Cover photo by Deborah Coleman/Pixar
A short history of Scott Morse in one long paragraph:
He studied animation at CalArts in the 90βs, dropped out in his sophomore year, but was hired to work under Looney Tunes godhead Chuck Jones and his longtime right-hand-man Maurice Noble, who would become his mentor. He worked extensively on Cartoon Network nostalgia trips Cow & Chicken, I Am Weasel, and The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, sometimes for their whole runs, also contributing to KaBlam! and Kim Possible. And In 2005, he got a job as a story supervisor for Pixar, where heβs worked since. “Basically I do storyboards,” he says, βbut I also supervise a team.β Which heβs done for Wall-E, Ratatouille, Cars 2 and 3, Brave, Toy Story 4, and next yearβs upcoming Soul. In the meantime, following a philosophy of βalways do something for yourself,β he published over twenty(!) graphic novels with Top Shelf, Oni Comics, Dark Horse, Scholastic, and Image comics, among others, and was nominated for Ignatz and Eisner awards. Heβs one of those artists who has a Wikipedia page.
Ratatouille, storyboards vs. final. (Disney/Pixar)
This is who hosts the last panel of Bethesda, Marylandβs Small Press Expo, on the hotelβs basement floor, in the last conference room at the end of the hall, to an audience of perhaps 20. βI first gave this talk in Taiwan to a group of about 400,β he says early in, reminding us what a privilege it is to hear him talk visual storytelling, the foundation of all his work.
The Three Big Things
βEverything starts with story, and story starts with emotion,β he opens, and the visuals are βreally an embellishment on top of that.β Your favorite movies, TV shows, comics, are memorable not for technical impressiveness of the CG or the linework, but βbecause theyβve emotionally marked themselves in your brain.β
Pixarβs 22 rules for storytelling. You might have seen this kicking around the internet before. Graphic by John J. Kimball.
βGood design should enhance, not distract,β he explains. βIf itβs distracting from what youβre trying to say with your story, it can really do a disservice. Your audience may be dazzled by what theyβre looking at, but they may not get what youβre trying to talk about.β
At every stage of a project, βThe three big things I keep in mind are clarity, economy, and charm. Things have to be charming, so that youβre enamored with it.β Charming doesnβt mean cute, though, more like engaging or fascinating. βCharming can be horrific: Charming can be Doctor Lecter when heβs freaking you out because he shouldnβt be that nice.β
But no matter where the story leads or misleads you, it should grab you from the beginning. βThese three things have to happen,β he snaps his fingers, βsuper, super quick.β
Pacing
βRaise your hands if you do comics,β he tells the audience. Most hands go up. βWho here also wants to make movies? Who wants to make animated movies?
βTheyβre all related, but theyβre not brothers and sisters. Theyβre like cousins. The main difference,β heβs noticed, βis the rate of speed at which you consume them. Film feeds it to you. You donβt get a choice how quickly you get to see an image. It has to work for as long as the storytellers want it to work.
βComics, on the other handβ¦β are read at variable speeds, with the risk of readers deliberating on the wrong parts and glossing over more important ones. βThereβs things that you can do in comic pages to trick the eyes into ingesting the story at the speed you want them to,β though.
This could use some expounding on, and the best place is Scott McCloudβs medium-defining Understanding Comics, which devotes a whole chapter to it. It might seem like βeach panel of a comic shows a single moment in time, and between those frozen moments β¦ our minds fill in the intervening moments, creating the illusion of time and motion. Like a line drawn between two points,β he writes. Right?
Images used with permission.
Each panel represents a different amount of time depending on whatβs in it. A panel with speed lines represents the fraction of a second in which motion from point A to point B takes place, where one where a character delivers a long monologue might represent a couple minutes.
In addition, the sizes and shapes of the panels themselves can change how we perceive them.
A row of narrow ones close together might seem like a series of short moments.
Changing their spacing might alter the perception of how much time passes between them:
And changing their size might alter the perception of how much time passes within them:
But Morse adds another: amount of detail. Technically impressive panels grab the eye, which is why most comics reserve them for establishing shots, crucial action scenes, and splash pages. He warns against βnoodlingβ uncritical panels, loading them down with detail-for-detailβs-sake that draws readersβ attention away from the important parts.
β[Individual] pages can be amazingly beautiful pieces of art, each panel can be something to dwell on. But as a storyteller, Iβve found that if youβre lingering too long on an image, youβre not ingesting the story, youβre being distracted. Maybe the purpose is to lose yourself in that world for ten minutes: You can do that, but the more clear you are, the more economic you are in your linework, your drawing, the more youβre going to get that storyline across.β
Composition
And inside each individual image, there are βlittle things you can do to direct peopleβs eyes to the next panel or lead to the next page.β Composition is critical to making sure the audience knows exactly where the storyβs happening and how their eyes should navigate through it.
Toy Story 4 is Pixarβs βbusiestβ movie, but through meticulous use of framing, color-coding, and contrast, itβs always clear whatβs going on. (Disney/Pixar)
βThereβs another whole hour we could talk about what each section of the screen [or] the panel means, based on the fact that we as a western audience read from left to right, top to bottom.β Building on Understanding Comicsβs living room scene, placement of the subject in the panel can mean not just their placement in space, but in time. Left or up are earlier, right or down are later.
But even more interesting, he says, is how βEach one brings with it a bias of emotion for what that part of the frame means. You have a character in a certain part of the frame, βit can mean theyβre in trouble, it can mean theyβre happy, it can mean theyβve got a long way to goβ¦β
Β
My word count is dangerously close to the limit, so hereβs someone else explaining it.
Focal Points
Viewersβ eyes are naturally drawn to certain focal points. The most obvious one is the largest thing in frame, or whateverβs centrally located or in the sharpest focus. But value and color can heavily influence it: Weβre drawn to illuminated objects and light sources, or bright or highly saturated subjects on dark or muted backgroundsβor vice-versaβwill also draw the eye.
If you want an intro to light use in Pixarβs movies, itβs worth setting aside 20 minutes to watch their lighting designerβs Ted Talk.
But weβre hard-wired to focus on characters. βWeβve done studies at Pixar tracking audiencesβ eyes, and they go to a face every time,β says Morse. And he composes his scenes to focus on them. When he draws an outdoor scene, for example, βI will typically make cloud shapes frame or point to a face or a person,β or βline up trees and stack them in spaceβ to vignette a character. βEverything about those big graphic elements are telling you exactly where the stage is so you know exactly where to put your characters; you know where to look.β
In this 2003 Morse piece, Plastic Man is surrounded by a bubble of negative space, and the abstract shapes of the background form arrows that point to him. Image from Comic Art Fans.
He emphasizes the importance of continuity in the locations of characters between shots. If a characterβs at the right of panel 1, they probably shouldnβt be at the left of panel 2, even if itβs drawn from a different angle. If the reader has to spend too much time looking for the focal point or the main character in a large scene, or if their placement in the frame is jarringly different from shot to shot, panel to panel… Suddenly, βthe audience is doing work to find where the storyβs at. Youβve pulled them out of the story.β
Thereβs only one thing that takes precedent over characters in readersβ minds…
Text
βWe discovered, anytime you put text in an image, youβre going to look at the text before you even look at the faces,β attests Morse. And himself, βIβve found that most of the time when Iβm reading a comic, I get the feeling of the drawing from reading the text. I will flip to the next text, and Iβll have to go back and look at the art.β
βHow do you stop it?β asks an audience member.
βYou size things differently in your panels, you move things around so that the art is favored in space, and taking up a little bit more… If you want the image to tell the story over the words. Other times the words are telling the story. One way to stop it is to [just] take the words out and tell your story visually.β
However…
During a meet and greet with the audience after the panel ends, he admits that by no means should artists take his advice as the only way to draw. Ultimately, βComics artists should do what they think they need to do to tell their story,β so his only hard rule is that when heβs working: βI try to remind myself, βAm I telling the story I want to tell?ββ
I ask him how I could tie this into Wacom. βPretty much everyone at Pixar uses a Cintiq,β he says.
Scott Morse can be found on Twitter or Instagram at @crazymorse, an excellent pun. Quotes edited for concision with his permission.
About the Author: CS Jones
CS Jones is a Philadelphia-based freelance writer, illustrator, and occasional photographer. He spends his spare time listening to Spotify and waiting for trains. Someday, heβll finish that graphic novel. In the meantime, his work is best seen atΒ thecsjones.comΒ orΒ @thecsjonesΒ on Instagram.