Posted on December 17, 2024

Max Steel: Turbo Missions, 2009

Max is bax for more turbo zurbo! Swing ding over the wing thing to get your tron on! Or whatevs.

During my tenure as the go-to storyboard artist for Max Steel movies (2007 to 2012) that guy got into one bonkers scrape after another, and it was my job to get him out. I can’t say I enjoyed every minute of it, since it was clear from the start that the storytelling aspirations were fairly low. But I did like how fast it went. The scripts were written for high velocity, and it was always fun to draw the ideas as quickly as they came to me.

I like a process with as few steps as possible between the starting and finishing lines, and storyboards for CG definitely fit the bill. This is because, as I’ve explained in previous outings, you don’t have to draw detail for a CG production. Nothing has to be precisely on-model because no artist has to redraw what appears in a storyboard. The computer does it for them. The real work instead goes to making it look as plausible as possible within the confines of a world where everything is a mirage made of light.

You walk a series of tightropes with every storyboard, and in CG you have the added tightrope of choosing camera angles that remain fully aware of those confines while still trying to make it exciting. Think of designing and blocking fight choreography for a stage play without anyone actually getting hit, and you’ll have a general idea of what this is like.

Between the 6th and 7th Max Steel movies, there was a set of 15 “Turbo Adventures.” These were mini-stories (each running a minute and a half) to highlight some specific character, vehicle, mechanical feature, etc. for the Max Steel toy line. Put together, they added up to the length of a single TV episode. They were created in the US in English, then sent to South America for dubbing in Spanish since that’s where the toy sales were hottest. They were released online and on DVD in whatever marketing pattern made sense to Mattel. (As you can maybe tell, I was not involved in that part of the process.)

On the writing side, the real challenge was to anticipate what would fit into 90 seconds. They didn’t always guess right. It’s generally agreed that a page of script equals about 45 seconds of screen time. Therefore, two pages of script were about right for one of these shorts. Some went a little longer. But you don’t REALLY know if you hit the mark until the action is actually drawn and the drawings are run together in an animatic with timing and sound. Dialogue scenes are much easier to gauge. Action scenes not so much. A dialogue scene doesn’t have much movement, so you don’t need many drawings. Action scenes tend to be shorter but need a LOT of drawings to cover the choreography. This is when it helps to be able to draw quickly.

Below you’ll find all 15 of the shorts and the storyboards that go with them. If you compare the two, you’ll see significant differences in some cases. That’s an indication that the animatic ran longer than 90 seconds once it was all put together, and cuts had to be made. When that happens, it’s up to the director to decide what to take out and how to suture the pieces back together. If it requires a serious rethink, it comes back to me for revisions. But if I’m not available or there isn’t enough time/money, the director can issue notes to the animators.

“We had to take a few shots out here, so this is what you should do to stitch the surrounding shots together.” That kind of thing. Further modifications can happen on the animation side if they find a way to save more time and money. It’s all very fluid, and the only thing that counts is how well the finished product works. Everything leading up to that, including the script itself, is a step toward a goal rather than a goal in itself. It’s important to keep that in mind no matter where you are in the production chain, because it keeps your ego from becoming an obstacle.

But hey, enough of my yakkin! Let’s go Turbo!