STORYBOARD ARTIST FIRST STEPS (5 /8) : As a Student and as a Storyboard Artist

The  main issue with wanting to be a storyboard artist is  that getting started with storyboards is not exactly easy, since there is not just one way to do storyboards. They are made for the production you are in and they all change with the type of production. Between books like Cristiano, G. (2008) The Storyboard Design Course  where he approaches different points about  many different aspects of storyboarding such as director notes and the difference between storyboard for animation and shooting boards.

One of my principal fears of going all the way into storyboard from the beginning was the professional opportunities that it has in the local animation industry and in the international one, as I also have to keep thinking on where i am going to be in the future and what is my professional projection.

​In general, looking for professionals currently working in the industry has been very enlightening and useful since I decided to focus on storyboard: getting in touch with people working on the field I am interested in is the best way to know what to expect and how to prepare myself for it.

THE RESEARCH 

The interviews I have conducted through my research have influenced widely my approach to  storyboarding, because the different artists I have spoken with have told me about the discipline and the importance of order and continuous improving of one’s own process. These interviews gave me great insights on how it is like to work for different clients and formats, They also let me hanging on several aspects widely on how to get out there and get a job in the industry. The information they all gave me is mainly about  their own experience when they started, be it several years ago, in other parts of the world or juts with other conditions to their first job. I was still lacking on that first step.
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I learnt that their advice, even if well intentioned was at some extent not helpful completely, and for the same reason following it blindly would have been a mistake . The professionals with longer trajectories coincide that the use of specialized software is not really an important tool to get into a job, while a couple of canadian storyboard artists in starting jobs, even in the other side of the world, insisted it was one of the advantages they had. After that, my own experience getting a storyboard test in a local studio showed me that they were looking for someone who was already familiar with the software, since they were already using it. People on entry jobs have to easily adapt to their new studio environment and even if learning the software on the job is a possibility, it just makes it harder on new graduates to getting use to an industry level of work  and on top of that, learn a software they have used just once. Being on top of the technology used in professional environments seems to be part responsibility of newbies and ignoring it would just make it more difficult at the moment to get a job.