In Team StarKid’s horror/comedy musical, Nerdy Prudes Must Die, the ghost of a high school bully returns to campus to wreak vengeance on the nerds responsible for his death. It’s a hilarious, if harrowing, look at high school social dynamics and the emotional realities of being a teen.
Megan Lloyd is a director and storyboard artist in the American animation industry. Her screen credits include directing on Star Trek: Lower Decks and storyboarding for Dreamworks, Nickelodeon, Marvel, and Netflix. In her spare time, Megan also creates fan animatics of non-animated media on her YouTube account ThirdChildFilms as well as on TikTok, where she currently has over 100 thousand followers.
Megan Lloyd’s fan video for the climactic song of Nerdy Prudes Must Die portrays the story in a way that can’t be captured on stage. Here’s what Lloyd had to say about the production process for these videos, which blend elements of animatics and animation for dramatic effect.
@thirdchildart I animated the title song from the horror musical "Nerdy Prudes Must Die"! You can watch the full @Team StarKid stage show on youtube! This particular scene features @Jon Matteson as Richie and Will Branner as Max! Script by Nick and Matt Lang, with music and lyrics by @Jeff Blim #horror #animation #nerdyprudesmustdie #npmd #starkid #teamstarkid ♬ original sound – Megan Lloyd
Megan: Funny, I actually did that video as a break from Nerdy Prudes. And that was a lot of fun to do, also done in Storyboard Pro. That was fan art of the cover that Morgan Clay produced. Because I love her so much as a singer and as a musical producer. It was sort of the first time that I had shared original characters online since college.
Seeing the positive reception, and then what I’ve been calling the “second wave” when people realize both of the characters are women, has been really gratifying. That’s a story I would love to make into a film.
@thirdchildart "This song used to make her knight laugh…maybe it can still reach her?" listen sometimes you fight an evil wizard and it goes soooo wrong, but don't worry I'm sure love will save the day! Heard this AMAZING cover by @MORGAN CLAE and had to illustrate it! I only used the 1 minute teaser BUT you can find the full version of the song on her youtube channel! EDIT: shoot, not sure why it's saying this is my original sound, I added Morgan's track when I put it on here. PLEASE go to her channel #animation #storyboard #originalcharacter #fairytale #morganclae ♬ original sound – Megan Lloyd
Jenna: I saw a few of your The Magnus Archive animatics as well. I love how you animated John moping.
Megan: Oh, and he’s on the floor.
Jenna: He’s on the floor, and then Martin leaves him the cup of tea. I’ve seen other animatics of that moment, and people can make it a very dramatic, heavy scene. But you went the other way and made it hilarious.
Megan: So I’m so glad you brought that one up. That was actually the first vertical video I did in Storyboard Pro. I work in television animation. We work in widescreen. I did this eight-minute Magnus Archives video of the Season Four finale. I put months and months of work into it. And it did pretty well online.
But I feel like not a lot of people watched it. And, in fact, when I would try to upload it to TikTok, I would just upload it in widescreen, with big black bars at the top and the bottom, and I kept getting copyright warnings. I’d have to write back every time and be like, “No. This isn’t a movie. These are my drawings. I drew this.”
But it would be too late, and the algorithm would have buried it and de-recommended it. So I decided I better start trying to make vertical videos. I actually got the Storyboard Pro template from my friend Anna Lencioni, who is one of your Toon Boom ambassadors.
I was talking to her about working in a vertical format. And she’s like, “Oh, yeah, I have a custom canvas that I’ve saved. I’ll send that to you.” I’ve made some scary Magnus Archives and some comedy Magnus Archives since then, just getting used to the vertical format.
Megan: The acting is the same, and the editing and pacing choices I make are the same. But how I’m using my background, and where I’m stacking my characters is very different.
The number one thing is that I exaggerate the heights of the characters more. Funny that it hasn’t changed my camera work much, but it’s changed how I designed my characters.
Jenna: It’s interesting that you bring up character design, because I love how you designed The Distortion in your animatic for the episode of Magnus Archives where the archivist is interviewing Michael. When I first heard the episode, I pictured him almost like a cloud of smoke. I thought he wasn’t entirely solid, and was swirling around himself.
Megan: Yeah, I love that. Before I do a project. I’ll gather references. [One inspiration was] Eris from Dreamworks’s The Legend of Sinbad. She’s someone who will be talking, and then she will turn to smoke and appear somewhere else.
The biggest reason why I did that scene with Michael is he is the thing that scared me the most in all of The Magnus Archives. The combination of Luke Booys’s unsettling acting, and whatever filters the sound designers put it through.
And he is supposed to be an impossible character. He is supposed to be something your mind [can’t understand.] And I think the thing that really cracked it for me in that sequence is when he’s laughing, and he’s leaving extra faces.
Jenna: Yes.
Megan: The thing with Michael that was a lot of fun is trying to figure out how a frightening character like this would keep surprising the audience. That’s actually only half of the clip that I wanted to animate. There’s more at the end of that episode.
