Click "Read More" to see my presentation (slightly adapted to better suit reading as opposed to being presented live).
A hypothetical feature film storyboard
A hypothetical television storyboard
(source: "Prepare to Board! Creating Story and Characters for Animated Features and Shorts" by Nancy Beiman)
Television storyboards differ from feature film storyboards; the former are more challenging - as veteran animator Nancy Beiman states in the cited book, television boards must be right the first time, with none of the "wiggle room" that feature boards have. A "bible" of final character, prop and set designs will be handed to the artist and must be strictly followed; television boards contain detailed camera moves and are very clean and tight (they may be reused as layouts for economical reasons), while feature boards can afford to be more artistic and use several panels to show camera moves. In short: "television boards illustrate the script; the storyboard is the 'script' of the feature film."
Storyboarding demands an understanding of cinematic conventions, especially camera movement and perspective, as demonstrated in the above talk by Avatar: The Last Airbender and Green Lantern: The Animated Series director Giancarlo Volpe. He states: "If I look through a storyboard or portfolio and I don't see a comprehension of perspective... I probably won't hire that person. That's just me, and there's probably lots of shows that would, but that's a must-have for me." At the 2:22 mark, he gives an example of a shot that, while not inherently wrong, could be improved dramatically simply by changing the camera movement and introducing perspective - the improved version is shown at 2:45. Understanding these conventions is crucial to the work of a storyboarder, whether they work on a feature film or a television series - for the time being, I am focusing my research on the latter, since that is where my interest lies.
"You have to be a chameleon," as former Disney character designer Chris Oatley states on episode 15 of his podcast, in which he interviews prolific storyboarder Rafael Rosado. Rosado describes his experiences needing to adapt to any drawing style to the point of forgetting his own personal style, and touches on the typical workflow of a TV boarder: most half-hour American shows are divided into three acts, with one storyboarder working on a third of the script simultaneously to save time. He was usually given a tight deadline: between four and six weeks to deliver a board; "it's definitely a marathon," Oatley remarks.
But it's worth it: most studios (in the US, at least - I'm using the US as a case study for this research, despite wanting to work as a storyboarder in the UK, since information on the US industry is the most readily available) outsource animation to overseas studios, but storyboarding is almost always done in-house, so in modern television animation, the storyboard is where most of the acting is done before the episode is shipped overseas. Storyboarding is also an in-demand, transferable skill: live-action series, films and commercials also need storyboards, making it a viable, sustainable career option.
So how does one become a storyboarder?
Like most animation jobs, there's no one way to break into storyboards, but most large studios have prospective storyboard artists take a test: they must draw a short board sequence in order to prove they understand the visual language of a series (as Rafael Rosado said in the podcast linked above, you wouldn't board an episode of Teen Titans the same way you'd board an episode of Dragon Tales) and can draw the characters as close to perfectly on-model as possible. The latter has more wiggle room if you're working on a board-driven series (as The Marvellous Misadventures of Flapjack demonstrated) but we'll discuss that later.
Another common "in" is starting as a storyboard revisionist, as Bee and Puppycat creator Natasha Allegri did on Adventure Time and humourously explains here:
"clean up (c/u), hook up (h/u), backgrounds, pose for dialogue, start pose (s/p), end pose (e/p), finish to line, other odds and ends" (source)
Once you've got the job, things diverge a bit based on whether you're working on a script or a board-driven series; my interest mostly lies in the latter, but I looked into boarding for script-driven series as well to satisfy my curiosity and try to get "the full picture".
Boards for script-driven shows often start out as thumbnails; a common practice is drawing them on the script itself for the sake of immediacy, as these thumbnails by Simpsons board artist Luis Escobar demonstrate and Chris Oatley's interview with Rafael Rosado confirms. One of my own tutors, Luis Cook, described a storyboarder's job as having to plus the script: work with what you've been given, but also add your own touches and visual flair. According to Rosado, the director may have some input at this stage, ranging from their own thumbnails to notes to nothing at all, depending on the individual production.
Thumbnails also come into play on a board-driven series, but they tend to be larger, broader and more detailed, as demonstrated here:
Animation director Milton Grey called these "energy sketches:" rough drawings the director hands to their storyboarders and animators to convey the poses and attitudes they want in the final animation. These examples are from The Ren and Stimpy Show, one of the earliest examples of the "creator-driven" model for television cartoons (although it was proceeded by Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures, which Ren and Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi directed), which usually overlaps with board-driven production pipelines. Episodes of board-driven shows typically begin with a rough story outline written by the showrunner or head writer, with a storyboard artist (who may work alone or in a small team) responsible for telling the story visually and writing the final dialogue.
Kricfalusi designed Ren and Stimpy's production system to resemble that of Hollywood's Golden Age animation, in which writers and artists were often one and the same (source), and would pitch their boards to a director and/or producer. Pitching is still part of the board-driven pipeline today, as Steven Universe boarder Jeff Liu anecdotally describes, and has been immortalized through early 1990s "Renaissance" features:
As Joe Ranft demonstrates in this video, one must be a good in-person communicator as well as a good artist to make a successful pitch. Ranft himself described the process of a successful pitch in a booklet passed around to Disney employees, which has now been immortalized on the blog Temple of the Seven Golden Camels.
Once your board has been pitched, accepted, revised and timed out into an animatic, it's time for it to go overseas (usually Korea) to be fully animated and coloured. When the final animation gets back, you might be surprised to find you had more control over it than you expected:
Luis Escobar made up both the shape the wall melted into (top) and the look of the mermaid statue (bottom); in both cases he assumed they would be redrawn - but due to the fast turnaround of TV animation, re-purposing storyboards as layouts is common practice. This is both an example of how much power a storyboard artist can hold and a cautionary tale about not leaving everything to the layout or overseas crews.
And that's the sum of my knowledge about the field I want to go into - just in a different country than where I want to go into it. I look forward to learning first-hand about storyboarding for television in the UK!
Thanks for reading!
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