Hi, I'm Dean Kelly and I'm a story artist here at Pixar. You know that old saying, A picture is worth a thousand words. Well it's true.
Using simple visual cues, you can communicate all kinds of cool ideas and different emotions. And because of this, a single image can tell a whole story.
Let's make this scene a simple drawing, like the storyboards we create at Pixar. The first thing you'll notice is that the bigger something is in the frame the more important it is.
I'm clearly the most important thing in this frame. Choosing to put a character in a large space, where they appear small, is one way to communicate how vulnerable they are, or how big their world is.
A low angle can make me seem commanding or menacing. I now seem a little unbalanced. Everything you see on screen is a choice. And all of it can help you tell stories.
This is development art from Ratatouille. This single image clearly illustrates how important shape and framing are to storytelling.
The artist who drew this chose everything in the frame, including the framing.
Look at Remy; he's a tiny rat, but in this frame and from this perspective, he's the same size as the chefs.
See how we separate from the kitchen with these panes. He's literally being kept from his dreams of being a chef, with these horizontal and vertical lines boxing him in. But Remy seems equal to the chefs, which is an important story point.
Shape also helps us tell stories. Take these three main characters from Monsters University. The artist who designed Mike, Sully and Hardscrabble show shapes that amplified and reflected their character.