Story Process

A phased breakdown of my story process with an example from when I had an opportunity to create and then make possible the 2D intro sequence to “Kung-Fu Panda”.

This shows how I work from concept through development, writing, and storyboarding. From there I also took the additional steps needed to not only sell the scene for our show, but beyond that to the studio leadership on re-opening a 2D division, and spearheading development of a new 2D pipeline needed to execute the scene, followed by some look dev animation to prove how we could achieve the desired look.

Here’s the final with a side-by-side for reference:

Origin (Concept)

There are so many versions of scenes along the way in story that explore and ‘crunch the story math’ that results in our final versions. The idea for this scene started with my original take on Po as a fanboy of Kung-Fu when we started (2003), where he’d imagine the legendary in anything mundane and daydream of being a wandering Kung-Fu hero. The story evolved a lot over the next few years…

Previous Pass (Launch)

After years of different passes, screenings, writers, directors, producers, and versions of Po, the shows leadership wanted a fresh reboot of the show. For context, this is the outline from our screenwriters I was asked to re-conceive and re-write when I came back from the holiday break.

Story (Thumbnails)

The launch here was very broad: “We’ve always like your take on Po, show us your ‘Jed-vision’ of this world and who Po is as a character. Now show us your vision of what Kung-Fu Panda as a film looks like - blank page, unfiltered.”

The way I start writing is “Miyazaki style” where story & vision are developed as one thing (images and dialogue), sketching it out as thumbnails. You’re working through the bigger concepts of character arcs, structure, and a rough idea on how you’ll tell it. Then, I’ll edit those ideas into a few pages like below. A lot of us work this way when writing because it’s a cinematic medium and this allows us a fuller range of the tools used in visual storytelling vs something like a novel.

Writing (Dialogue)

Once I have the thumbnails down that gives me the shape of the scene. Based on feedback I’ll either go back into thumbs, or in this case with a thumbs up I’ll charge forward.

For a day or so before I board, I’ll revise and polish the scene in screenplay form, imagining how I want it to read when I pitch the scene. Here’s an example of the pages I’ll write after sketching out the scene, then I’ll re-adapt my thumbnails to this and sketch in any tweaks I make.

I still use the thumbnails as my main roadmap to boarding, but the act of writing it out helps me do a quick character pass, vetting lines for what and how the character would say it, also steering it toward the voice actors style. In this case I was aiming it for a Bobby Lee/Jack Black direction, knowing in records they will add their own magic to it. Basically just getting something they can take and easily feel comfortable with.

Storyboard (Pitch)

With thumbs and pages in place, I’ll storyboard the sequence while trying to keep it to the basic story beats. These are the storyboards and story pitch I’ll do to communicate the scene as clearly as possible before we spend time editing and recording for it.

Evolve as needed (New 2D Anim Dept)

Normally, the work ends at the storyboard. However, sometimes for an additional level of sell or clarity we need to do some special ops.

In this case, because I knew we couldn’t afford to do this all in CG, I pitched the idea of doing the sequence in 2D which would make it more representative of Po’s imagination, and also be easier than building all these assets in CG. The show leadership loved it, but they couldn’t convince the studio to re-open a recently, and permanently shuttered 2D department for our intro following Sinbad. My Head of Story and Producer tried selling it but I was told:

“We love it. The studio loves it. But, we can’t do that here. 3D would be too expensive and 2D is done…”

Joe Ranft once told us that our job as story artists was to ‘do whatever you need to, to sell the sequence’. I was also maybe a bit sentimental about his advice at the time as he had just passed away a few months prior, so I went a bit rogue on this.

“Borrowing” my cintiq from work to use on my home rig (one of the only cintiq’s at that time because nobody wanted to use them), I created this animatic to sell the studio on giving us the green light. I spent a very sleepless week completing it, then shambled half awake in to Dreamworks to show it knowing it would work, or I would be in really big trouble. Knowing how much everyone wanted this 2D scene to have happened (self included), and how bummed they were when it couldn’t be, I had to try.

No secret now, it worked! Dreamworks REOPENED an entire 2D ANIMATION UNIT just for this, which they liked so much it also evolved into use for the DVD special I developed as well, “Secrets of the Furious Five”. I was exhausted, but having a parade of people coming through the rest of the week to watch it multiple times because they couldn’t believe we were getting to make something like this - that’s why I enjoy being in story. Writing, sketching, and pitching stories people are excited to make and feel is worth their time and talent.

I attribute the fact that this scene ever came into being to Joe and his sage story wisdom.

Look Dev (2D Anim Pipeline)

The fact that we had an opportunity to bring back 2D was exciting to say the least. Vis dev did not disappoint in developing artwork for the final look and style that was over the top awesome. Done, right?

The next challenge was rumblings of how the ambitions of those designs couldn’t be done within the budget, so it would need to look more like the previous work Dreamworks was used to doing. That would have been cool too but we really liked the artwork vis dev had done and didn’t want to see that get lost. Knowing that we actually ‘could’ accomplish those looks I couldn’t bear to watch their wonderful designs be lost to blindspots in oversight so once again I went home to see if I could forge a way forward (credit to my friend Drew Leung for building me that rig which made all this possible). 

For this, I did some 2D look dev of my own to begin figuring out a way to capture their style for the scene as closely as possible to prove how it could be achieved. This is all probably easy to do now but back then it took a lot of convincing. Thankfully it was enough to prove how we could do it, and our Head of Story asked me if they could use this for the final production, as she was going to oversee James Baxter’s team in getting it animated.

Animation (Final Comp)

Here’s a side by side comparison of all these efforts informing the final output created by the teams of talented artists and animators at Dreamworks. I took it through many passes and ultimately we just couldn’t possibly do all of it (part of this was also just to explore a new vision and tone for the film/world/franchise). What we kept is all cut together and assembled here.

After that, a final workbook/production pass to lock it all down to incorporate artwork, design, and any final tweaks. As Story Artists, we just try to get our scenes through that studio’s pipeline the best we can so it’s worth everyone applying their talents to. I just like making things people are excited to make better than I can make it, and even more excited to watch when it’s done.