Sunday, March 22, 2009

Roger O'Reilly Draws a Bud Board

Here are some frames from a Budweiser animatic board I did sometime around 2002 /2003.


I was working mostly from a script having built up a good working relationship with the agency, so scamps or roughs weren’t provided. At this stage, most art directors were quite happy to leave me to work out the shots and email back pencil thumbnails to show the shot progression.


This campaign featured the Bud Clydesdales and was based around Monument Valley. There’s no real plot-line, just visual links.


I often found the roughs to be more fun than rendering the finished piece - just some scraps of paper and a pencil, though this one was fun to do.


As usual the deadline was merciless, but one of the advantages I’ve always found with storyboarding is that when you work like the clappers to get the thing done, there’s no sense of guilt if you take some of the following days off to go visit galleries or just hang around in coffeeshops sketching.


It’s a pity I have so little of my work prior to broadband, because they had to be hand mounted and delivered to the agency and invariably ended up as a giant coffee coaster.


Getting them back was a major effort. The slicker ones the junior members of the client team took home for their “artistic” kids, the rougher ones went in the bin.


They were one of the last sets I did with markers, though at this stage I was dropping in the background skies in photoshop. I miss the markers. There was a tactile quality to rendering and I must admit I liked the whiff of them, but I could never get them to scan the way I wanted, so the colouring on most of the marker boards I have on file looks pretty off and painfully weak.


I did four further boards with the Clydesdales. I think one might have gotten produced with extensive changes. Thems the breaks. No-one gets into this business to get their work into print!

* Posted on behalf of Roger O'Reilly by Leif. Be sure to check out the gorgeous sketches on Rodge's blog!

3 comments:

  1. I agree with your stand on roughs vs. finished, Roger. It's as if I don't care that much what the roughs look like & care too much about the finished & the roughs invariably come off better.
    Beautiful sketches on your site BTW. Do you sell much of it?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Mark
    Sorry for the tardy response. I've been having problems getting the site to accept comments.
    Most of the sketches on the site are from sketchbooks, so they remain on the living room shelves. The New York work was done quite large and I've sold those on. I've had the sketchbooks in a couple of exhibitions, but they mostly serve as an online portfolio - moderately successful, though I did get a commission to illustrate 25 pubs in Belfast and Galway out of it.
    Love your work by the way.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Roger, this work is perfect. I'm am from Brasil, and i'm make a work about advertising and horses. This storyboard transform in a commercial our not? Thank you, this is "uauuuu"!

    ReplyDelete