I took some of the characters of Percy Jackson and the Olympians book (that I recently read) and decided to design them and make animated head rotations to see how the designs and the style would work animated. Also as a practice to get use to TVPaint software setting myself a goal of making two characters a week in any free time I got between university projects.

Rough design of the characters from the book:

Organization as key to achieve...anything
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Working on several different projects at the same time during my MA led me to the first and more important lesson: organization is vital. As I have noticed in my research, storyboard artists (and freelance artists in general) need to be perfectly organized to tackle all the challenges of a production and keep the pipeline flowing, but the concept goes further, since work needs to coexist with independent practice, study and the ordinary life. The ability to multitask is appreciated in this scenario, and it’s something the industry values greatly, but, at the heart of it, what counts is efficient scheduling, skill that I had to learn during the first months of the MA.
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The time I spent getting to a workflow and learning how to prioritize aspects in a production or in my own projects was worth it, since now I know the way to perform more efficiently without stressing over getting things done.​

I’ve always knew I was interested in narration through images, being this the center of my practice for many years. This is why my research into the animation world started from knowing what role in the immense pipeline intersection my innate interest in drawing belonged to.

My final decision of becoming a storyboard artist for animation came after a long process of first, to understand how things actually work in the animation industry; second, to explore the scope that the different positions in an animation crew have, so I could see in which one I could really feel satisfied; and third, to identify the type of projects I would like to be part of.  But it is, as alway,s a decisions that should be made alongside practice considering that in a creative career is not only important to know the aspects of the work but also to have the experience of doing it.​

My initial research led me to find information first hand, communicating with storyboard artist from around the world via email,  about what is to be a storyboard artist in the industry. WIthout leaving aside other tools like books such as Levy, D.B. (2006) Your Career in Animation,  and even more online resources like  Creative Skillset  (2016) Animation Job Roles (animation) and the pages of the same animation companies, they usually have no secrets about what they aspire to get from someone applying to any of the different roles in their studios.​

After coming through with my initial research on how the animation industry works ,my idea of storyboard changed and I started to perceive the possibility of a professional development in this area. For being a storyboard artist in animation, generating clear images for the rest of the team to work from is a priority.  For this reason, as Richard Williams says in his book The animator’s survival kit (Williams 2001, p. 23) “Drawing should become second nature, so that the animator can concentrate on the actual actions and the timing of them and give the performance life”.

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