"The Adventures of "ACTION PAT" Storyboards for Screen Arts Animation Studios

"Action Pat" is a character my classmates and I concieved while studying 2D Animation at Screen Arts Animation Studios in NYC on Orchard street under the instruction of Mark Stansbury. Our Project was to come up with a character, a simple plotline, board it out and animate it. It was my job to do the character design and the initial boards which are presented here. Mark assigned each student a portion to animate and our combined efforts were to be displayed at the final incorporating it into the overall film. My particular section involved Pat Spinning into the tornado and coming out of it with the cape wrapping around her body.

The Character, "Action Pat" is based on Pat, one of the students at the school, who had her hair in the style illustrated in the cartoon. I made the character as simple as possible so we all would be able to animate our particular section without too much difficulty.

PLOT:
Action Pat is a preteen girl who likes to dream. She has a very strong domineering mother who burdens her with chores and always keeps her from doing what she wants to do. (in the case of this cartoon, it's to attend a concert she has tickets for) Whenever Pat cannot get her way, she transforms into her Superhero Alter Ego, "Action Pat". Whenever Action Pat appears on the scene , instead of solving the problem, she somehow ends up making things worse and creating another problem! Me and my fellow students envisioned that it would be difficult to determine whether Action Pat's exploits were actually happening in "real time" or if they were imagined.

The Studio closed up shop after six months, NYC rents being what they are and we unfortunately did not recieve a copy of the completed film, but Since I have the original drawings I still plan at some point to animate it.

Mark Stansbury, a "purist" insisted we make this film the traditional way and NOT use Flash at all! His intention was for us to learn the process of animation the hard way, and once learned, our Flash animation, should we choose to use, it would be more powerful.

Incidently, Action Pat's Mom, is based on Mark Stansbury. Hence, the goatee.