Beat Boards for Tales of the Black Freighter

It was said in 'the making of' that Zack boarded the film.  In fact, I directed the story board and various sequences were boarded by Robert Valley, Andy Knight, Brandon Jeffers and myself.  

Here is a beat board, derived from the original thumbnail board, which contained a lot more panels that I used to cut a full animatic.  This was then approved by Zack and Warner Brothers before I took the project on to Seoul to be animated.

I am sad to say that this was the last project that Andy Knight worked on before unexpectedly passing away in Paris.  Andy was a great longtime friend and I was privileged to have traveled to Toronto to spend his last two weeks with him, boarding on this project.  He loved working on this film as he adored seafaring stories.  He often went sailing, owning a captain's license and made detailed model boats as a hobby.  He was already swamped with work when I approached him, but I am very thankful that he went out of his way to work with me for those two weeks.  When I told June, the head of the layout at Big Star about Andy, he pledged that they would work twice as hard and do their best in honor of him.  Whatever anyone makes of the end product, I know they kept their word.

To toggle through panel by panel, hit play, then pause again and then use arrow keys. 

PLEASE NOTE: This animatic is NOT timed. I have just loaded it this way to view the large amount of panels more easily.