Dave Gibbons Quotes

To this day I over prepare. I draw storyboards for every scene - chicken scratches so crude that they amuse and horrify the crew. I send out shot lists, act out the scenes, and search for a theme that I can relate to. It's my favorite time of the process.

I really don't storyboard unless it's an action sequence of some kind, but I plan carefully.

I think all the stuff that happens before the pictures are taken is much more exciting.

You know it's my job to visualize, what is literal or audible, so I designed all the characters, and I designed what they do and how they should do it and so on.

I have always meticulously storyboarded my films from beginning to end.

I've heard that Alfred Hitchcock said that by the time he was ready to shoot a film, he didn't even want to do it any more because he'd already had all of the fun of working it out. It's the same thing with these Frank comics.

The day before I work, I don't like to even look at the script and let whatever happens happen on the set. But I do prepare a lot. I'm a big believer in that.

Usually I start with a concept, which I then sketch out so that I can get a feel for the character. The character doesn't really become real to me until I draw them.

To get the film in your head on the screen, first you have to take it out of your head and explain it to everyone who is working with you. This will take work and planning.

I have to see the whole scene in my head before I go out and do it. Which I do. I will envision the entire scene before I shoot it.

I use colors to bring fine points of story and character.

There is no difficult moment working together because when we start a new project, Dante starts to make all the sketches and I can see the vision of the movie and then I start my job.

I think almost always that what gets me going with a story is the atmosphere, the visual imagery, and then I people it with characters, not the other way around.

I am always making sketches of how information should look or mapping out a marketing campaign. When I present my notes, people start responding to them. Desktop publishing makes everything look slick. When you present sketches, it helps start the dialogue and collaboration.

I discovered that, in order to write a magnificent piece, you should shoot the images because once you are filming, you are writing the script in your mind.

'The Indian Runner' was easy. It had been incubating in me for eight years, and by the time I sat down to write the thing, I had all the pictures in my head.

I carry a notebook full of sketches of pictures I want to take - they are really scruffy sketches, but at least I am going out there with a clear objective.

It's weird - on almost every film I've worked on, the first sequence we storyboard ends up being the first sequence that goes into animation, and ends up being almost shot-for-shot the same.

I mean when I was working shall we say with Disney, you know they sent me the script for the film Hercules and I had to imagine what all the characters looked like. And to develop those characters, so nothing exists visually when I get the script.

As a writer, I always think about who my prototype actors are, in my brain. It's helpful, as a writer, to think about that.

When you're drawing something, you kind of run a movie in your head. You might close your eyes or stare into the distance and kind of see a movie unfolding and, you know, grab a certain moment or think, 'Oh, yeah, that's when we need just the point that he appears around the corner but just as she's getting into the car,' you know?

At the beginning of a new project, often before I do any actual writing, I collect photos, quotes, song lyrics, and even objects that relate to the characters or the world I'm creating.

'Ice Age' felt like stage acting. You'd write a sequence, and sometimes you'd submit pages, but other times, I would actually perform it for the directors and producer in my office.

I always felt if we were going in to do an album, there should already be a lot of structure already made up so we could get on with that and see what else happened.

Every Pixar film, when we start developing the story, it takes about four years to make one of our films.