Storyboards

[Philip]

A couple of months ago, several Maple Town and Palm Town storyboards were listed on Yahoo Auctions Japan. I bid on the ones I wanted the most (I could never have afforded all them, some went for quite a lot of money), and I ended up with seven of them. These are the episodes:

Maple Town

#34 The Travelling Girl Dora

Palm Town

#2 I Hate Patty!
#3 The Automobile Carrying a Dream! (working title: "Papa's New Car")
#16 The Church on the Hill
#18 The Magic Lamp
#22 Nice to Meet You, Baby
#40 The Quarreling Pair (working title: "Yota Guta Graffiti")

I was a bit more interested in the Palm Town ones (#18 is even one of my most hated episodes! XD)

Storyboards are used to plan the animation of an episode, and can be quite interesting to look at. These ones particulary so. Some are very crudely drawn, while some have art that almost looks better than what we got in the actual episodes!

Some have very cool title pages, but most only have the episode's title in plain text, sometimes with excerpts taken from the storyboard itself.

Here are the the ones that had interesting title pages:


Palm Town #18
Maple Town #34

Here is an example of how the animation matches up with the storyboard:


Sometimes there are portions that have been crossed out, that means these shots weren't used in the final animation.

Here Christine asks Dora about her mother's name, which is Agnes. Christine then flashbacks to when Dora's father said the same name when he first saw her. This is to drive home the point that Christine looks a lot like Dora's mother, which I guess someone realized is already PRETTY DAMN OBVIOUS, so they decided skip that part.


In episode 16 of Palm Town, the guest characters Elliot and Lucy ended up looking a little different in animation than they did in the storyboard. Here is a comparison:


I guess someone thought "Gee, we sure've been having a hell a lot of dog guest characters lately" (episode 10, 11, 13... with many more to come) and decided to change them into cats (I actually kinda like both versions, although Elliot's eyes are colored very strangely in the animation). Later in the storyboard they are drawn with their corrected character models.


If that wasn't earth-shattering enough for you, let's take a look at the storyboard for "Papa's New Car":


Sorry, no comparison for this one. But it doesn't look too strange, does it? Patty has a different dress, Joey's dad looks a lot more like Joey, the guy in the car is a bear instead of a cat... otherwise it's just like the actual episode. Moving on...

Florence also looks just like Joey... but who is that girl sitting in the chair who also looks like Joey? He only has one sister?

That's... ROLLEY!!!!?

I guess... at the point this storyboard was drawn Rolley's character design hadn't been finalized... and she would just have been described as a "dog girl", so they used Joey's (who was apparently designed first?!) design for her too? It's the best theory I can come up with. But she is correctly drawn as a cocker spaniel in the storyboard for episode 2, so...

And then, Philip's boss, Robert Cordon, whom you may remember as a hippo is portrayed here as a... a dog!

Bucky, the bear mechanic, is no bear here, but instead... a dog!
(see a pattern?)
But in the last couple of pages, everyone's character models are suddenly corrected

Fascinating, isn't it?

Here is a bonus page from another episode where Patty and Rolley appear to become very friendly with each other:


Hope you have enjoyed this! If there is any scene from the episodes mentioned above that you want see the storyboard of, let me know! If I come across anything more that I find interesting, I will let you know!

[Bunny]

SO UH I feel like patty and rolley are gay eeeeee!!??

[Flyaway]

Aug 18, 2016 19:47:45 GMT -5 Bunny said:

SO UH I feel like patty and rolley are gay eeeeee!!??

Nah, they're actually just really close friends, like sisters. The panel above is actually them holding onto each other because they're laughing so hard at Yota, as is the rest of the crew. That's what it says in Japanese next to the picture! Btw, Bobby and Joey I think are stated to be Patty and Rolley's boyfriends, respectively.

[Philip]

Actually, in one picture book I own, Joey's character description says he is the boyfriend of BOTH Patty and Rolley. XD But even though the above caption is a joke, I would certainly say Patty and Rolley had more chemistry between them than either did with Joey. (But Joey's pretty much a cardboard cut-out and doesn't have much of a personality)

The first series has what seems to be a love triangle between Patty, Johnny and Bobby (and sometimes Diana who likes Johnny). But since these characters are between the ages of 8-10 I don't think it really means much at this point.

[Lambie]

I think I figured out what was going on in the I Hate Patty! storyboard's title art... this is how the officer imagines things went down, as he thanks himself at the end of the episode, "Thanks to my efforts, another day has passed without a single incident in Palm Town!"

Same energy as the "My job here is done!" / "But you didn't do anything..." Sailor Moon meme.

Do you suppose this is similar?

order.mandarake.co.jp/order/detailPage/item?itemCode=1117863252

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