OH DEAR!

I am glad you want to get into storyboard :’) You are starting and what I am telling you here is a broad view for the 3 years or so you are going to spend in college. I do not have a single idea what kind of program you are in, and each has its own variations and links to the industry and stuff like that. Anyway!

Storyboard artists work with composition,  storytelling continuity and establish relationships between characters and assure the flow of the sequence. They balance “strong drawing skills with good knowledge of anatomy, staging, acting and the ability to think quickly” .All must come naturally to the storyboard artists. and that is why you better try different types of stories, techniques, and audiences, as well as study composition and narration in finished products like movies, ads and TV shows.  

The main issue is that getting started with storyboards is not exactly easy, since there is not just one way to do storyboards, no 12 principles or specific rules and it can go from mainstream to completely experimental. Some projects will require reworking one scene several times or drawing into the model and others will be great with roughs…

Your aims are to be adaptable because you never know where you are going to end up working or in what kind of projects…And when you are starting, you want to figure out what are your strengths and what you are not so good at. 

What kind of courses?

• Life Drawing is a must, illustration and design is also good, i will say painting is great since it could helps a lot with color composition and of course, animation. From my experience, it is better if you know how animation works,so your boards wont be a mess for the animators and designers. Also to really understand your place in the whole process. 
• Also, anything to do with visual storytelling, or storytelling in general, from children’s books to cinematography. 
• There are many books that are amazing about cinematography and storytelling for animation. it is good to watch how others work, from the roughs and thumbnails, the internet is your friend to find this.
• Learn your softwares, this comes with time and is not a No. 1 priority but in the long run, it is important.. For storyboarding it goes mostly to photoshop and storyboard pro (and sometimes tv paint, i’ ve seen it) . Even when some professionals may tell you that it is not that important, and that if it is a good board it doesn't matter, it does matter for studios and junior position jobs.

Have in mind that internalizing any of this takes time and practice, but it is worth it when you are boarding you want to be thinking if the framing is dramatic enough or the expression funny as you want it to be, not much about the drawing (but you still want it to be clear and good)

And do not be afraid to ask questions.  Many of the animators and storyboard artists are really happy to answer any questions about being part of the animation industry, and they are often more accessible through their own social media. 

things to avoid?

• Not giving yourself time to learn the basics (in animation, in life drawing…in storytelling and in working on groups) 
•  Avoiding feedback…if you want to imrpove, then this is the only way. Sometimes you are so much in your head that it never ends on the drawing :\
•  Being  attached  to your drawings. Storyboards are a tool for planning. they are not supposed to be pretty (i absolutely love them but that is just my opinion..). And most importantly, while boarding you discard drawings, whole scenes A LOT of them. and that is perfectly okay it is all of the planning process.
• taking any kind of feedback and criticism too personal. Kinda difficult BUT everyone is there to make the final thing better. If something can be better, then…you can make it better or you can learn to make it better. 

how to get job experience?

create a portfolio and talk to people. but do not exploit yourself

Tell your teachers and fellow classmates that you are looking for industry experience, and this one come in hand with being able to demonstrate it with your work. If they see you are a good part of the team, they will let you know if they see something available.

Remember that you start from the beginning (as revisionist and assistant ) and it is a great way to improve while working with other professionals AND to show them you are a person they want to work with. You do not have to start as a storyboard artist and that is okay too. There are many many ways to get your foot on the door. …i would say the most valuable thing for ANYONE working in animation is to be a good person. for people dealing with deadlines and last minute changes, you want to work with someone reliable and just plain nice.   

When you want to be a storyboard artist and your goal is to work at an industry level a big part of it is about working on teams and relying on other people’s  abilities to get the most of a project, big or small. and having a broad understanding of various parts of the project is an advantage so do not be afraid to net involved in other aspects of animation.

And finally, i would say a good tip is to find something that fuels your fire and practice with it and enjoy it. Not all will be perfect but you will learn about your own way of doing it. IMO  posting your work online is good, since you learn what form of storytelling is more effective and you start being okay with sharing your work, but take this with a grain of salt because the social media world  is messy and does not reflect your actual worth as an artist. Just if you find it fun to share your stuff, do it. We all love to see more art.Finally, and after a big wall of text I hope it is helpful, I will link you to my MA animation blog…because it has everything form my MA including my final reflections on the industry and portfolios for sboard.

The only way to become good at telling stories visually is by doing it. And screwing it some times, all is part of a process.
If you have any more questions, i’m here to help
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Make mistakes.  Take feedback. Improve. 

I dedicated my MA in Animation at the Bristol School of Animation to truly understand what it means to be a Storyboard Artist and how to develop my artistic career as one.

This is a reflective analysis I decided to  publish in 8 parts about my personal and professional practice from the point I decided to become a storyboard artist and being part of the animation industry. 

Having drawing as a central point in my practice, and not limiting myself to only learning about storyboarding but being able to adapt this existing illustration skills in different projects.  I’ve been involved in layout, and editing my own animatics and final projects, also and more important, develop other set of skills to further my career in animation: I was able to learn about visual narrative and storytelling into a much deeper level. This skills I developed in different projects can be adapted in different aspects I am interested but was not sure how to develop during the MA, like comics and children stories as they all share the principles of drawing and storytelling.
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Although it is clear that I still have room for improvement, nowadays I can say that I can perform professionally as a storyboard artist. I have gained and applied my experience adapting several skills to new environments and performing different roles in various projects while obtaining a better idea on what aspects I need to improve. A big part of the industry is about working on teams and relying on other people’s  abilities to get the most of a project, big or small. and having a broad understanding of various keyponts to not feel at lost in different situations that may occur is a personal advantage since  part of the storyboard artist job as someone who  extinguish fires before they happen.

Drawing is still the axis to develop my career, and being able to develop skills that are useful in more than one way is important in the industry to keep the job, but also to develop a creative voice in personal projects. Storyboard artists work with the composition, storytelling continuity and establish relationships between characters and assures the flow of the sequence. They balance “strong drawing skills with good knowledge of anatomy, staging, acting and the ability to think quickly” (Levy, 2006) A storyboard is the drawings that illustrate a narrative momentum and it is after all a tool to help visualize the film, and like that, they are often discarded to create a stronger point in a story, it is, after all, thinking in terms of visual storytelling and quickly translating those thoughts so they can be pitched, revised and dissected. For the story.

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The animation industry and creators have a need to share their work since it is the only way to get feedback from it. Online presence is beneficial for networking and may be useful to nail freelance commissions and/or studio jobs. As a visual storyteller, it also helps to build an audience that eventually could support personal projects. The animation industry has changed in recent years thanks to artists now being able to share their work online at all time,  generating an audience and hopefully also captivating the interest of specific directors. This article from  Anime News Network is one of the most interestings since it reunites the experiences of american, european and australian animators that have gotten into the industry by animating and sharing what they do in social media." Learn animation. Post your work online. Take feedback. Improve. Be recruited onto a high profile project as a key animator."  The feedback from the public is as enriching as watching what other professionals are doing, which can develop the critical eye on own productions. And even further, having my work organized online can contact me with studios in other countries and widen my career possibilities.

Getting in contact with people in the industry is often the most important way to get relevant feedback and sometimes even the smaller tip can change the way of approaching  the same work I was doing before. The only way to get into a dialogue with people in the industry is having some work done and be able to show it, even a little. Many of the animators and storyboard artists are really happy to answer any questions about being part of the animation industry, and they are often more accessible through their own social media.

​It has been the tips from storyboard artist looking at my board that have gave me a big breakthrough on the job. More than often, as storyboard artist we are so focused on the board we are doing that those small tips, like paying a little more attention to the foreground or using the negative space in a character design, are often seen as tricks and are the most difficult to see when immersing in a specific script, but they speak more about the experience of working on different type of boards and having someone reviewing them directly.

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Most of the artists I reached work on projects or have online platforms that I have followed for a while. Others were recommended to me. I wrote to fifteen people and received answers from eight of them.

After speaking with them, the main lesson was an obvious one: storyboard artists work in all of the fields of visual media. Adaptability is necessary to work on the field, because the size of the crew, the production needs and the resources vary wildly among short films, tv shows, feature films and advertising for different media. Even if my main goal is to be able to work in a studio based job, I know I must learn about the characteristics of freelance jobs, since they make up for a great percentage of the offer.
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The questions I send to them where:

•What was your first job in the industry? How did you get to work as a storyboard artist?
•What kind of technology do you work with on a daily basis?
•What kind of additional skills may help a storyboard artist working in animation?
•How do you approach scripts? is it any different for short projects than for big ones?
And in the case of the directors: how their role as storyboard artists influence their role as directors.

Key points I found are:
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•Each project is unique, therefore it must be approached with a brand new mindset. The job of a storyboard artist is to figure out the specific requirements of the story and the clearest way to satisfy them visually.
•Each director approaches projects in a different way and the crew operates differently according to this approach. The storyboard artist must be able to adapt and take the best of every new experience.
•Type casting is a real thing in the industry. In some features, the storyboard artist is picked to plan a specific scene that requires high skill in action or drama expression, other times, it is more about the general feeling of the entire project.
•Related to this, it is vital that the storyboard artist and the director understand each other.
•Storyboard is all about planning and a storyboard artist needs to keep all the aspects of storytelling in mind for being able to deliver. Acting, colour, composition, cuts. All must be clear in the storyboard and come natural to the storyboard artists, which is why having experience in several projects is important. Storyboard notes come very handy.
•It is important to question everything that is going to be shown to the audience: why the director wants it to be like it is, which is the best way to show it, how will the material get clear enough to make the cut.
•The simpler the better.
•Mastery comes from practice and experimentation. It is essential to try different scripts, techniques and audiences, as well as studying composition and narration in finished products like movies, ads and TV shows.
•Most of the interviewees work digitally, using mainly Adobe Photoshop and Toon Boom Storyboard Pro. Some of them consider the proficiency in the latter a requirement to work as a studio artist in the industry.
•The length of a project can go from one or two days for advertising, to two or three years for feature films.
•Newcomers normally get jobs as revisionists, where they help tying up the storyboard artist’s work with the director final needs. It is a great way to enter the industry because one can see the storyboards from professional artists and listen to the director’s commentary first hand.

I looked up for the requirements big studios have for their storyboard artists, what do they want to see in a portfolio and which skills they appreciate in an animator too, because I got from the interviews that several storyboard artists also work as animators or even concept artists and character designers.

They definitely need that the storyboard artist understands the pipeline and commits to make it flow, since a production is a team effort to put a finished product on screen and the storyboard artist is one of the critical pieces in the functioning of this mechanism. The pipeline is the tool to understand the whole process and define who needs to work at every step of it. With it, the storyboard artist can manage to make the blueprints to all the departments in time and assure everything goes as planned and the studio can be sure their money is not going to waste.
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Behind the scenes documentaries for feature films are great to see this in detail, since they show how the work of the storyboard artists intertwines with the rest of the crew and how different studios approach the challenges of production. Cartoon Network, Pixar and Dreamworks have information about this online for everyone to see

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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