Return to Menu

Storyboard Artist

If you love to draw cartoon strips and tell stories using visual sequences perhaps the field of storyboard design may be a career option for you.

Storyboard artist Greg High writes that "Storyboard design is a specialty niche of commercial illustration. It entails telling a story with a number of sequential images with consideration for scene detail, character continuity, camera angles, special effects, etc. Storyboards come in many forms depending on budgets. Sometimes a simple series of pencil thumbnails does the trick and sometimes only super color paintings can sell your project. One has to be creative, versatile and flexible. There aren't a lot of us out here who do storyboards."

A storyboard artist is assigned the task of translating a script into a visual form. The ability to visualize a story and to create continuity between shots is a vital skill. One needs to be able to quickly do perspective drawing using cartoon or realistic images. Illustrating backgrounds, landscapes, figures, and action are all a part of the storyboard artist bag of skills.

A good place to see a variety of storyboard art styles is at the Famous Frames web site. This site has many examples of storyboard art. See frames from Red Dragon and The Ring. Also check out the portfolio section. There is also a good collection of movie spoof storyboards - a lot of fun to explore.

Interviews: Here are four online interviews with professional storyboard artists. There is much one can learn by reading what these individuals have to say about their work as illustrators.

Ricardo Delgado conceptual designer and storyboard artists who worked on Men Black, Tomb Raider, Dinosaur and Atlantis

Tony Kieme commercial and game designer worked on Final Fantasy

Elizabeth Colomba worked on Polish Wedding or William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet.

Wendy McAllister has been churning out storyboards in Vancouver's film industry since 1993. She has worked on "Saving Silverman","3000 miles to Graceland", "Free Willy 3" and many others.

Anthony Zierhut is a storyboard artist by profession working in Los Angeles. His site gives useful insight into his career as storyboard artist for George of the Jungle, Babylon 5 and other television programs

Other Artists: Portfolio sites

Paul Power. A wide range of storyboard examples from film such as the Mummy and Con Air to TV commercials and other graphic work.

Ulrich Zeidler not an interview but a great site to explore by a film designer and storyboard artist.

Tutorials:

Josh Sheppard's Storyboard Site is worth a visit as it has a large collection of materials related to the art of the storyboard. His Storyboard Tutorial was developed "... in response to the many, many requests for tips I've gotten over the years from other artists trying to break into storyboarding as a career. This tutorial is not meant to be definitive or exhaustive. These are my opinions. Unlike some successful commercial artists who jealously guard their hard won knowledge, I am not threatened by helping out up and coming hopefuls. I've been doing it for years and nobody has taken my job away yet."

Useful Links

Acting with a Pencil - Storyboarding your Movie using some innovative ideas for non-artist and artist alike.

Information Architecture Tutorial by John Shiple. Information architecture is the science of figuring out what you want your site to do and then constructing a blueprint before you dive in and put the thing together. It's more important than you might think. Topics include: defining your goals, audience, site content, structure, and visual design.

Job Profile: Background of a Storyboard Artist/Production Illustrator . The ins and outs of work as a production artist.

Scott McCloud is recognized as one of the leading theorist on the design of comic strip or sequential art. His book Understanding Comics is used in many multimedia design courses. This site is full of ideas for the individual interested in storyboarding techniques.

Storyboard Example This site has sequences of storyboard cards for the film Twister in thumbnail arrangement that can be clicked on an enlarged for examination.

Storyboarding Multimedia Depending on the nature and scale of your operation, you might be skeptical of the idea of storyboarding programs. It can be time-consuming and if the product development time is short (as in TV or Radio news programming) then who has time to produce a shot-by-shot plan of how the end product should look and sound? But if you are in film, commercial or TV magazine and documentary production, dealing with large multidisciplinary production teams who may be split between different sites, then careful planning is essential. Storyboarding plays an important role in these areas in providing everyone, including the client, if there is one, with a common point of reference, to verify and validate structural and content elements. The same is true in multimedia production, perhaps even more so since teams in this area are still in the process of developing a common cross-disciplinary language and, with development tools still in the process of evolution, experience is not always there to draw on when it comes to the incorporation of more obscure design elements

Storyboarding for Success This worksheet will assist anyone creating an online course, especially those who have no instructional design support.