Storyboard Central

Various TV commercial and motion picture OBB storyboards here in the Philippines

2012-02-02T14:02:00.000-08:00

Here are some storyboards I worked on in the past 3 years, varying from TV commercial to Opening Billboards for a local feature film here in the Philippines.

how to make your client happy:

2011-12-05T03:00:00.000-08:00

make it bright and shiny!

was one weekend of speedy cars..

PROMOTIONS

2011-12-02T16:44:00.000-08:00

As apart of my marketing plan for the year, I decided to send postcards to potential and existing clients(art buyers, creative directors....you know). Since agencies work with different clients, I decided to keep it more general. My idea was to do 4 ninja facts for the year. I've posted the three I've already done and different options for the 4th. The last one will go out early in January.I would really appreciated some feed back. Not sure if the idea is that great, but at least it's something. I think I may continue with it in 2012 and try to take it a step further. Looking forward to your comments

Al McAlister on the Constant Change in Our Business

2011-11-19T08:41:00.001-08:00

Last month, on my other blog, Today's Inspiration, I talked about how technology and changing tastes had caused dramatic shifts in the illustration business back in the mid-20th century. Many illustrators watched their careers disappear before their eyes. The lesson we can learn from that era is this:

"Adapt or Die"

Nothing ever stays the same in this business. If you've been around it for any length of time, you'll quickly discover that. Al McAlister was one of the many artists who commented on that post and I thought his remarks, based on long personal experience, would be valuable for all of us to consider.With Al's permission, here are his remarks on the subject, accompanied by some of his always terrific artwork - many thanks, Al! ~ Leif

Al McAlister on the Constant Change in Our Business

It is a timely topic, I am feeling the change also.

In 1991 the business here in Brazil tanked because of the economy.

I was invited back to New York by my old comp art illustration reps, Diamond Art Studios. The advertising comp art business had changed a lot since I had left the USA in 1983.

The ad agencies were now enamoured with storyboards made up from stock photo catalogues. With that, comp work dried up - so Diamond left the storyboard and comp business.

They were now into regional marketing campaigns - direct with the client, no ad agency. Diamond Art even rebranded themselves as the Diamond Promotion Group. So with promotion clients, I was very busy once again, this time working with Clairol, L'Oreal, and what seemed a huge number of liquor brands.

A few years later the company was bought out and in 1995 I began working with Paul Santa-Donato, who was one of my first reps at Diamond originally. Illustration for comps had come back strong since the clients had complained that all the storyboards looked alike because the art directors would all use the same "beautiful" photos.

And the photographers themselves and directors disliked comps and storyboards with photos, specially the ones with mood, saying that it really hampered their creativity. An illustrated storyboard always left room for imagination.

With the advent of the internet I was able to return to Brazil and work from my studio here. But now we are going through another phase... what you see here are some examples of recent work.

* Many thanks to Al McAllister - please visit Al's Facebook page for more great artwork!

Storyboard History Class: Bill Peckmann Boards Cheetos' "Cheesy Rider"

2011-11-12T14:12:00.001-08:00

My friend Bill Peckmann, who worked at Phil Kimmelman & Associates back in the '70s sent me a wonderful surprise gift earlier today. Bill wrote, "I came across 4 old thumbnail boards of mine from 1973. They were done for CHEETOS. The most popular one was "Cheesey Rider".

I asked Bill if he could recall what the going rate for a frame was back in the early '70s. Of course being on staff Bill wouldn't have been paid by the frame... but I thought he might have heard what freelancers got, since people like the great MAD magazine cartoonist, Jack Davis did boards for PK&A.

Bill replied, "I believe back in them there olden times, there wasn't a panel rate. We charged by the board and you're right, I was on staff. Sorry, I can't remember the rates... they were decent, there was lots of work, we were young and stupid and lived for "art"! Life was good. Ha!"

"And, to add insult to injury, I was only 32 years old, I'd worked my way up thru apprenticeships, inbetweener, ass't animator etc. and, here I was doing S/B's for a national brand, I would have worked for nuttin'!!!"

Bill continued, "These 4 boards are from 1973. We had done the previous CHEETOS spot at another studio (Focus Design Inc.). That one and these were all done without the help of Paul Coker Jr. who had designed the original Cheetos mouse at that time. I realize now that the Adv. agency probably saved a lot of money by not going back to Coker."

"And we thought it was because they loved us. Ouch!"

* For anyone interested in learning a little more about the origin of the Cheetos "Cheesy Rider" Mouse, there's a great little post on WaffleWiffer's blog that includes a link to a 1971 Cheetos commercial featuring the mouse. Bill told me that "The art at that link, mouse in suit, Hail Cheeser, is all mine. I still have my Cheesey Rider t-shirt!"

Animatic

2011-10-22T08:40:00.000-07:00

Realization of the animatic Margarita.

First the outline with information, plans and references to adjust with the creative once approved this step that we would say it is very important, so we can work on a secure base.

Then we went to do the illustrations and attention to detail would be thinking like movements are going to do for the next step.

Then we began the realization of digital animation with AE, the most important thing here is that we are telling a little story and that's what has to be understood.

Also I leave a link of how to get the movie filmed, to find the differences.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wk3y05Pb7c

--

More examples on our website

http://www.fukudo.com.ar/

Thanks
regards

Fuku-Do

Pencil and color digital.

2011-10-12T17:30:00.000-07:00

A storyboard, done in pencil and then color in digital format, looking soft and warm tones to the palette was appropriate for the product.

The illustration is not a full finished but the execution time doesn't helped to give all the details that would have required the chocolate.

Fuku-do

2011-09-24T16:57:00.000-07:00

In this paper we gave a lot of freedom to make the drawings.

We were asked that were not traditional pictures of the storyboards.

Just asked us something to more modern, simple and funny.

We search our styles and we came out this.

The storyboards are called: Blowing, look, discomfort, detail and yawning

Each client is a different universe, we must be ready

Fuku-do

Tak Murakami (1933-2011)

2011-09-12T02:55:00.000-07:00

* A few days ago I received an email from Jason Millet: "A friend and co-worker of mine, Tak Murakami, recently passed away and - as Tak was an excellent storyboard artist and illustrator before that - I'd like to post some of his work and a tribute up at Storyboard Central." What follows is Jason's tribute to his friend, Tak. ~ Leif

Artist and illustrator Tak Murakami passed away Wed., August 24th after a five month battle with cancer. He was 78 years old.

All of us here in the Chicago illustration, advertising and storyboard communities who knew him are saddened, faced with the loss of this great draftsman and man.I had gotten to know Tak over the past two and a half years while freelancing for Poison Pencil art studio, but I’m sure that there are many others who visit this blog who may have known Tak during his twenty-plus years over at the Art Bunch. Still others here or over at Today’s Inspiration may have met Tak at the art studio Stevens Biondi DiCicco or as a teacher at the Chicago Academy of Art during the late 1970s.

Tak was a farm boy - one of thirteen children - whose education came in the form of the original Famous Artists School and a homemade studio set up in the family barn. He and I shared a love for a lot of the illustrators that he grew up with - Austin Briggs, Al Parker, Albert Dorne, Noel Sickles and - for Tak most of all - Robert Fawcett.

Tak was even profiled very early on in his professional life by the FAS magazine and got to meet Al Dorne.

Tak worked as an illustrator for many years and unfortunately I don’t have much of that work (and this blog is about storyboards anyway). He did develop a sculpted and cut paper style in addition to his drawn and painted works that I find extraordinary. As a teacher, he taught and mentored Gary Gianni, Hilary Barta, Scott Gustafson and Geoff Darrow among, I’m sure, many others.

Tak had not been aware of what any of these former pupils were up to, but it’s worth your Googling each of these gentlemen if you don’t know the names. Tak was especially proud to find out that the young kid Gary who had helped him out on a film strip job grew up to draw Prince Valiant.

By the mid- 80’s, Tak was looking for new streams of revenue that illustration had ceased to provide and that brought him to storyboarding and The Art Bunch.

Tak was a wonderful artist, but he was just as wonderful a man. He had a charming, child-like quality and sense of wonder that was accompanied by great depth and insight. I truly enjoyed our conversations about religion, politics, family, world events, history and, of course, art. A couple of our best conversations came during visits I made to the hospital while Tak was sick. I think that there’s something about being with someone in a hospital - both of you removed from deadlines - that really puts you present in the moment you have with each other. It’s sad that we can’t bring that same presence and stillness to the noise of our daily lives.Tak had a love of people that comes through most in his off-handed sketching and train doodles.

There’s a delicacy of line in these that’s hard to capture in a scan...

... but I just find these people as warm and likeable as I know Tak did.

We love and miss you, Tak - Godspeed.

Coke

2011-09-07T22:19:00.001-07:00

This is a storyboard old enough, we did a commercial for Coca-Cola that our country was well known.

I designed this file, with some of the pictures of the storyboard, because the director of the commercial, commissioned us to do about 50 pictures for the story.

You see the link as is the commercial filmed by the producer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8YPJrt4aks

I hope you like it.

Fuku-do

storyboards and the final result

2011-09-06T23:21:00.000-07:00

Storyboard for Frisian Flag 'Raih Esokmu' TVC

while working on storyboards for TV ads, the most fun for a storyboard artist is if every scene of the ad is exactly the same as what's in the storyboard.

Final result link :

http://youtu.be/y7TvRIFrrUc

The new!

2011-08-22T13:51:00.000-07:00

Hi all, thanks to Leif for allowing me this opportunity, I am very grateful.

My name is Adriano Giulitti I'm an illustrator and with my friend a great artist Alejandro Santana,both work from Argentina for various advertising agencies locally and internationally.

Together we form the Fuku-do where we give a illustration services to advertising clients.

We work as a team to do the work faster and more efficient for the customer demand.

We actually have many and varied work done as an illustration,storyboards, animatic and animation that slowly I'll show you.

Now I show you some works we did in Story boards.

I hope you like it and I would like to read comments.

Thanks a lot!

Greetings from Argentina!
Regards

Adriano

Drawing tools and programmes

2011-07-01T03:35:00.000-07:00

Like most storyboard artists, I'm constantly experimenting with making my boards look better ( and making the job easier for myself). I use a Cintiq for drawing on the computer-it's less than perfect, but I guess it's the best available at the moment.

I've experimented with various drawing programmes - they all have their advantages and drawbacks - and still haven't found one that ticks all the boxes. Currently my preferred programme is Sketchbook Pro. It has most of the tools I need apart from the facility to draw straight lines quickly off the vertical or horizontal (it has a good versatile ruler, but using it slows things down).

Strangely, I'm veering back towards doing all the drawings in pencil and scanning those in and adjusting level because it's more intuitive, tactile and frankly, quicker.

I've tried drawing in photoshop -it does straight lines off angle easy-peasy - but there's no tactile sense to any of the brushes I've used or created. One of the things I like about Sketchbook is that the choices are limited -Painter defeated me due to unlimited options- and the method of enlarging and reducing on-screen feels much more intuitive than any other programmes I've tried. Colouring in Sketchbook, though is a chore -I do all that in Photoshop.

Manga I've tried - good for a comic feel but slow for flicking in and out of, and I even gave ArtRage a shot. It does very little that other programmes don't do better.

What are your preferred methods and why? Over to you guys...

anything is "drawable"

2011-06-01T02:39:00.000-07:00

The business is tough and very competitive... Clients don't always help. Timings are ridiculously tight for the most part of the projects... But there is something fullfilling about knowing that you are involved in something that's not given to anyone... expressing ideas with your hand, your main tool...

Thank you Leif for giving me the oportunity to write and publish some of my work...

Imagination is limitless... If you are creative enough (and I believe EVERYONE is creative, no exceptions), and you have the ability to paint, draw, expressing what's in your mind, anything is "drawable". Even air...

I'm a self-taught illustrator living in Barcelona. I haven't been in the storyboard/roughs business for too long... I worked for many years in advertising agencies, from which I decided to "escape" to do what I love: drawing.

Barcelona is a very creative city. I guess you could say the architecture, the history, the sunny weather and the sea, even the people, can be an easy source of inspiration for any artist...

just a quick post..

2011-05-08T13:52:00.000-07:00


not much to say, but since this was one of the best storyboards i have ever drawn... -i just want to show it to you! -done in painter.

action SIOL trio, shooting board + TV add

2011-04-14T04:23:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpAjXkaGfgw&feature=player_embedded

A brief insight into some excerpts from the shooting board for a TV ad SIOL action trio where xobi (furry doll) is kidnapped...
It was fun to work with Thor and Baldur, which are responsible for hot and dynamic advertising in the spirit of action movies!

Yeaah!

in the name of the game!

2011-03-29T05:06:00.000-07:00

IN THE NAME OF THE GAME - ACTION!
I wonder if someone can put it in a few words, what's the main connection between comics, graphic novels and storyboard telling...?

Stan Shaw, Color Storyboards

2011-02-08T12:11:00.000-08:00

Won't go into what these are for, but they were my first stab at full color storyboards in a while.

Over 30 in all, they were done with the idea that they may have a life in print at sometime way way in the future.

Also technically and creatively it worked to keep the background and foreground figures separate. Used Sketchbook Pro and Photoshop plus a bit of InDesign in the organizing phase. I talk a bit more about them on my blog.

Even though the schedule was tight on producing these, I enjoyed the chance to take the art to this level of finish. Normally the bulk of my storyboard work is rushed and line or tone. But these benefited from a longer more thoughtful approach, and my up front work in character and background design and concepts.

I'd love to hear any comments or suggestions.

Update: Since the project has not been completed, I thought it best to remove the images.

Stan

Antonio Santamaria: Strategies for Dealing with the Global Crisis

2010-12-03T10:53:00.000-08:00

Recently I was contacted by a fabulous Spanish artist named Antonio Santamaria, who asked to be added to the artist links list on Storyboard Central. I asked Antonio to share his thoughts on the state of the industry today and he sent a long, thoughtful and encouraging reply. Below, some examples of Antonio's work and his insightful commentary. ~ L

The truth is that I can not complain because I had a lot of work. But I'm not so lucky; I've also noticed the global crisis like everyone else. I am trying not to let this crisis affect me too much... trying to get ahead of long periods without work... seeking alternatives as a Character Designer or lately, working as a Teacher of Storyboards and Illustration at the IED (European Institute of Design).

After a period doing storyboards for movies on Filmax Studios and just before reaching the big crisis, I started to work for clients in foreign countries from home. Some studios allow it, so today its possible to make storyboards from your own studio and maintain a fluent communication with the director via email, phone or skype. So when the problems started in the Spanish companies, I was lucky to be already working for South Africa, Italy and USA. Especially for an Italian studio that I've been involved with for the last 2 years storyboarding for some of its TV series.

However I kept in contact with a studio of my country and I am now also developing sequences for a new 3D film called "Goleor, The Scales and the Sword" which will be released in 2012 and is still in pre-production (but very advanced).

What I have tried to do during these tough times is to open my range of job opportunities, not only focusing on the creation of storyboards. That is, one of the things we are asked to do as storyboard artists is to create many different situations, be able to sketch a variety of characters in different positions and views, create backgrounds or draw them from any perspective.

In short, having the ability or skills to handle many facets of the drawing. This means that if you have some definite style, you can assume other roles within the field of animation, such as the creation and character design. This is another of my tags as an artist and I have been lucky to be able to develop, over the last 3 years, the stages in which I had no storyboard work.

Anyway, with our type of work we can hit a lot of different doors. It is known that there are considerable differences between a storyboard animation and one of a real image film, or between one from a video game and another for advertising.

Here we can diversify our search of work. When I didn't have a job in animation I've accepted shooting boards jobs for commercials and even some for real image.

The fact is that through our work we are able to belong to different sectors within the field of visual communication. We can work for television, advertising, film, animation .... and that's an advantage.

There is a sector that is gaining great importance lately and over time is getting closer to a super great film and that's the video game sector. I think that it could be another option for storyboard artists, not only for the development of any animated sequence in the game, but also as creators of concepts during the pre-production stage. Its also interesting that the very success of a video game is leading production companies to want to "convert" the game to a film project... and that creates more opportunities for work for us.

I just want that this crisis to pass quickly and we can get a little peace of mind knowing that after a project will come another one and, although we have to adapt to changing times, the companies and studios always take into account the important role that our profession has in the quality and the success of any production.

Antonio Santamaria's blog

Antonio's storyboard portfolio website

"What the...?" Harry Borgman on our ever-changing industry

2010-11-27T08:28:00.000-08:00

I think last weekend's post referencing a recent fastcompany.com article on the future of the ad industry had a sobering affect on many people. Certainly the comments and emails I received confirm that. One person who wrote to me is my friend, Harry Borgman, who has seen it all in the many years of his career and has managed to not only survive but thrive, despite everything that has changed about the business over the years. Harry has vast experience in finished illustration in a wide variety of styles, cartooning, design, art direction, teaching, art instruction book authoring and fine arts. I have the utmost respect and admiration for his many accomplishments. Here are Harry's thoughts on the subject at hand:

"I did a couple of graphics on my reaction to the weird and often outlandish changes that occur in the ad biz. Most, of course, are predictable, others just come out of the blue, and often not everyone is affected."

"The most dramatic recent change was when the computer arrived and put all of the type houses and retouchers out of business. The computer doesn't effect really good designers and illustrators, as it's an interesting new medium, BUT there certainly is a ton of garbage being done today by people who think the computer automatically turns one into an artist or designer. There is also the matter of IDEAS, a computer cannot create ideas, people do."

"I actually began working while still in high school, at an engraving company's art department. All of their artists were drafted into the army... it was 1943. One day I would design a brochure, the next day I would do cartoons, the next day a mechanical illustration and so on, a great way to learn.

Early '50s cartoon for "Friends" magazine, a GM publication, illustrated by Harry Borgman

After graduating from high school, my best friend and a great graphic designer Herb Schiebold, and I started an art studio in 1947 with space in a downtown Detroit office building. We hired a rep that got us a great deal of work directly from Chrysler.

Early '50s Chrysler 300 brochure, illustrated by Harry Borgman

Things were going really well when suddenly the Chrysler workers decided to go on strike. Somehow that affected the flow of assignments we were getting , and suddenly we had NO work and had to close shop. I don't know how two 19 year old kids could have enough guts to start a commercial art studio... but we did."

"That was my first encounter with GREAT CHANGE in the business, however, it did work for me as I ended up immediately being hired by a terrific art studio, Allied Artists, where I worked for years. It would take too long to go into all of the other changes that affected my career through the years, but believe me, there were many that changed a lot of Detroit artist's lives."

"The chart below shows some of the years that I went through great changes as well as shock. There were, however, long periods of peace in between the jolts. OWWW!!"

"That article about the ad biz was frightening ! There are always dramatic changes in the ad business, but this one is major, I fear. My former rep in NY says that the storyboard business is going to hell, as there are artists from other countries willing to do frames at greatly reduced prices."

"I hope that more artists leave comments about this subject on Storyboard Central."

Harry Borgman's website

Harry Borgman's blog

Flaviano Armentaro: "Lots of studios [are] hiding themselves..."

2010-11-23T07:51:00.000-08:00

A week or two ago I received a note from Italian storyboard artist, Flaviano Armentaro. He asked me to add him to the links list. I took a look at Flaviano's blog and was blown away. I asked Flaviano to tell us a bit about himself and the state of the business in Italy and here's what he wrote:

"I'm 27 years old and I've work in animation since I was 17. I graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts where I studied sculpture. Because I was always fascinated by cartoons and animation I took a little course for cleanup artists in a studio in Turin (Lanterna Magica, one of the best known studios here in Italy)."

"I never left my light table since that day. I did all the positions, inbetween, animation, layout and now I work as a freelance character designer and storyboard artist."

"Hard times today... few productions opened, very low quality and even less time to focus on a good realization of the work. Lots of studios are hiding themselves under the crisis and slow economy, a chance to fire people with fake motivations."

"The audience is becoming very lazy and ignorant because of stuff like Dreamworks: very high on the technical side, but very poor and stupid scripts."

"Outside of animation I also create comics for Italian magazines and web sites like here coreingrapho.com You can find other comics and illustrations here

On my portfolio page you can see some of my work and you find another interview about how I work here

Thanks, Flaviano, for sharing some examples of your fabulous work with us, for giving us your unadulterated opinion on the state of the business, and for joining Storyboard Central. Welcome!

The End of the World As We Know It?

2010-11-20T10:35:00.000-08:00

Whether you specialize in advertising, film, animation or comics, whether you do finished illustration, graphic design or concept art (or some combination of those specialties) you've probably noticed;

Business sucks.

As an artist, educator and blogger I've developed friendships and affiliations with a lot of people all over the world in a huge variety of graphic arts industries. And from all over I've been hearing the same desperation-tinged question: "Where has all the work gone?"

We've been going through the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression so naturally one would expect business to be slow. For those of us who went through the '93 Recession ( and later, smaller downturns ), we know from experience what this feels like. You hunker down and stay hopeful and eventually things turn around.

Last week I sent an email to a long-time friend who does boards in Toronto asking how things were going. He wrote back, "What can I say? The ad biz is not like it used to be, that's for sure. Not a business I would recommend to anyone right now. You did well to get out when you did. It might turn around but it's hard to say when."

The question is, are things going to turn around this time?

If this article at fastcompany.com is correct then I think the answer is "no."

In her article, author Danielle Sacks describes the ad biz many of us have comfortably participated in for all the years of our careers:

"The ad business became an assembly line as predictable as Henry Ford's. The client (whose goal was to get the word out about a product) paid an agency's account executive (whose job was to lure the client and then keep him happy), who briefed the brand planner (whose research uncovered the big consumer insight), who briefed the media planner (who decided which channel -- radio, print, outdoor, direct mail, or TV -- to advertise in). Then the copywriter/art director team would pass on its work (a big idea typically represented by storyboards for a 30-second TV commercial) to the producer (who worked with a director and editors to film and edit the commercial). Thanks to the media buyer (whose job was to wine-and-dine media companies to lower the price of TV spots, print pages, or radio slots), the ad would get funneled, like relatively fresh sausage, into some combination of those five mass media, which were anything but equal. TV ruled the world. After all, it not only reached a mass audience but was also the most expensive medium -- and the more the client spent, the more money the ad agency made."

Then Sacks described how dramatically things have changed:

"That was then. Over the past few years, because of a combination of Internet disintermediation, recession, and corporate blindness, the assembly line has been obliterated -- economically, organizationally, and culturally. In the ad business, the relatively good life of 2007 is as remote as the whiskey highs of 1962."

Sacks continues, "The death of mass marketing means the end of lazy marketing. At agencies, the new norm is doing exponentially complex work. Think of the 200 Old Spice YouTube videos whipped up by Wieden+Kennedy in 48 hours. "Creating more work for less money is the big paradox," says Matt Howell, president of the Boston agency Modernista."

And further (and perhaps most importantly for us), "Squeezed by clients, agencies are also beset by a host of new competitors attacking from every direction. Technology companies have commoditized much of the "art" of that old assembly line. Producing an ad doesn't have to be an expensive multiperson affair these days, given that commercial-quality high-definition video can now be shot on cameras that cost less than $2,000."

If you're a storyboard artist, look at the new face of the ad industry as described in Sacks' article and ask yourself if the $100 - $200 per frame you're used to getting for your work fits this 21st century ad budget:

"GeniusRocket is what an ad agency looks like when it's stripped of Madison Avenue skyscrapers, high-priced creatives on payroll, sushi dinners at Nobu, and two-week shoots at the Viceroy in Santa Monica. The firm is nothing more than a bare-bones website that crowdsources broadcast-ready TV ads from a pool of loosely vetted talent from Poland to Guam. A CMO accustomed to handing over millions of dollars to an agency for a campaign designed around a single spot can now hand GeniusRocket $40,000 -- and get seven spots, each of which will be syndicated on 20 web platforms for tracking, testing, sentiment analysis, and wide distribution."

Sacks quotes Aaron Reitkopf, North American CEO of digital agency Profero, and writes, "There's only one thing everyone agrees on, and that's that there is too much excess: too many people, too many of the wrong kinds of people, too much bloat, too much inefficiency. And this in an industry that has laid off more than 160,000 people in the past two years. "Ohhhh," nods Reitkopf, "the carnage is going to be awesome."

One thing I'm sure of is that that as dire as things seem to be, creatives like us are now and will always be relevant. There is and will always be opportunity for those who are talented and determined and most importantly flexible and innovative. I think communities like ours are a valuable asset to all who participate in them - in any capacity.

I've got a lot more to say on this subject but I'm curious to hear from you, the members and readers of Storyboard Central. What has your experience been over the last couple of years? How are you dealing with the downturn in the market? I hope you'll comment. Share your thoughts, advice and experience with us! :^)

* I encourage you to read Danielle Sacks' entire article, The Future of Advertising at fastcompany.com

* The images used in this post are my rough concept sketches and finished art for a 2009 article in Profit magazine.

Welcome Jordi Valbuena!

2010-11-14T14:57:00.000-08:00

While many of us on Storyboard Central are advertising artists, let's not forget that storyboards are a big part of other related industries, like animation and video games. A couple of days ago I received a note from Jordi Valbuena in France... I loved his stuff and invited him to write a post so everyone could get a look at his terrific work. Jordi asked me to help him with his grammar and spelling (but actually I hardly had to change a thing). Welcome, Jordi! ~ Leif

I've worked in the animation business for almost 15 years but I've been drawing for almost twice that long. My name is Jordi and I was born in Barcelona, but I actually live on the sunny southern coast of France.

In Barcelona I worked for many years for the firm CROMOSOMA on countless storyboarding jobs and BG artwork as well as working as a director's assistant. I ended up directing the last 39 episodes of the series "The Triplets." After the interesting but exhausting experience of directing a series I moved to France where I started anew as a storyboarder, which is the part of the process I'm most interested with in animation.

In France, thanks to a developed industry that helps the artists in many ways, I've been able to jump from one project to the next easily. I've worked in very interesting series like "My Giant Friend", "Dragon Hunters", Comboninos", "Tara Duncan"...

... or more recently "The Little Prince", a spectacular 3D series based on Saint Exupery's work.

Besides animation, I'm very interested in illustration, character design and comic books too. All creative ways of expression that I practice less often but that are always satisfying.

I also very much like to see other people's work, lurk on blogs and go bug-eyed with the amazing pool of artistic talent that exists out there. The idols from my youth are Moebius and Spanish comic Book designer Josep Maria Beroy, and I think both have left an indelible mark on my style.

If you want to take a look at my work, you're very welcome at my blog (http://jordivalbuena.blogspot.com/) . Thank you very much and see you soon!

Jordi

fast lane

2010-11-06T03:06:00.001-07:00

hey there,
early this year i did some scribbles for a funny volkswagen-project. i really liked the ideas, too bad they didn't tell me where they built it. finally i recieved links to the videos. hope you enjoy watching.

watch it on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4o0ZVeixYU

watch it on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEcbkusXUlo

watch it on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPztb-c16as

and a few other works i 'd like to share:

2010-11-03T19:41:00.000-07:00

So the headline of this blog reads that this is "Part bitchfest" Well it's officially time to bitch.

I had a client a few weeks ago that had countless rounds of revisions, then at least 2 rounds after the coloring was finished. I don't understand, if you see something you don't like, then why can't you change it round 2 instead of round 5. Anyway, I actually feel kinda bad complaining because i got PIZZAID for this job. I've never gotten paid this well for a storyboard job, so it was worth the headache and no sleep. Here are some of the frames from that job.

Dan Milligan's New Blog

2010-10-25T06:47:00.000-07:00

Being the typically humble, understated guy he is, my buddy Dan Milligan never mentioned he had started a blog. Go visit danmilligan.blogspot.com and prepare to be blown away.

Dan's main website

Jeff Norwell's New Storyboard Blog

2010-10-18T07:54:00.000-07:00

My buddy Jeff Norwell has started a new blog devoted to showing his storyboard artwork. All I can say is, its about time!

I grabbed a few jpegs for you to drool over...

... but do yourself a favour and go visit slaughterhaus5.blogspot.com

Its no secret that I think Jeff's one of the best board artists around. The killer art on Jeff's new blog proves me right.

Jeff's main website: jeffnorwell.com

How about a little courtesy?

2010-10-10T06:17:00.000-07:00

I stared Storyboard Central because I wanted to reach out to the community of my fellow storyboard artists. Aside from the obvious purpose of this blog - posting words and pictures by myself and contributors that would (hopefully) inform, entertain and inspire visitors - one of the courtesies I wanted to extend to the community was my Artist Link List (located in the sidebar at the bottom left of this page).

Generally speaking, most people have been great about sending a friendly note along with their request to be added to the list. But every once in a while I get an email like the one I received yesterday. The subject line read something like "Add my link" and contained nothing more than a URL.

Look, it takes maybe 5 minutes of my time to add an artist's name and website address to this blog's list. As I said, its a courtesy I extend to my fellow artists - I'm not a machine and I don't have any obligation to add you. If you can't take one minute to write a short, friendly note requesting to be added to the list, what makes you think I would feel like wasting 5 minutes of my busy day on you?

Show a little courtesy and you'll be welcomed here. Treat others the way you'd like to be treated. I shouldn't have to write about this... good 'netiquette' should be a given.

Walter Brogan

2010-09-21T07:47:00.000-07:00

I was blown away by the work of a new member of Storyboard Central, Walter Brogan. This guy can really draw the tough shots!

And right away, I thought Walter's work had a nice comic book flare (with a dash of that classic Neal Adams style in it, yes?)

So I asked Walter for a short biography and sure enough, he's had an association with comics (and specifically with Neal Adams). Read on...

I started working while still in my third year of college -SVA- at Mavel on a magazine called "CRAZY", doing the T.V. and movie satires. after school I started working as an assistant art director at FOOTE CONE BELDING advertising agency - then moved to BENTON BOWLES advertising agency drawing storyboards while still working at CRAZY. I left New York to go work at the WALT DISNEY STUDIOS in 1980, did work at Hanna Barbera , Filmation and some smaller ad agencies. I stayed in L.A. for about 4 years... then came back to N.Y. (I couldn't take the snog in L.A.)

Anyway I started working at "CRACKED" magazine (I worked at CRACKED for almost 20 years) and did some boards on a movie called GALAXY RANGERS for about a year. In 1986 I started working at J.WALTER THOMPSON advertising agency,left JWT after 6 years and got a few reps. One was FAMOUS FRAMES, another was WARSHAW BLUMENTHAL,and the thirds was BURRITO BOARDS. I've been working from home now this way for many years. I also worked for NEAL ADAMS on and off - walter brogan.

Walter's new website: walterbrogan.com

2010-09-10T14:24:00.000-07:00

Ok, well a few months ago i posted an email promo, i didn't really like it, so now Im posting a new one. This one is much better, I think it's good enough for what Im trying to accomplish. IDK. Feedback is always welcome.

2010-08-24T12:14:00.000-07:00

These were some bw key frames I did for a cell phone company. I liked them, so I decided to post them.

Adidas MEGA Storyboards

2010-08-10T21:02:00.000-07:00

These were for the Adidas Originals "MEGA Diner" ad. As per usual, quite a few fun ideas were tossed around in the board phase. It's been great working with a familiar director on multiple projects as I can express more of my personal tastes or notions at the early stage~

The casting wasn't entirely decided when I did these, so it was interesting to see who the players became in the final product.

Some of the ideas not in the commercial found a home in the fun interactive web component -- a sort of "choose-your-own-adventure" type with a waitress to take your order.

The full set of boards and screenshot comparison can also be found on my storyboard blog.

Enjoy!

Chris K.

www.chriskawagiwa.com

The best storyboard I ever drew...

2010-06-21T08:44:00.000-07:00

Hi all...
I'm a Vienna based illustrator specializing on storyboards, comps and caricatures.
I've been working as a freelance illustrator since 1996.
I'd like to show you what I consider my best board so far, it was also the most fun to execute as I really liked the concept. Hope you like it!
P.S. Sorry, Leif that it took me so long..I still am struggling a bit with blogs...f.e. I rarely seem to be able to post comments, even on my own blog, someone know what the problem could be??

Another greeting from Indonesia

2010-06-15T04:40:00.000-07:00

Thanks for letting me put my drawing here, Leif. Since i find a contributor from my country, Indonesia, i encourge my self to introduce my self here. My name is Fitra Sunandar, i'm an animator in a 3D animation studio in Jakarta. Sometime i draw character design for modeling. And sometime i draw storyboard as my side job, Haha.

I start to consider to take storyboarding as my main job to earn money, but i realize i have to learn a lot about it. As a start to promote my self, i create a brochure to send it to local production house in Jakarta. Well, i hope it is okay to put it here, with some of my other pictures.

Best regard,

Fitra Sunandar
www.veetra.com
http://veetra.blogspot.com

2010-06-09T10:31:00.000-07:00

This is my first real attempt at self-promotion. I am sending this email promo to 1,200 art buyers and creative buyers, based on who actually opens it and clicks through my website they will get a postcard from me. So I would like some feedback from the storyboard community.

Let me know your thoughts. Should I have some of my shopper marketing stuff on top, since that is a majority of what I do, and I feel like that's my strong point?? Anyway, here is the first draft.

Greetings from Bandung-Indonesia

2010-05-26T21:28:00.000-07:00

I'm Indonesian which is based in Bandung the capital city of West Java ,After 9 years of experience in Animation Studio as Production director i decide to focus my proffession as a freelance storyboard artist servicing the advertising, indie film also as Illustrator.

Storyboarding Film is my favorite part ,turn a script into a storyboard frame..lots of action.

Storyboard for Indie film Detroit

These for Indie film Hollywood

Sample of my illustration

for local commercial I always have very tight schedule ,sometimes i have to finish 50 frames in color only 16 hours .practice with doing some sketches its really helpfull for speed up the drawing skill.

http://erwin-chopperart.blogspot.com

email : erwinbullhead@yahoo.com

Thank you Leif,for giving me the opportunity so i can post some of my work here.

Erwin Budiono

Ernesto Melo: "I'm a self taught artist."

2010-05-15T12:30:00.002-07:00

Earlier this year I came across the blog of a wonderfully talented artist named Ernesto Melo. I contacted him and asked if he would share some details about himself and his career with us.

Ernesto wrote back, "I'm Argentinean and I live in Castelldefels, a seaside village 20 km from Barcelona. I'm a self taught artist. Even though I never thought I'd become a painter, I loved to study the Neoplasticism and Bauhaus schools, above all Itten's theory of color."

"During my teens many books and magazines fell on my hands which were decisive to me. First, I received as a present two books of the master, Andrew Loomis. Years later my uncle, an advertising creative, moved to Europe and left some Art Director Annuals from the fifties. I saw for the first time an incredible drawing by Robert Fawcett."

"He left me two Buenos Aires Art School books, where I discovered Albert Dorne, Dean Cornwell..."

"... from there an immense flood of illustrators came over me, the unforgettable books such as "The Beatles Illustrated Songs", later "The Illusion of Life", and many, many titles of Dover books..."

"As a student, I was Alberto Breccia's apprentice (international acclaimed comic master) for several years. During that time I worked on many comic books for European magazines."

"A while back, still living in Buenos Aires, I won the 1st prize of the International Science Fiction Award organized by the Japanese Starlog magazine. The jury: Frank Frazetta, Ray Bradbury, Moebius, Syd Mead, Roger Dean, Neal Adams."

"I moved to Europe and I illustrated book covers, and other commissions until I was hired for the (at that time) Barcelona JWT studio."

"Nowadays I'm a storyboard artist and illustrator, working for ad agencies from Germany, the UK and the United States."

"At Ogilvy Barcelona, I was an in-house storyboard artist for ten years and I already knew about tight deadlines and how to work with a creative group."

"There I did map illustrations and designs for theme parks (like Port Aventura-Universal's and
Terra Mitica), watching them grow and grow and changing the concepts to achieve the great goal of having beauty and function live together in harmony."

"During that time I studied animation at Bob (Yellow Submarine's Director) Balser's studio. I was commissioned many times by the agencies for jobs related to animation- Daffy Duck, Road Runner storyboards for WB and illustrations of Woody Woodpecker for Universal. I designed characters, concept design including limited animation for a Web game."

"These examples I've enclosed are my usual process after receiving the briefing from the AD (therefore, my contributions for your blog)."

More recently, Ernesto sent a second message and enclosed the following:

"Last week a storyboard commission appeared, with a very tight deadline. They wanted all frames in color although they knew that there wouldn't be enough time for me."

"So I scanned my thumbnails, then I enlarged them to fit with my template frame and lowered their opacity."

"Then I drew directly and decided to use one tone with a small variation in light source, where I could put another color."

Ernesto adds, "Maybe you can use this as a contribution for your blog. Muchos Saludos and keep in touch!"

Many thanks, Ernesto!

Be sure to check out both Ernesto's blog and his portfolio site.

Valeri Koval: "Greetings from Russia!"

2010-05-13T07:09:00.001-07:00

Recently I received a message with that greeting in the subject line. Russian storyboard artist Valeri Koval sent me a link to his blog, where I quickly became engrossed in page after page of his gorgeous penciled storyboard frames. Below, only a small sample from a 2009 project called "Legend of the White Monk"

Valeri describes himself as a "freelance storyboard artist, traditional animation" but a long list of credits at this site shows this talented artist has extensive experience in a wide variety of specialties, including feature film and commercial boarding.

Personally, I'm fascinated by Valeri's unique approach of drawing his frames exclusively in his signature pencil technique!

Valeri Koval's blog

Reality Check: Planet Fitness

2010-05-08T20:49:00.000-07:00

by Anson Jew

My Art Blog
My Storyboard Slideshow
My Complete Storyboard and Concept Portfolio

In most cases, when I get a commercial gig, I do the work, get paid and move on. As a freelance storyboard artist, my work typically happens early in the process, so I'm pretty much out of the process by the time they start to put together the actual spot. By the time the commercial is done, my mind is already on other things. But occasionally, I'll wonder "whatever happened to...?" I've been doing some digging around the 'net and was surprised to find a good number of my commercials out there. This is part of a series of posts I will do where I will post my storyboards along with a link to the finished commercial so you can compare the boards with the final product.

Here's a little job I did for a commercial production house called Bl:nd.

Wienerschnitzel Corndog Sweepstakes

2010-05-03T17:45:00.000-07:00

This is my first post-- thanks to Leif, honored to be among such amazing talents!

This was a promotion for Wienerschnitzel that was made into a simple "game". The sweepstakes opened with an intro animation and gave a few options when entering a promo code. The challenge for me (including re-learning how to animate in a newer version of Flash), was keeping the story flow for each of the possibilities separate. I opted to color code them and also show a few frames to show finished key colors.

The sweepstakes runs a little while longer at wienercash.com where you can see the intro animation. The second part can be accessed using the code "CORNDOG" without having to actually go out and eat a bunch of them to reveal the codes on the sticks~

Sweepstakes Screenshot:

My storyboard-specific blog and regular sketchblog.

Coors Golf Spot

2010-05-02T17:52:00.000-07:00

One of the nicest compliments you can get as a storyboard artist is to see the finished commercial shot almost exactly as you have boarded it up. For this spot I just got the usual script brief. No thumbnails from the AD, (that's practically extinct these days.) This AD/writer is fun to work for as he kind of gives you a minimal script and lets you go to it.

Here are my working linears:

And the final colours:

And now the actual spot:

48hrs

2010-04-09T04:06:00.000-07:00

These pictures had to be made within 72hrs ( I should have told the agency that they are crazy and so on but I didn´t. I´m buyable. ) So I started to search the net for backgrounds. I found some good, some bad and started rearranging them in photoshop. Then I printed the whole stuff, drew some lines across in order to make it look more like coloured illustrations and less like stock photos. Finally I scanned them again and drew the persons carefully to match the backgrounds as good as possible. uff. I´m proud of the result . I think that is a big issue for every layout and storyboard artists: nobody can judge our work fairly without knowing the work conditions like time pressure.

illustration vs. food

2010-04-06T21:09:00.000-07:00

I love food, and I love to try new foods, and I enjoy illustrating food more than anything. I feel like it gives me a rare opportunity to really get in there and render. As I am on a quest to market myself better, i will be sending postcards soon, well hopefully within the next 3 months.

Maybe I can use food illustration as my first promo piece. What do you all think?

When things go smoothly (the rare times, I mean)

2010-04-04T12:19:00.000-07:00

I don't like to work fast. Or since our works are always hasty, I'd better say I don't like to work this fast.
I made this job on january 2009. The client was an agency in Milan and the product was Mini. The first call came about 6 hours pm. It was the desperate call from a new client (the very first call, when you know that he's calling you of course because his favorite artist is not available and you say yes to everything).

The brief came in ten minutes and I sent this rough scribbles (everything was made with photoshop on a cintiq):

In half an hour I received an ok with no big corrections and made this clean-up.

I sent it again to the client that answered immediately: no changes!

As I finished a couple of frames I sent them to the client to allow him to work on the presentation. The last to frames were sent about 6 am, about 12 hours after the first contact.

The client was very satisfied of the job (mainly because the idea was approved).

About one month after it was on tv. This is the video:

blogged by freekhand

2010-03-31T07:36:00.000-07:00

That´s what I like about storyboards: sometimes they become realized. It´s nice to compare what survived of the picture ideas.

Ernest Agullo Galilea: "... my brain is a frame"

2010-03-30T13:14:00.000-07:00

I live in a small town, near Barcelona (Spain), with my wife and two kids (boy 5 and girl 2 years old) I'm 42 years old and I'm drawing frames since 1994. In the last decade I've been working for animation companies as a Storyboarder and director, and also for advertising agencies as a freelance ilustrator, drawing layouts, storyboards, etc...I've also done many, many shootingboards for commercials productions.

Always drawing inside the frame, hehe, my brain is a frame.

I consider as my main influences:

Dan Milligan. Oh my god! Amazing artist and I'm sure fantastic guy! I wrote him and he gave me a feedback immediately, I couldn't believe it! I love his art, his fantastic drawing, how he puts the color, Dan really inspires me a lot. Would be fantastic to meet him in order to learn his Painter secrets, I woldn't have problem to give him my litlte Painter secrets, hehe... but Toronto is so far for me!!!!

Ernesto Melo. A good friend of mine, is a fantastic artist and fantastic guy. I usually talk with him about our profession, about Painter, about life.... He has given me many advice about the light and colour.

James Crandall: Dan and Ernesto work with Painter as me instead James, I think, works with Photoshop, but , as you know, is a monster when he "faces" a car, is amazing how he controls the car mirrors, I usually go to Crandall website when I have to draw a car!

Unfortunalety I don't work for N American clients, I should improve my English spoken to do it, (as you can see my English is quite a lot poor, sorry. )

But I worked many times for Storyboards.nl with Frank, (I've seen in Storyboard Central that you already met with him!) through email or call (for me Is quite a lot easy to understand European English )

Anyway, I have enough with European clients!

Currently I'm very busy with animation Storyboards for Italian company, (http://www.rbw.it), almost full time. I have no space to work for advertising, and when I work to advertising I have no space for animation.

I can't do both things at the same time, if I would try to be able it otherwise I couldn't to enjoy my wife, kids, etc.

Congratulations for your blog, Storyboard Central... I've visited calmly and I've found amazing artists I've never seen before, and very interesting articles about my job and my passion: STORYBOARDS!!!

And we're very glad to have you here, Ernest - thanks for sharing your story and your beautiful artwork with all of us! - Leif

Ernest Agullo's blog

Ernest Agullo's website

HD by LP

2010-03-28T19:47:00.000-07:00

Its been a while since I posted anything, so here's a bunch of frames and comps I did last year for Harley Davidson.

Or maybe for the Wisconsin Tourist Board featuring Harley Davidson? I kind of forget... but still, very fun stuff to work on, and a bit different than my usual stuff ( you know, happy families eating breakfast, business people getting into cars and driving around...)

More of my storyboard art here.

Working from Germany

2010-03-27T10:11:00.000-07:00

I'm David Norman and have been working as a storyboard artist here in Germany since 1983. I studied such a long time ago (in Ireland in the 1970s) that I remember a teacher once remonstrating with a student who had dared to illustrate a poster with new-fangled markers and Letraset! Everything back then had to be done in pen and ink or brush and paint. I now work paperless on a Cintiq and it has freed me up a lot. I have no tension in the back of my mind to get things right, so I feel freer to sketch and scribble. Its faster, too, as I don't have to scan anything.

One advantage of being a storyboard artist is that, unlike say, journalists, musicians or dentists, you're part of a pretty small global community. Its probably true to say that many or even most of us know each other either personally or through hearsay. Here in Düsseldorf I organise the monthly illustrators' meeting. Of 53 email adressees only about 5 are storyboarders. The solidarity is good and we are very free with tips and even recommend each other for jobs. I like that.

Besides agencies in Germany I also do quite a bit of work for the US market through Storyboardsinc. I find that after a briefing, American art directors usually give me more or less free rein, whereas European clients still do little sketches along with the script sometimes, though this seems to be dying out. This is fine by me, as I can still suggest different camera angles or visual solutions and they are often accepted. Being very direct, German art directors are probably more likely to tell you straight if they don't like something. An important difference is the money or, to be precise, the payment. American clients pay after about three months. Between one and four weeks after a job for a German agency, the money is in my account.

Although storyboards and animatics make up the major part of my workload, I also enjoy doing lots of other types of illustration. When I illustrate an adventure or crime reader for German school kids learning English for example, the job specifications are much different to those for a TV spot. At first this meant a steep learning curve for me, but learning and mastering new skills is one of life's least acknowledged pleasures.

I truly enjoy looking at the work on this site. Its typical of Leif Peng that he should come up with the idea of a blog just for storyboard artists and I'm looking forward to seeing what turns up here over the coming months!

NEW TO THE GAME: Toney Prince

2010-03-26T08:16:00.000-07:00

Ever since 2004 I've been freelancing with studio's in Chicago, but they would never hire me on a contract. While in college I tried over and over to get hired in a studio and I would get turned down. Don't get me wrong the studio's loved my work. It's just that they would say "we're looking for someone with more years of experience, or you should be a art director". So I took up some classes for art director, then I heard lots of stories about art director's who quit their jobs to do storyboards instead. Finally after graduating in 2009 from college I just decided to go freelance on my own.

Reality Check: American McGee's Alice

2010-03-24T17:11:00.000-07:00

by Anson Jew
My Art Blog
My Storyboard Slideshow
My Complete Storyboard and Concept Portfolio

In most cases, when I get a commercial gig, I do the work, get paid and move on. As a freelance storyboard artist, my work typically happens early in the process, so I'm pretty much out of the process by the time they start to put together the actual spot. By the time the commercial is done, my mind is already on other things. But occasionally, I'll wonder "whatever happened to...?" I've been doing some digging around the 'net and was surprised to find a good number of my commercials out there. This is part of a series of posts I will do where I will post my storyboards along with a link to the finished commercial so you can compare the boards with the final product.

AMERICAN MCGEE'S ALICE

With Tim Burton's Alice on the minds of many, I'm reminded of this promo I boarded some time back for the EA PC game American McGee's Alice. The promo was created by R. Zane Rutledge.

Miguel Herranz: "What I really love is to draw"

2010-03-16T14:37:00.000-07:00

Last week I received this note from Miguel Herranz in Italy:

"I've followed your blog for about one year (it's one of my absolute favorites) and finally I dare to send you my stuff. I'm a newcomer, I have just 4 years of experience drawing storyboards, but I've been an art director for about 20, always making my own boards and comps. What I really love is to draw, and it's because of this that I left art direction to become a storyboard artist."

I clicked on the link to Miguel's site and was blown away. I asked him to tell me more about his decision to give up art directing to do boards...

Miguel wrote, "I started on the late 70's early 80's and my main inspiration was comic. My favorite artists were Jean "Moebius" Giraud, Carlos Gimenez and Hugo Pratt. I started working on a graphic design studio while studying in the evening, and then I took contact with illustrator's books and I've been totally dazzled by many of the artists. I loved so much Michael Schwab, Murray Tinkelman, Ludwig Hohlwein and Guy Billout."

"From the first studio in which I was the office boy I moved to an advertising agency, then to another. I studied graphic design while I taught myself to draw, instead of taking proper studies in art... at the time making money was much easier as a creative than as an illustrator. I became an art director with drawing skills."

"I worked in the Madrid office of J. Walter Thompson and some other little agencies till I founded my own little agency in 1996. The accounts were Winston, Kodak, Nescafe, Kraft, Heineken, Alitalia and many others less well known."

"In 2001 I was tired, things were no good (I think I can be a good or bad professional but sure I'm a terrible manager). I decided to stop and look for a job in another agency and found it in Italy so I jumped to Bologna. At that point I was not used to taking orders from a boss and one year later I was a free lance (after passing through 2 agencies). I tried to offer all my skills: creativity, graphic design, corporate image and... illustration. I had not drawn so much in the years I had my own agency (I had no time!!!) so I was a little stiff at drawing. Moreover, I had made the transition from graphic design to the computer but I continued drawing on paper and I had to learn how to do it on the computer. My surprise was that even with all these problems agencies asked me for more and more illustrations. I discovered I was so pleased, drawing was my first love and I felt advertising and graphic design had been just a big detour. I did my last graphic design work in 2006, from then on I'm just an illustrator. 3/4 storyboards, comps and event design, the rest characters, and some other stuff. I like storyboards, but I like to publish more and to know that more people will see my artwork (the ego, you know :-) )."

"I work for Italian agencies but in the last couple of years I've started to work for german, dutch and spanish agencies too. I think this diversity helps in these bad times to keep the phone ringing, so I'm not having huge problems. From what some art directors tell me, they value my experience in their roles... maybe I'm not the best artist but I know what an art director has in mind. I think that this allows me to float."

I told Miguel that I thought his experience would provide a valuable lesson for my students (and no doubt many others who will read this). He replied, "There's another thing that may be of interest to your students. In the years I became a manager of my own little agency, since I couldn't draw for work, I started to draw sketchbooks - just on holidays and on the rare free weekends I had. I had no plan or continuity, it was just the need of drawing. Anyways, I have just about 50-60 sketchbook pages from those 10 years. I didn't use to draw very much. When I started to work as an illustrator, making almost all my work on a tablet (now on a Cintiq), I missed the paper and then my sketchbooks became much more important. You see the paradox? When I didn't draw, my sketchbooks were just a tiny thing, when I became a (mostly digital for work) illustrator, they have grown to become a very, very important thing. I discovered diferent groups in the web (everydaymatters, sketchcrawl.com) and became one the (proud) members of urbansketchers.com . I was invited to the Biennale du Carnet de Voyage de Clermont Ferrand in 2008, and this is now the kind of drawing I love the most. I don't earn any money with it, but I've learned so many things, not only about drawing, I've come to know people and its a great relaxing activity (my wife ask me if I'm mad when I use to stop working in the evening and watch some tv... while sketching the images!). If you want to take a look, the quickest way is my youtube page where I have all my sketchbooks at the moment." http://www.youtube.com/freekhand

Many thanks to Miguel for sharing his story and his beautiful artwork with us!

Miguel's website: Comps, Storyboards, Event Mktg and his Flickr sets

Shootboards for Dave

2010-03-12T11:40:00.000-08:00

A while back Lief suggested I post a few shootboards I had done over the years for my cousin David Straiton who is a director in LA. I am at the moment in animatic limbo waiting for client approval on roughs so I thought I would oblige him.

I actually got out of the shootboard thing a few years ago, but David occasionally asks that I help him out. He's a pleasure to work with. Very professional, knows what he wants and expects input from the artist, which helps to reduce the grunt factor. He's directed a variety of TV series including Enterprise, Heroes, Angel, Charmed and House. Its quite a list.

This first example was for a pilot called '2 Kings' which was shot in Toronto but never made it to air.

The next set is from a series called 'Standoff'. I remember when I drew this it felt awkward...not for ethical or moral reasons (I lost those years ago), but because I hadn't drawn a gun totin' dude since I was a kid in elementary school. The only things the people I draw are usually holding are bottles of beer or Immodium.

This last set is from 'House'. As I remember, this was one of the first episodes David was to direct (I think he's directed a total of 10) and he wanted to make sure his producers understood his take on the opening 'teaser'.

I'm still hoping that someday David will finally accept a feature length directing gig for some expensive period piece that has airplanes in it, the prerequisite elements that would persuade me to really get back into shootboards. (Sorry, David. That was presumptuous of me. I'm sure Bruckheimer would have someone else in mind.)
Anyway...hope you enjoyed this. If that big flick ever comes my way, I'll be sure to post the boards.

Richard Row

2010-03-11T22:10:00.000-08:00

In Leif's 2nd interview with Thomas James from EFII, he mentioned "the old guys" and taking some of their old drawings and "deciphering them to figure out why they were so damn good." I laughed out loud when I heard that because I did the same thing. These are some drawings from my "old guys" at The Artbunch. Hopefully one day I can draw like this.

Hi, My name is.......

2010-02-28T14:25:00.000-08:00

Hello All,

I'm Kristen, and I'm so excited to be apart of this storyboard community, and thanks for the warm welcome. I am a storyboard artist based in Chicago, IL, and I was invited to the blog by Leif. Last week I had the pleasure of listening to his podcast with Thomas James on EFII, and was very inspired by it.

Ok so I don't want to take up to much of your time, so I will try to make this quick and interesting. I started off as an apprentice at The Artbunch Inc. in Chicago, I had the honor of working with some of the best storyboard artists in the business. While there I put my tria markers to good use and colored their storyboard frames, answered phones, delivered work to clients, and occasionally they would give me pencil and paper to draw something. Eventually I moved on from Artbunch, and freelanced with Famous Frames, this is where more of my professional career started because I was actually getting real jobs and talking to real clients. So then I got an offer to work at a shopper marketing agency called Saatchi & Saatchi X, and I was thrilled to be working in an agency, I mean health benefits, 401k, and a consistent paycheck every two weeks no matter what. Who can beat that, it was a great experience because first of all, I was getting lonely at home all day by myself, second of all it helped my drawing out a lot. I was forced to learn perspective better, because all I drew was in-store interiors. Ok so I worked there for about 1.5 years and got laid off because of the economy and all, but they liked me and my work, so they asked me to be their freelancer. Unfortunately when I started working at the agency I let go of my freelance clients (big mistake, but what can I say, you live and learn). So now returning upon the freelance world, it's a lot different than it was when I first left. I was shocked to see how slow things were. I think I've gone long enough, I will post more in the near future. Thanks for reading.

roughs and not -so-roughs

2010-02-01T02:37:00.000-08:00

since there wasn't an update in quite a while i figured i could post some of my work.

i'm doing most of my storyboard work on my toshiba notebook and my very old a5 wacom tablet.
when i started working professional i used photoshop 6.0 but about a year ago i changed to painter and i'm really satisfied with it -has a more natural feeling.

let's start with a really fun one. the basic idea was the old karate kid movie (as you can see). every frame took me about 1 hour:

but usually i do a lot of car advertising work:

and finally two older storyboards i've already posted, but i reacently found the final films on youtube and thought i could share these too:

a rough storyboard i did for scoda in february 2008. pencil on paper.
it was one of the first times i had to draw in an agency with the artdirector next to me, giving comments on every single line i draw. but it was fun to do.
here you can see the final film:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEWqLqJWHYY

and one for fisherman's friend. the artdirector gave me a photo of the two main characters.
watch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7czbOS7iQQ

The Mighty "Sphere"

2009-12-04T07:10:00.001-08:00

Back in the 1980's, if you were a young marker renderer working in Toronto, there was one team of seasoned pros to whom you bowed down in awe and supplication: "Robert and Doug" ... the mighty "Sphere"!

If you were the in-house guy at a Toronto agency and an AD had sent out for Sphere boards on a job, you can bet you were there ready to nick them after the presentation. Every frame was a lesson in how to render with markers - and how to make 'em sing!

These are just a few of a bunch of Sphere animatics my friend Jeff Norwell gave to me years ago. I still pull them out all the time to admire and learn from.

This last piece; a flow board done in Pentel pen is interesting because, unlike so much Sphere artwork, it doesn't look photo referenced. This one's a good example of the natural drawing style of Robert or Doug ( or more likely both - the two artists usually passed the work back and forth over the top of their face-to-face drawing boards ).

I've been trying to pin down Stuart Godfrey, who began his comp art career as an assistant at Sphere studios, to tell me what it was like to work for "the gods of marker rendering" in Toronto. So far Stu's been mum... but hopefully seeing this post will light a fire under him. Robert and Doug were not only amazingly good - they were blazingly fast and they were known for their take no B.S. attitude. I'll bet Stu has a ton of great war stories from his time in the trenches at Sphere. Hopefully, next time I present some more of Robert and Doug's work, Stu will be doing the accompanying narration!

Under Where? Under There!

2009-11-26T12:57:00.000-08:00

Some time ago we learned about Art Saaf, a talented comic book artist who moved over into advertising way back in the 1950's. Art's son Steve created a website in tribute to his dad, but at that time, unfortunately, he had no examples of Art Saaf's comps or storyboards. Well recently Steve found some!

Steve wrote, "These look like they are from the mid-late '70s. I don't know if they were for an actual product, a proposal or that my dad was just having fun. I suspect the last.

In any case---ENJOY!"

Enjoy we will - with many thanks to Steve for sending these great comps by his dad, Art Saaf.

Addendum: Original Comic/Illustration Art dealer, Mitch Itkowitz sent a note to say, "Art Saaf worked in comics at least until 1973 and possibly a little later on the Romance books. He was drawing Supergirl as late as 1971-72."

Thanks for that clarification, Mitch -- that means Art Saaf must have been doing both advertising art and comic book art simultaneously for much more of his career than I had originally assumed. Very interesting!

Addendum to the addendum: Steve Saaf got in touch to pin down the specifics on the dates of his dad's career, vis-à-vis comics and advertising: Steve writes, "My dad entered comics in 1940, working there until 1954, when he entered Madison avenue. He stayed there until 1967, when he returned to comics until 1980."

Many thanks, Steve!

More Molino!

2009-11-12T09:11:00.000-08:00

The recent unearthing by Paddy Lamb of storyboard frames painted(!) by an Italian illustrator, Roberto Molino (deceased) caused quite a stir here at Storyboard Central.

Recently another illustrator from Austria, Bernd Ertl, very generously sent me a second batch of Molino's fabulous art. Many thanks, Bernd!

This time, not only do we have some great quickie storyboard frames to admire, but a handful of gorgeous painted comps...

... AND a whole pile of finished art print ads by the mighty Molino - wow!

I've now put everything by Roberto Molino in a set on Flickr - if any more comes my way, I'll be sure to present it here and add it to the archive.

Happy 1st anniversary, Harry Blogman!

2009-10-28T19:20:00.001-07:00

I've featured Harry Borgman's work on the blog several times. Harry, who began his career in Detroit, has been doing comps and storyboards since before the days of markers - and then he literally wrote the book on using markers!

The other day Harry sent me a note to announce that he had just celebrated the first anniversary of his blogging career - yes - Harry Borgman is eighty one... but Harry Borgman's Art Blog is just one year old.

To mark the occasion, I thought I'd go take a look at that first post from October 22nd, 2008. Harry wrote, "What does an 80 year old illustrator do? NO MORE STORYBOARDS !!!!"

Congratulations, Harry - and here's to many more - both for you and your terrific blog!

There's always something interesting going on at Harry Borgman's Art Blog - go check it out.

A Couple of New Commercials

2009-10-21T09:35:00.000-07:00

by Anson Jew
Website: A Goy Named Jew

A couple of production board jobs I did recently for Bl:nd. The Bl:nd website includes the finished commercials, plus a behind the scenes look that includes my storyboards.

ASGROW DELIVERS

WALGREENS: SAVINGS IN SEASON

Wes Chapman: "Quick On the Draw!"

2009-10-19T08:30:00.000-07:00

Any renderer (for you kids, that's what we used to call "concept artists") who paid his dues in the Toronto ad business in the last 30 or 40 years of the 20th century will either know or know of the legendary Wes Chapman.

Chapman, who's business card is said to have been emblazoned with the slogan "Quick On the Draw", was renowned as the fastest wrist in the East (well, in Canada anyway).

Stories of Chapman's astounding speed and admirable drawing ability are still talked about with awe and envy among veteran storyboard artists when they gather together to hoist a few and shoot the bull.

Equally legendary was Chapman's reputation for his love of country and western - the music and the bars!

Stories are told of panicky ad men in need of renderings for 9 AM client meetings scouring Wes' favourite C&W saloons in the middle of the night, finding Wes well in his cups and cajoling (or threatening) him back to the studio where, inebriated, the master renderer would effortlessly draw everything and anything requested plus more (all perfectly delineated in spite of his condition) as though the drawings were pouring out of the end of his pen on their own.

Unfortunately, rendering being what it is, nothing more than the stories of Wes Chapman's renderings have survived the years... until now, that is.

Recently, T.O. storyboard artist Lee Strugnell tracked down this beautiful series of Wes Chapman renderings and forwarded them to me. At last we have the opportunity to see some examples of the gorgeous artwork that many of us had wondered about for all these years.

What purpose these drawings served has been lost to time. Were they used as finished art? Their large size suggests they were not storyboard frames... animatics, perhaps?

I had another thought: as a kid growing up in the early 70's I used to start my Saturday morning cartoon watching sessions very early! Around six in the morning the only programming for kids consisted of these very odd cartoons called "The Wonderful Stories of Professor Kitzel". These cartoon shorts mixed 'bigfoot' style animation with more realistic historical still-shot drawings that the camera would pan through as a narrator told the story of some historical event. Years later I saw a similar concept executed in a series of cartoon shorts called "Max the 2000 Year Old Mouse".

The non-cartoony historical still-shot drawings were quite similar to those done by Wes Chapman in this series. I don't know if Chapman did this group of renderings for either of those cartoon series... but perhaps for some similar 'educational' limited animation service?

We may never know. For now, I'm just delighted to be able to share Wes Chapman's fabulous drawings with you all. His work is a real inspiration. Many thanks to Lee for going to the time and effort to share this awesome Wes Chapman art with us all!

* And for those who have never seen those odd cartoons I mentioned ( and for those who have not seen one in years ) here's a "Max" I found on youtube. The historical drawings are not by Wes Chapman - but they're great - well worth taking a few minutes to enjoy:

Mystery Solved! It's Roberto Molino!

2009-10-13T09:48:00.000-07:00

The mystery of who that magnificently talented Italian storyboard artist was has been solved by Patrick Lamb of Express Visuals. Paddy writes, "Hi Leif, the Italian artist is definitely Roberto Molino. I have kept my eye out for his work for ages, he was great."

That's a name that was suggested by Paulo Gaspare last week in the comments of the last post. A name I'm sorry to say I'm unfamiliar with.

Paddy found these two new examples of Molino's work online. The one above especially knocks me out... but they're both great!

Let's hope more Roberto Molino artwork surfaces. Very inspiring stuff! As Paddy says, "Molino had that looseness, lively thing going on. Absolute solid drawing and the confidence that comes with it leads to wonderful risk-taking with some. He knew what he was doing, so he just threw it down."

* Later that evening: On the advice of my friend David Roach in England, I did a little detective work on the Internet and found some more work by Roberto Molino. WARNING: this material is semi-nude and violent. It may offend some people and is definitely NSFW!

David writes, "Roberto Molino as far as I know never actually drew any comics but he certainly painted 100s of covers for various sex/horror pocket sized comics , similar to the work of Biffignandi."

The Unknown Italian Storyboard Artist - R.I.P.

2009-10-06T07:31:00.000-07:00

Someone at storyboards.nl recently sent a note and included these amazing boards:

"This may be interesting for your blog,"they wrote, "the artwork is from an Italian artist we used to work with. He passed away some years ago."

"He made all the storyboards in aquarel, really fantastic!" And I have to say, they most definitely are.

The person who sent these scans had no name attached to this work and even his invoices didn't give any indication of who the artist was. I could almost imagine that this might be the work of the legendary Jorge Zaffino. He did pass away a few years ago... but of course Zaffino wasn't Italian -- he was from Argentina.

Whenever I need help identifying European artists, I call on my friend David Roach in England. I sent David the scans... but even he was stumped.

"I've forwarded these on to my friend Alberto in Italy but neither he nor I can actually put a name to this artist," replied David. "We're both convinced we've seen his stuff before --- but who is he?"

For now I guess he will remain a mystery. A shame, because, as the person from storyboards.nl wrote, "you really don't see this kind of work anymore."

Many thanks to our anonymous benefactor!

Smells Like The '80s!

2009-09-03T15:41:00.000-07:00

Okay, I feel guilty for not contributing so I thought I'd cough up some art from the bottom drawer, mid '80s thru mid '90s.These will cover a lot of typical job genres that I banged out back then. Seem's like only yesterday!

I think I made these images a bit small, just click on them to enlarge. Sorry!

Okay, does anyone remember Sheena Easton? she was one of the spokespersons for Chicago Health. Markers on marker paper with Xerox text. Don't try to read it.

Lifestyle boards were a mainstay. Kids, food, beer , haircuts. We had it all.

The gal's head is marker dyes wiped onto copy paper with Kimwipes (for glass cleaning) and prisma pencil. We used to fight for the pretty girl jobs.

This is either Fantastic Sams or Supercuts, I don't recall. Carnation stuff was endless frames of pretty girls lounging around the house, drinking the stuff, more lounging. Yes!

Kids were big. Kids at the mall, kids playing, kids fighting. I must have done a hundred Sunny Delight boards, thanks Asher/Gould Advertising!

I don't know how that bear got in here. Little did I know the OTHER bear was a foreshadow of things to come!

Let's eat! We did fast food, supermarkets, junk food, cereal, you name it. Here are two really different takes on Carls Jr. ads.

I don't have all the frames from this one, but the plant doesn't go for the SuperGro plant food, he of course downs the Carl's meal. It takes place in a greenhouse.Fun ad.

This was COMPLETELY different! Unfortunately it was a rush job ( the fun ones usually were. Dang!) The suit was skin tight latex with Carl's sauce dripping all over.

Is this getting too long? Anyway, I do actually have a few complete boards, (alas, not the color versions, usually didn't have time to copy them at the end of the day.)Here's one for beer that was fun to draw. Bigfoot!

Beer or Bigfoot photo? You have to make choices in life I guess.

This one was for LA Gear shoes (I think!) Can you say DREAM JOB! The other reason I included it was after seeing Leif's condom comps.

How about some theme park crap for a change of pace? These are a few frames from a Batman stunt show for Six Flags. These boards tended to go on forever (check out the frame number, these usually went to 40 or 50 frames. Oy.)

Terminator 3D! The Governator. Who knew THAT would happen?

Well that's about it for now, my scanner button finger is sore. Hope I didn't bore you with my trip down memory lane. Believe me, there's a LOT more of this crap in the drawers! Happy storyboarding, kids!

Chris

Reality Check: Acura RSX

2009-08-22T13:45:00.000-07:00

by Anson Jew
Blog: http://agoynamedjew.blogspot.com

This is part of a series of posts where I will post my storyboards along with a link to the finished commercial so you can compare the boards with the final product.

ACURA RSX: "Ride"

UPDATE: a more direct link

Incredibly, this spot directed by Mark Romanek (One Hour Photo) was done entirely in CG (allowing practically no restrictions on camera movement). To view it, go to Mark Romanek's site, select "spots", click on the main image and then click on the arrow button on the upper right until you find "Ride".

Because of the fast cutting nature of this spot, and the number of ideas generated (many unused) many, many boards were generated for this 30-second spot. I've have posted a few samples below and more can be seen here:

Harry Borgman: Harry COMP man!

2009-08-19T04:53:00.000-07:00

Harry Borgman, who literally wrote the book on marker rendering, sent me the following note the other day, along with some amazing examples of his comp work from the pre-computer era. Harry writes...

"I found a couple of comps that I thought you might want to post on the storyboard blog. These are examples of my tight comps done in the marker era."

"The Hidden Valley Ranch comp was done using markers only, it was an ad for a Chicago agency, can't remember which one."

"The beer can was another marker comp on layout paper."

"The X-bec comp was done using everything, markers, paint and airbrush."

"The same with the sample comp with the cat. Some art directors wanted fresh, fast marker renderings, others preferred very tight work for their comps."

"Most of the work I did through the years was of the fresh, fast variety, primarily because of the crazy deadlines."

* You'll find many more examples of Harry's work (layout, finished art, and cartoon) and tons of great related stories, at Harry's blog. And to see some of Harry's exciting experiments in digital art and design, go to his other blog, Hairy Blogman.

2009-08-18T17:16:00.000-07:00

An Animatic by Alex DeLeon

2009-08-13T14:19:00.000-07:00

Hello, My name is Alex DeLeon. I am a storyboard artist in Los Angeles. I thank Leif for his blog and am glad to contribute to it. This is an animatic that I made from shooting boards that I recently did for a director. I did the pencil drawings based on his shot list. I applied the camera moves and sound in After Effects. Thanks for viewing and more of my work may be viewed here.

Thank God for Photoshop!

2009-08-07T15:34:00.000-07:00

Nothing puts me in a cold sweat like hearing the art director on the other end of the line emphatically insisting "It's got to look photo-realistic!"

Ugh.

Such was the case with this comp from 2007. I wrestled with how to render it for a while until finally deciding, "If he wants photorealism, I'll give him photorealism!" So instead of drawing this comp, I manipulated some photography in Photoshop. Thank GOD for Photoshop!

These days you have to be part illustrator and part photo retoucher/manipulator. It took me a while to realize that art directors really don't care how you achieve the results they're after... as long as it explains the concept as accurately as possible to the client, they're happy.

All of these were created by finding suitable photo scrap online and messing around with it.

It seems weird, even to me as I look at these now, but the idea was to get as realistic a look as possible while still suggesting that they were 'drawings' - not photography - thus the addition of rough sketching over top.

This second job reinforces even more emphatically my point about ADs wanting their 'vision' presented as accurately as possible. The AD on this project wanted to show a stressed-out man's face as though it were made of electronic component wires. I figured I had it sewn up by doing the drawing with one of my favourite Painter tools: the Scratchboard Rake.

But he felt it "wasn't quite there"... could I show it to him as a mass of coloured wires...?

No problem. Here's the second pass. "Still doesn't quite read as a mass of wires," he fretted.

So I searched up some scrap on Flickr...

... and *voila!* a man's stressed out face made of a tangle of electronic component wiring.

The AD was very happy.

More of my work here.

Vitalik Shushko: "I can not imagine how to live without comics and animation."

2009-07-29T11:43:00.000-07:00

Recently I discovered the blog of Russian storyboard artist Vitalik Shushko. I asked Vitalik to tell me about his career:

"I learned about storyboards in the beginning of 2000 thanks to the additional materials (bonus features) on DVD disks... before that I had not even heard the word "storyboard". Having looked at an enormous quantity of disks with "additions" to favourite films and cartoon films I made some accurate samples of storyboards."

"I found a job in video game production... I was tasked with doing storyboards for game cutscenes."

"Since childhood I dreamt of being an animator or to one day draw comics. Now I create illustrations for books, I do covers for magazines, I create concept art for video games and sometimes I do animation for advertising."

Vitalik skills are even more impressive when you learn that he is only 29 - and has been drawing storyboards for just 4 year. his first project in video game boarding was "Biker Mice from Mars", which we will look at in another post on another occasion.

These frames were drawn for a PSP game called "Coded Arms: Contagion"

Among those artists who most inspire him, Vitalik cites "Glen Keane, Matsumoto Norio, Katsuhiro Otomo, Tatsuyuki Tanaka and... a lot of other gifted artists and animators."

Many thanks to Vitalik for sharing some samples of his excellent work with us - I promise to post more in the near future.

Vitalik writes, "I can not imagine how to live without comics and animation."

* Vitalik's blog

The Digital Storyboard Artist - Painter vs Photoshop

2009-07-22T16:08:00.000-07:00

Above: an early Painter effort.

Hi everyone, my name is Maria Peña and I am an illustrator and storyboard artist based in Melbourne, Australia.

I have been working on my storyboards digitally since 1997. I saw an article about Fractal Painter somewhere and it really captured my imagination, as soon as I could afford it I bought a Power Computing Mac Clone, a digitizing tablet (not a Wacom unfortunately), and an A3 colour printer. And of course a copy of Painter 4. I still have the paint can it came packaged in.

My journey with Painter has been a long and profitable one, and I have been an advocate of this application, well, since the beginning. I was only the second storyboard artist in Melbourne (perhaps Australia, I don't know) who ditched her markers and fineliners and went totally digital. It cost me a client or two at the beginning, but it changed the way I work forever, and as far as I am concerned, for the better. Once the internet took off, and clients became comfortable with the digital delivery of the work, I started getting visits from fellow artists wanting to check out my setup and I always recommended Painter to them over Photoshop, as I had tried drawing on Photoshop and it was awful!

Above: Storyboard frame done in Painter

The thing is, Painter is now on version XI (or 11 if you like) and it is more powerful than ever... as far as drawing and painting is concerned. I was using Painter X almost exclusively (except for converting images to CMYK for delivery to clients, and sometimes to do any image editing necessary for corrections etc- Photoshop was still the choice for that) up until recently.

Because Painter has changed 'owners' quite a few times, it has had features added and then taken away by the next company; then brought back when the loyal Painter community made their disappointment known. At some point, between Version 5 and 7, the tool I used the most, the Digital Watercolour, changed so much it became unusable and I stuck to Version 5 until about version 8. By then, Painter had taken a lot of features from Photoshop like layers and it was actually quite usable. Version IX was really quite good- then I upgraded to an intel based Mac. Suddenly, the distort tool wouldn't work. You could only move one handle on the selection and then it wouldn't let you drag another one. You only got one distort move! Resizing was the same. You could resize once, and then the handles would grey out and you couldn't resize again without accepting the resize and do it again. (Which pixelated whatever you were resizing quite badly). I upgraded to Painter X thinking they might have fixed it (plus the new version looked great). Nada. New cool features but the old bugs were still there.

I actually raised this issue with Cher Threinen-Pendarvis, the author of the fantastic Painter WOW books, when I went to do an intensive Painter X workshop with her. This was in 2007! I started AVOIDING the distort tool. I had to go to Photoshop whenever I needed to distort things. Hell, let's resize things in Photoshop too, they don't get so pixelated and you can do it in real time rather than look at a frame that lets you see approximately the size you're going to get at the end of the resize. (I KNOW, I was putting up with a lot just to keep using Painter).

Above: Painting on Painter can be lovely!

Then I decided to upgrade to Leopard and Adobe CS4 (to get After Effects for animatics...another story) And promptly found out that Painter X was even worse under Leopard - I can't use the resize tool at all! I upgraded to Painter X.5 but I didn't get a solution to my problem. I went to the usual forums. People were saying that Painter XI wasn't Leopard ready. Leopard has been around for years now! So, no upgrade to XI for me.

I have just started to use photographs and other elements for my storyboards to make them more realistic and to save time, and suddenly resizing and distorting has become very important. I tested out Photoshop CS4 and found that it comes with this handy Workspace already created for painting. It doesn't have the depth of tools and brushes of Painter I don't think or their accessibility, but I am working around it and finding ways to arrange the tools I use most. I don't know how, either, but the drawing experience has improved vastly on Photoshop too! Of course the painting is still not as good as with Painter... but the rest of the program is fantastic. And it does 3D? whoa! Something I may take advantage of.

So now I have deserted Painter X and embraced Photoshop CS4. And I know a lot of my fellow digital artists are probably saying "Well duh!, told you so". But I think that my love affair with Painter WAS lovely while it lasted...it just soured at the end.
Here are some of my latest, Photoshop CS4 frames.

Above: A lovely line is had by all.

The painting on the characters is a bit cruder than with Painter but I have just started...

I want to thank Leif Peng for inviting me to contribute to this fantastic blog. And for nagging me until I finally posted a submission. Sorry for such a lenghty read... more pics and less talk next time.

storyboards by arne s. reismueller

2009-07-19T01:07:00.000-07:00

hey there,
as this is my first posting here i have to start saying thanks to leif peng for letting me participate on this blog.
i am a storyboard-artist and illustrator living and working in germany.
here are some samples of my advertising work:

usually advertising storyboards need to be colorfull and shiny like the one above.
on the following job (for fisherman's friend) i really enjoyed playing around with more colder or less saturated colors to catch the fisherman-mood:

just lineart for a toyota-storyboard:

from time to time (not too often) i'm asked to do only rough scribbles. that is what i enjoy the most. drawing fast and staying lose.

i think this is enough for a first posting. if interested there are many more storyboards as well as other work on my personal blog or my portfolio-site.

A Letter from Olivier de Lajarte

2009-07-11T11:49:00.000-07:00

I certainly get a lot of interesting mail as a result of running this blog and Today's Inspiration. The painting below arrived recently, along with a note from the artist, Olivier de Lajarte:

"Hello; I am a French artist in illustration and I recognize myself in those painting illustrations that you show. I would be curious to have your point of view or advice. Here are two samples."

Olivier and I began corresponding and I quickly discovered that he is also a storyboard artist. He next sent some examples of shooting boards he did last year for a film by Philippe Lioret called "Welcome".

Olivier writes, "It is a story about immigration and the guy is trying hopelessly to swim across the channel from France to England."

"These sequences are the most dramatic of the film and they end up with his disapearing into the sea. The film is based on a terrible reality."

Olivier continues, "Here [in France], cinema storyboard is the poorest job. It's only quick sketches. Directors don't care about the quality of drawing."

"Most of my work is for advertising agencies with a very usual looking style of colouring. I also work for productions and I have had some very interesting experiences in cinema. As I have learned drawing more by observation, I still have a lot to learn in imagination drawing. I was not taught in a comic or animation school. However, I work on that."

Olivier's passion, obviously, is his finished painting - and he sent along the remarkable piece below. He writes, "I just finished a large size painting for the French Marine. I hope you like it. It's nice to think that some people still enjoy illustration and painting from the heart."

*You can see many more examples of Olivier's work on his Flickr account.

Four Animatic Frames by Borgman

2009-07-07T05:14:00.000-07:00

Harry Borgman writes, "Here are some animatic frames I did for McCann Erickson in NY. These were large 8 x 10" frames and some had moving parts , like hands , arms and heads turning."

"They gave me a week to do these after submitting preliminary sketches. That's still not a helluva lot of time to do a big batch of frames."

"They are rendered a little tighter than my normal rush stybd and are quite effective when filmed. I did tons of animatics while living in NY and even after I moved back to Michigan. I worked for most of the major ad agencies but my best clients were McCann, Y & R and O & M."

"Like storyboards, animatics can be fun to do unless you have a boring script to work with..."

"... or a bad art director."

Check out Harry's Blog, where he's currently showing some of his gorgeous early finished art from Ford Times magazine!

More Comps by Charlie Allen

2009-06-30T15:01:00.000-07:00

West Coast illustrator Charlie Allen has been presenting art examples from the many decades of his career once a week for a year on Charlie Allen's Blog.

This week, in his 52nd post, Charlie shares a multitude of comps done mostly in the 1970's.

Here's a small sample of the 18 scans Charlie is sharing with us this week. He also provides brief descriptions of each job's circumstances.

If you're not a regular visitor to Charlie Allen's Blog, don't waste another minute...

... go now and prepare to be inspired!

Brian Postman's FF Sketch Cards

2009-06-13T11:41:00.001-07:00

Here's and interesting story of an artist who has put his storyboarding skills to use in a different way.. Brian postman writes, "Leif asked me to do a short article on working on the X-MEN ARCHIVES,and FANTASTIC FOUR ARCHIVES SKETCH CARDS for Rittenhouse Archives..."

"Generally, I approached doing these cards much like I do storyboards.... I generally take on about 300 at a time, and usually have three months to complete them."

"I start by printing out references on all the costumes.... in this case everyone who ever appeared in an X-Men comic. I have the dvd-rom of the "Complete X-Men" comics -- that's where I found all the reference I needed. I usually start by doing some rough thumbnail compositions of the cards.... then I jump right into the pencilling. I don't stop until I've pencilled all 300 cards."

"This can usually take a month to a month and a half. Once they're pencilled, I take a break for a few days, and jump into inking all 300 cards. That usually takes about a month as well."

"Finally, I start coloring them. I do all the flat color with A.D. markers (you all remember these!) Again, I do all 300 cards in FLAT color."

"The final step is using Pelikan water-colors for all the modeling, shadows, etc."
"Sketch cards don't pay as well as storyboards, but I do get lots of enjoyment out of doing them. Also, I am my own "art director" ... all of the compositions are mine."

"Generally there's no interference, so there's lots of freedom in that sense."

"I've included some pictures of my paints and markers, the cards after they were inked, and many of the finished Fantastic Four cards."

* See more of Brian's work at Brian Postman.com

More Sex Please!

2009-06-12T08:04:00.000-07:00

Why can't I get more jobs drawing stuff like this?

Seriously, I would like all art directors everywhere to please send me all the "sexy-girls-exercising" jobs. Is that too much to ask?

This was for a Durex condoms focus group thing ( I'll bet that group was pretty darn focused! ) and all I had to do for the renderings above and below was trace off the photographs from two earlier Durex campaigns.

As rendering goes, this was about as painless as it gets! The toughest thing was doing the 'diagramatic' drawings for the top section of this second series... and even that was just a trace of existing art.

Here's why the AD got me specifically involved on this project: the new concept they wanted the focus group to consider was a series of ads that mimic the look of old comic book covers. I guess they saw on my website that I do a lot of 'retro' comic book art, so for this next batch that's the sort of look they wanted, complete with the ol' "Roy Lichtenstien Dots" pattern tossed in here and there.

Below, the AD's rough sketch, and my final colour rendering for one of the comic concepts.

I had some difficulty giving the AD the shot he wanted for this concept below... I did the first two sketches based on his verbal description, but he ended up doing me a thumbnail of the composition he was looking for, and the third sketch is what resulted from that thumbnail...

... and this is the colour final, along with two more finals from the series.

I never saw the final concepts done up with type ( I wish I had, but they were done at the agency ) and they never came back for a quote on doing finished art for these, so I presume the focus group didn't buy this as an ad series concept. Stupid focus group!

* More comps and storyboards by Leif Peng

First Post

2009-06-08T18:17:00.000-07:00

I've been very impressed with the work on this blog, so I am very happy to contribute to it. To start off with here are a couple of presentation boards I did recently for a client in New York.

Harry Borgman Draws Cars. A LOT of Cars!

2009-05-20T08:22:00.000-07:00

The amazing Harry Borgman sent along another great example of why he could easily have won the title of "The Rendering Machine". Here's the story:

"Your readers of the storyboard blog might find this interesting. Maybe this should be in the Guinness Book of World Records!"

"As you know, some of the toughest assignments in the industry are the automotive ones."

"I got a call late one Friday afternoon from Y & R in Ervine, California, the art director had 65 storyboard frames for Lincoln Mercury that had to be done and in their offices by Monday AM ! They also were unable to send me any reference material on the cars. Obviously I also didn't have time to send in sketches for approval. I accepted the assignment, not quite sure how I was going to manage getting it done on time."

"Luckily, I found car reference photos on the internet."

"On a job like this you can not start out rendering tight and then ending up doing the last frames loose, everything has to be consistent. Obviously, these were going to be rather loosely done renderings."

"Well, I made the deadline and everyone was very pleased with the job. To get it done on time I had to do each frame in about 20 minutes, drawing and rendering. I couldn't do very tight renderings in that amount of time. It was a very tough job, probably the toughest one I've ever had. This is why the storyboard business isn't for everyone, you have to be able to work well under extreme pressure and not miss deadlines."

Harry

Be sure to check out Harry's blogs: Harry Borgman Art and Hairy Blogman where he shows off his digital experiments. And of course he has a website: harryborgman.com

Reality Check: The Black Eyed Peas' Instant Def

2009-05-12T12:39:00.000-07:00

by Anson Jew
Blog: http://agoynamedjew.blogspot.com

This is part of a series of posts where I will post my storyboards along with a link to the finished commercial so you can compare the boards with the final product.

INSTANT DEF
This series of short films by the musical group Black-Eyed Peas starred the Peas in superhero alter egos. Initially very visually ambitious, it was to be shot in black and white with splashes of color (a la Sin City) with lots of CG visuals, but the end product was scaled back a bit. The director was Jesse Dylan (yes, the son of that Dylan).

Part 1:

Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5

Here's a sampling of some of the boards I did for this:

Harry Borgman - Comps, Storyboards, Fine Art

2009-04-26T12:32:00.000-07:00

Here's another amazing batch of marker comps and storyboards by Harry Borgman.

When Harry sent me these scans he wrote, "I have hundreds of these images, here are a few more, Boy ! I sure was busy in those days !!!"

This little group of comps below really shows the master at work! I love that park bench! All of these show great choice of colours, strong picture design and solid drawing - not to mention hand rendered type (remember those days?)

Who hasn't dreaded the thought of having to draw a huge crowd sitting in a giant stadium? Here's how its done, folks.

Harry's now in his 80's and still going strong. He works digitally now, and divides his time between fine art and commercial art projects.

Harry writes, "I live in what is known as Harbor Country and they have a yearly popular event called ART ATTACK. This year it will happen in the first weekend in May, May 1, 2 & 3rd, to be exact. Many galleries from New Buffalo to Sawyer, Michigan will be participating. It's a fun event and I hope that any of you in the area will join us. The gallery that represents me, Craig Smith Gallery, will have an opening reception for new work by his artists, it starts at 5 PM, May 2, 2009. Hope that you can join us ! You'll love it here, it's a very beautiful area of the state, some great restaurants are also located here, check it out. -Harry"

Be sure to check out Harry's blogs: Harry Borgman Art and Hairy Blogman where he shows off his digital experiments. And of course he has a website: harryborgman.com

Two great 1970's pencil comps...

2009-04-23T12:44:00.000-07:00

For those of you who don't regularly visit Charlie Allen's Blog, here are a couple of beautiful pencil comps Charlie is showing in this week's post.

He writes "...a couple of pencil comps for McCann Erickson and the Ortho Chemical division of Chevron."

"Farming subjects were fairly regular assignments from a variety of agencies and accounts....Del Monte, US Steel, Kaiser Aluminum, State Fund, Ortho Chemicals, California wineries....those were the main ones I can think of."

There are lots of gorgeous finished art pieces in a variety of styles in the same post. Go to Charlie Allen's Blog to check 'em out.

Reality Check: Phil Vassar-"Good Ole Days"

2009-04-14T10:09:00.000-07:00

by Anson Jew
Blog: http://agoynamedjew.blogspot.com

This is part of a series of posts where I will post my storyboards along with a link to the finished commercial so you can compare the boards with the final product.

PHIL VASSAR: "GOOD OLE DAYS"
This is a music video for country singer Phil Vassar directed by Ryan Craig, inspired by fraternity movies like Animal House and Old School.
Watch the video.

Storyboard Pro Notes

2009-04-03T05:42:00.001-07:00

I’ve been a storyboard artist for the past 25 years mostly in animation series work and have been using Toon Boom Storyboard Pro for the last two years. I am very satisfied with results.

I have no financial interest in Toon Boom, but I feel every board artist should at least try SBPro. I’ve worked in Flash, Sketch, Photoshop and Painter and feel the data management tools in this program make it far and away the strongest tool to board with. The program has lots of features but I’ve tried to highlight just the features I really like or dislike. (A Cintiq is necessary to take full advantage of the program.)

Pros

Drawing:
Brushes: There are textured and non-textured brushes. The textured give a look more like pencil but add considerably to the file’s size. The non-textured is more like drawing with a Pentel but if the client is agreeable, provides nice clean output to various media.

Painting Behind: There is a great function that allows painting behind line already put down. It’s great for adding tone to line-work.

Layers: You can draw the BG on a layer and easily garbage matte the characters over to facilitate reuse of both BG and characters.

Slide layers: You can copy layers from scene to another by simply sliding the layer along the timeline. Or if you are reusing it later in the board, select it and copy and paste it in the later scene. There is the option of adding it to the library, but I found this too cumbersome and confusing for SBPro in transfer between platforms.

Data management:

Script Import: You can import the entire script into the program and just copy and paste into the panel description, action, notes, and etc. flds. There are hooks to get info directly from Final Draft but I’ve yet to use them. I get scripts as PDF, export to text, import into SBPro, and copy and paste from there. This makes it easy to shift text during any revision.

Image Import: You can import image files into SBPro. If you bring in all your drawings, it increases the file size incrementally. I use it to import character and BG designs after I use Photoshop to crunch their size down. I’ve also have a series of perspective grids I use to help layout scenes.

Renumber scenes: This is particularly good for animated series work. Add or drop scenes throughout the process esp. in revision. At the end, go to the first scene and hit renumber entire board. Remember the time spent adding Pg 1a, 1B, 1bzz… The program does it in a snap.

Export: This is the real time saver for production (i.e. our clients.) SBPro will export to PDF, individual images (psd, tga, jpg), an entire QT of the board –you can time the board in the program including ramped camera moves, or an EDL with individual QT files for each scene. This makes the workflow into editing programs really fast.

Cross Platform: I work on a Macbook Pro. I FTP or hand transfer files to different clients on PCs. So far there’s been no issues that way. Back to the Mac from PC has given me problems in the past.

Cons

Expensive: SBPro doesn’t have an installed base like Flash, but the larger studios sometimes provide a cut while you’re on their job. However, this means you can’t read your files once your return the license dongle.

No Save As function: This means you can’t easily save versions of your boards.

Back and Forth Cross platform: As said before, I’ve had issues with transfers back to Mac from PC, so I stay away .

Large files: SBPro files can become huge –I’ve seen some come in at over 20 Gigs- This is usually a function of importing images into the program rather than drawing them in.

For advertising or presentation artists, the ability of SBPro to import, make pans, and moves on their art allows them to create animatics easily.

Hope this intrigues you enough to try it out.

This shows the Drawing view of SBPro. The timeline refers to the frame highlighted and shows where layers can be slid along to copy. The side bar shows the layers (BG, A, B, C The rough level is turned on.) that can be turned on an off to display. The timing of the panels is 3 sec. The action notes are copied directly from the script. Drawn with non-textured brushes.

This PDF is a little blurry but this demonstrates how much information is pulled from the board to be displayed and how art (in this case production BG and internet reference for the designers) can be imported into the board.

Some storyboards from the archives

2009-03-28T17:33:00.000-07:00

Here are a few frames from around (yipes!) 1988-1990. One was for some sparking water ad, the girl waking up was probably for some clothes company like Ross, I honestly don't remember, and of course Sharon Stone! For some studio promotional film.Okay, that one I had photo reference for but the others I made up out of my head. The finals of these were probably in color but that was pre-computer so they were xeroxed and colored with markers, so I usually ended up with just some b&w copies to take home. We would usually bang out 10-16 of these frames in an 8 hour day, usually in color. I get tired just thinking about it!

More examples of my work on my blog.

Reality Check: Nissan Pivo2

2009-03-25T12:24:00.000-07:00

by Anson Jew
blog: http://agoynamedjew.blogspot.com

This is part of a series of posts where I will post my storyboards along with a link to the finished commercial so you can compare the boards with the final product.

NISSAN PIVO2
This was a promo for the Nissan Pivo2 concept car. My understanding was that this was part of a larger promo shown at car shows in Japan using a super widescreen format. The director's name is Adam Bluming and you can find an excerpt from the ad on his website. Just click the link below to get into the site, then go to the director's section and then to the commercials section. Then click on the image on the upper left of the grid to see the spot.
Adam Bluming's site.

Roger O'Reilly Draws a Bud Board

2009-03-22T11:44:00.000-07:00

Here are some frames from a Budweiser animatic board I did sometime around 2002 /2003.

I was working mostly from a script having built up a good working relationship with the agency, so scamps or roughs weren’t provided. At this stage, most art directors were quite happy to leave me to work out the shots and email back pencil thumbnails to show the shot progression.

This campaign featured the Bud Clydesdales and was based around Monument Valley. There’s no real plot-line, just visual links.

I often found the roughs to be more fun than rendering the finished piece - just some scraps of paper and a pencil, though this one was fun to do.

As usual the deadline was merciless, but one of the advantages I’ve always found with storyboarding is that when you work like the clappers to get the thing done, there’s no sense of guilt if you take some of the following days off to go visit galleries or just hang around in coffeeshops sketching.

It’s a pity I have so little of my work prior to broadband, because they had to be hand mounted and delivered to the agency and invariably ended up as a giant coffee coaster.

Getting them back was a major effort. The slicker ones the junior members of the client team took home for their “artistic” kids, the rougher ones went in the bin.

They were one of the last sets I did with markers, though at this stage I was dropping in the background skies in photoshop. I miss the markers. There was a tactile quality to rendering and I must admit I liked the whiff of them, but I could never get them to scan the way I wanted, so the colouring on most of the marker boards I have on file looks pretty off and painfully weak.

I did four further boards with the Clydesdales. I think one might have gotten produced with extensive changes. Thems the breaks. No-one gets into this business to get their work into print!

* Posted on behalf of Roger O'Reilly by Leif. Be sure to check out the gorgeous sketches on Rodge's blog!

Reality Check: VW CC

2009-03-15T10:07:00.000-07:00

by Anson Jew
Blog: http://agoynamedjew.blogspot.com

In most cases, when I get a commercial gig, I do the work, get paid and move on. As a freelance storyboard artist, my work typically happens early in the process, so I'm pretty much out of the loop by the time they start to put together the actual spot. By the time the commercial is done, my mind is already on other things. But occasionally, I'll wonder "whatever happened to...?" I recently did some digging around the 'net and was surprised to find a good number of my commercials out there. This is the first of a series of posts I will do where I will post my storyboards along with a link to the finished commercial so you can compare the boards with the final spot.

VOLKSWAGEN CC "RAVE REVIEWS (Driving at Night)"
This commercial was directed by Roman Coppola (son of Francis Ford Coppola and
director of the feature film "CQ"). Although these were shooting boards, they also had to be clean enough to be shown to the client.

Tony Lovett, Storyboards, Film Promotion & Visual Storytelling

2009-03-12T08:20:00.000-07:00

Promotion artwork for an animated feature film.

Getting a film made these days involves an enormous amount of marketing and selling of the idea and the story as well as how it will look. Especially if it's an animated feature. This is where storyboard artists can come in very handy. The visualization of the film, key moments and ideas can be expressed in animatics and stills, going a long way to helping a film get the attention it needs without busting the bank.

Recently I was fortunate enough to be involved in such a project, a 3d animated film called The Fourth Magi. A group of about five to six story artists, matte painters, and character designers, working entirely on the promotion of the film. Then once more funding was secured into pre-production.

Sadly, However, due to many unforseen circumstances the production has since been put on hold. Which is extremely sad, because it was a film with heaps of potential. Set in the Middle East at the time of Christ , the subject matter and scenery was brilliant. I'm really hoping the film does get made someday, (when the credit crisis gets a headache...).

You can find more artwork from this project at my blog & matte paintings from Wayne Haag.

A polished animatic I worked on for a the film promo. I did these using a Cintiq and Sketchbook Pro with Photoshop. A couple of hundred panels were done like this with just three of us to do it. Talk about crazy!

Polished Storyboard Art for the film's promo book. More digital pen work.

This time amping up contrast to get a strong comic book feel.

That's the pretty stuff, advertising the film concept...

Then come the production boards...

Storyboarding for animation can be pretty intense. You need to think like a director, cinematographer, actor, editor..... There are usually many panels, and the detail of acting and timing are very important to get right.

This production board sample was for the same project. A lot looser of course. Attention is given to making the film work. How odes the story flow, are the shots and cuts working? There is always something to improve.

This segment was quite interesting and fun to do. The Hero, (Arty) is trying to help his injured camel companion (Kamal), by carrying the beasts' pack. The heat and rugged terrain get the better of him before long and Kamal's rest is short lived.

I like the fact that there's not much dialogue in this scene. It's just the two of them out in the middle of no where getting on each others goat (or in this case, camel).