{"id":2658,"date":"2019-10-11T22:33:16","date_gmt":"2019-10-12T05:33:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eu.shop.wacom.eu\/us\/?p=2658"},"modified":"2026-06-05T09:23:43","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T16:23:43","slug":"visual-storytelling-with-pixars-scott-morse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/visual-storytelling-with-pixars-scott-morse\/","title":{"rendered":"Visual Storytelling with Pixar&#8217;s Scott Morse"},"content":{"rendered":"<span style=\"color: #000000;\"><em>Cover photo by <a style=\"color: #000000;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.deborahcoleman.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Deborah Coleman<\/a>\/Pixar<\/em><\/span>\n\nA short history of Scott Morse in one long paragraph:\n\nHe studied animation at CalArts in the 90\u2019s, 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<em> Cow &amp; Chicken, I Am Weasel,<\/em> and <em>The Grim Adventures of Billy &amp; Mandy,<\/em> sometimes for their whole runs, also contributing to <em>KaBlam! <\/em>and <em>Kim Possible.<\/em> And In 2005, he got a job as a story supervisor for Pixar, where he\u2019s worked since. \"Basically I do storyboards,\" he says, \u201cbut I also supervise a team.\u201d Which he\u2019s done for <em>Wall-E, Ratatouille, Cars 2 <\/em>and <em>3, Brave, Toy Story 4,<\/em> and next year\u2019s upcoming <em>Soul<\/em>. In the meantime, following a philosophy of \u201calways do something for yourself,\u201d he published over <strong>twenty(!) <\/strong>graphic novels with Top Shelf, Oni Comics, Dark Horse, Scholastic, and Image comics, among others, and was nominated for Ignatz and Eisner awards. He\u2019s one of those artists who has <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Scott_Morse\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a Wikipedia page<\/a>.\n\n&nbsp;\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/YwBPmWQ-pGg\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>Ratatouille, storyboards vs. final. (Disney\/Pixar)<\/em><\/p>\n&nbsp;\n\nThis is who hosts the last panel of Bethesda, Maryland\u2019s Small Press Expo, on the hotel\u2019s basement floor, in the last conference room at the end of the hall, to an audience of perhaps 20. \u201cI first gave this talk in Taiwan to a group of about 400,\u201d he says early in, reminding us what a privilege it is to hear him talk visual storytelling, the foundation of all his work.\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\">The Three Big Things<\/h2>\n\u201cEverything starts with story, and story starts with emotion,\u201d he opens, and the visuals are \u201creally an embellishment on top of that.\u201d Your favorite movies, TV shows, comics, are memorable not for technical impressiveness of the CG or the linework, but \u201cbecause they\u2019ve emotionally marked themselves in your brain.\u201d\n\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\" src=\"https:\/\/i.imgur.com\/nT0cDVC.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"1223\" title=\"\">\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>Pixar\u2019s 22 rules for storytelling. You might have seen this kicking around the internet before. Graphic by <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/johnjkimball.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>John J. Kimball<\/em><\/a><em>.<\/em><\/p>\n\u201cGood design should enhance, not distract,\u201d he explains. \u201cIf it\u2019s distracting from what you\u2019re trying to say with your story, it can really do a disservice. Your audience may be dazzled by what they\u2019re looking at, but they may not get what you\u2019re trying to talk about.\u201d\n\nAt every stage of a project, \u201cThe three big things I keep in mind are clarity, economy, and charm. Things have to be charming, so that you\u2019re enamored with it.\u201d Charming doesn\u2019t mean cute, though, more like engaging or fascinating. \u201cCharming can be horrific: Charming can be Doctor Lecter when he\u2019s freaking you out because he shouldn\u2019t be that nice.\u201d\n\nBut no matter where the story leads or misleads you, it should grab you from the beginning. \u201cThese three things have to happen,\u201d he snaps his fingers, \u201csuper, super quick.\u201d\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\">Pacing<\/h2>\n\u201cRaise your hands if you do comics,\u201d he tells the audience. Most hands go up. \u201cWho here also wants to make movies? Who wants to make animated movies?\n\n\u201cThey\u2019re all related, but they\u2019re not brothers and sisters. They\u2019re like cousins. The main difference,\u201d he\u2019s noticed, \u201cis the rate of speed at which you consume them. Film feeds it to you. You don\u2019t 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.\n\n\u201cComics, on the other hand\u2026\u201d are read at variable speeds, with the risk of readers deliberating on the wrong parts and glossing over more important ones. \u201cThere\u2019s things that you can do in comic pages to trick the eyes into ingesting the story at the speed you want them to,\u201d though.\n\nThis could use some expounding on, and the best place is Scott McCloud\u2019s medium-defining <em>Understanding Comics, <\/em>which devotes a whole chapter to it. It might seem like \u201ceach panel of a comic shows a single moment in time, and between those frozen moments \u2026 our minds fill in the intervening moments, creating the illusion of time and motion. Like a line drawn between two points,\u201d he writes. Right?\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.imgur.com\/za81HfUl.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"310\" title=\"\"><\/p>\n<em>Images used with permission.<\/em>\n\nEach panel represents a different amount of time depending on what\u2019s 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.\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\" https:\/\/i.imgur.com\/JbbCPIbl.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"618\" title=\"\"><\/p>\nIn addition, the sizes and shapes of the panels themselves can change how we perceive them.\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.imgur.com\/kt8nIITl.jpg \" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"338\" title=\"\"><\/p>\nA row of narrow ones close together might seem like a series of short moments.\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.imgur.com\/T7sVN8El.jpg\u00a0\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"310\" title=\"\"><\/p>\nChanging their spacing might alter the perception of how much time passes between them:\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.imgur.com\/X8BpFlol.jpg\u00a0\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"416\" title=\"\"><\/p>\nAnd changing their size might alter the perception of how much time passes <em>within <\/em>them:\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.imgur.com\/1cPJ3s2l.jpg\u00a0\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"311\" title=\"\"><\/p>\nBut 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 \u201cnoodling\u201d uncritical panels, loading them down with detail-for-detail\u2019s-sake that draws readers\u2019 attention away from the important parts.\n\n\u201c[Individual] pages can be amazingly beautiful pieces of art, each panel can be something to dwell on. But as a storyteller, I\u2019ve found that if you\u2019re lingering too long on an image, you\u2019re not ingesting the story, you\u2019re 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 you\u2019re going to get that storyline across.\u201d\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\">Composition<\/h2>\nAnd inside each individual image, there are \u201clittle things you can do to direct people\u2019s eyes to the next panel or lead to the next page.\u201d Composition is critical to making sure the audience knows exactly where the story\u2019s happening and how their eyes should navigate through it.\n\n&nbsp;\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/enZdFC4qHx0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>Toy Story 4 is Pixar\u2019s \u201cbusiest\u201d movie, but through meticulous use of framing, color-coding, and contrast, it\u2019s always clear what\u2019s going on. (Disney\/Pixar)<\/em><\/p>\n&nbsp;\n\n\u201cThere\u2019s 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.\u201d Building on <em>Understanding Comics<\/em>\u2019s 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.\n\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;\" src=\"https:\/\/i.imgur.com\/5e0o6qh.jpg\u00a0\" alt=\"\" width=\"990\" height=\"718\" title=\"\">\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/battlepug.com\/comic\/2019\/5\/22\/new-comic\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Battlepug<\/em><\/a><\/p>\nBut even more interesting, he says, is how \u201cEach 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, \u201cit can mean they\u2019re in trouble, it can mean they\u2019re happy, it can mean they\u2019ve got a long way to go\u2026\u201d\n\n&nbsp;\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">\u00a0<iframe src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/CvLQJReDhic\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>My word count is dangerously close to the limit, so here\u2019s someone else explaining it.<\/em><\/p>\n\n<h3><\/h3>\n<h3>Focal Points<\/h3>\nViewers\u2019 eyes are naturally drawn to certain focal points. The most obvious one is the largest thing in frame, or whatever\u2019s centrally located or in the sharpest focus. But <a href=\"https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/us\/color-theory-in-the-digital-space-part-2\/\">value and color<\/a> can heavily influence it: We\u2019re drawn to illuminated objects and light sources, or bright or highly saturated subjects on dark or muted backgrounds\u2014or vice-versa\u2014will also draw the eye.\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Z1R1z9ipFnM\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>If you want an intro to light use in Pixar\u2019s movies, it\u2019s worth setting aside 20 minutes to watch their lighting designer\u2019s Ted Talk.<\/em><\/p>\nBut we\u2019re hard-wired to focus on characters. \u201cWe\u2019ve done studies at Pixar tracking audiences\u2019 eyes, and they go to a face every time,\u201d says Morse. And he composes his scenes to focus on them. When he draws an outdoor scene, for example, \u201cI will typically make cloud shapes frame or point to a face or a person,\u201d or \u201cline up trees and stack them in space\u201d to vignette a character. \u201cEverything 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.\u201d\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.imgur.com\/QaftAy9h.jpg\u00a0\" alt=\"\" width=\"690\" height=\"1024\" title=\"\"><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>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 <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.comicartfans.com\/GalleryPiece.asp?Piece=105809&amp;GSub=15596\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Comic Art Fans<\/em><\/a><em>.<\/em><\/p>\nHe emphasizes the importance of continuity in the locations of characters between shots. If a character\u2019s at the right of panel 1, they probably shouldn\u2019t be at the left of panel 2, even if it\u2019s 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, \u201cthe audience is doing work to find where the story\u2019s at. You\u2019ve pulled them out of the story.\u201d\n\nThere\u2019s only one thing that takes precedent over characters in readers\u2019 minds...\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\">Text<\/h2>\n\u201cWe discovered, anytime you put text in an image, you\u2019re going to look at the text before you even look at the faces,\u201d attests Morse. And himself, \u201cI\u2019ve found that most of the time when I\u2019m reading a comic, I get the feeling of the drawing from reading the text. I will flip to the next text, and I\u2019ll have to go back and look at the art.\u201d\n\n\u201cHow do you stop it?\u201d asks an audience member.\n\n\u201cYou 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 <em>want <\/em>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.\u201d\n<h2 style=\"text-align: center;\">However...<\/h2>\nDuring 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, \u201cComics artists should do what they think they need to do to tell their story,\u201d so his only hard rule is that when he\u2019s working: \u201cI try to remind myself, \u2018Am I telling the story I want to tell?\u2019\u201d\n\nI ask him how I could tie this into Wacom. \u201cPretty much everyone at Pixar uses a Cintiq,\u201d he says.\n\n<em>Scott Morse can be found on <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/crazymorse\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Twitter<\/em><\/a><em> or <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/crazymorse\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Instagram<\/em><\/a><em> at @crazymorse, an excellent pun. Quotes edited for concision with his permission.<\/em>\n\n&nbsp;\n<h2>About the Author: CS Jones<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-1841\" src=\"https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/40\/2019\/07\/CS_Jones_avatar-300x300.png\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/40\/2019\/07\/CS_Jones_avatar-300x300.png 300w, https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/40\/2019\/07\/CS_Jones_avatar-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/40\/2019\/07\/CS_Jones_avatar.png 595w\" alt=\"CS Jones\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" title=\"\"><\/h2>\nCS Jones is a Philadelphia-based freelance writer, illustrator, and occasional photographer. He spends his spare time listening to Spotify and waiting for trains. Someday, he\u2019ll finish that graphic novel. In the meantime, his work is best seen at\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/thecsjones.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">thecsjones.com<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/instagram.com\/thecsjones\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">@thecsjones<\/a>\u00a0on Instagram.\n\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.thecsjones.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Website<\/a>\n\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/thecsjones\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Instagram<\/a>\n\n&nbsp;","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cEverything starts with story, and story starts with emotion and the visuals are really an embellishment on top of that. Your favorite movies, TV shows, comics, are memorable not for technical impressiveness of the CG or the linework, but \u201cbecause they\u2019ve emotionally marked themselves in your brain.\u201d ~ Scott Morse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":2677,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2326,2332,2318,2317],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-animation","category-cintiq-and-cintiq-pro","category-creative-inspiration","category-digital-drawing-painting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2658\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/community.wacom.com\/en-us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}