused primarily on the story and humor to clearly convey my personal sensibilities. Click the link in the title to view the slideshow.
Email Sean
Email Sean
