Storyboard portfolio - what should I put in my story portfolio?
I’ve recently gotten this question a lot and thought I might take some time to go over what you might put into a story portfolio.
Storyboarding is not a job that a lot of people talk about, so the requirements of what goes into a portfolio are a bit more obscure. I also spent some time talking to my supervisor, who worked on the Incredibles, to give you guys some of his insights as well.
Always, before giving you guys any information, I always like to put a disclaimer that my input is only an opinion. Please don’t feel bad if you disagree with anything I say, I’m just trying to share knowledge from my experience. Even though I’m working in animation, I think we are all students when it comes to art and we can always keep learning. So don’t hesitate to get as much input as possible when it comes to your work and your portfolio and take what you can learn from everyone :)
So lets get started.
What kind of drawings should you put into your portfolio?
Even though storyboarding traditionally is not about pretty drawings, storyartists nowadays should show strong drawing skills. As a storyboard artist you don’t really get to render your work. Instead you mainly draw with lines. You often have to work fast and your drawings don’t have to be clean, but they have to communicate clearly. That is the most important thing! Therefore any drawings that can showcase the above skills would be great.
Some examples would be full body cafe sketches or lifedrawings that showcase your drawing skills. You could put a page of hands and a page of feet to emphasise that you know how to draw both. Any animal drawings that you might have could add to your portfolio. Especially if you know that the studio you’re applying to has a project coming up that is using animals. It would be great if your drawings could show weight, movement and communicate some story or emotion. A child playing in a water fountain; a mother carrying a million bags on her way home, while she is on the phone with the babysitter; two business men out for coffee, one is a confident man that has been at the job for 20 years, the other an upstart waiting to impress. The possibilities of what you might see are endless :)
But besides your drawing skills you will also want to show your storytelling skills.
For a storyboard artists there are often 2 paths, feature storyboarding and TV storyboarding.
I know most people want to get into feature animation, but it’s always great to mention not to discount TV animation as well. For example in feature animation, weather or not you are an animator or a storyboard artist you will potentially have to redo your work again…..and again……and again…..and again. You’re not worse or better because you can or cannot do this, it’s just a reality that this is not for everyone. One of my coworkers had to redo a storyboard sequence in a feature film about 20 times. The sequence kept changing again and again….and again. Now he LOVES his job, but by the end, he just couldn’t look at it anymore. It’s good to note that this doesn’t happen all the time, but you have to be ok with throwing out your work, and starting over again. In TV animation you don’t have this issue as much. When you do a TV-storyboard the deadlines are often times very tight. This means that you get to do the storyboard once and maybe if there is time, one set of revisions. The great thing about TV storyboarding is that you get to do a lot of work in a short amount of time. This practice and repetition really lets you experiment and lets you make mistakes. You get to learn a lot in a short amount of time. Of course TV Storyboarding also has positives and negatives as well. For example you might not get to delve as deeply into characters emotions in TV Storyboarding. Sometimes you can’t do the kind of camera work that features might be able to do, or you might be limited to the amount of shots your allowed to have in your storyboard.
I just wanted to mention this, because I don’t think you should ever feel the need to justify yourself if you wanted to work in either TV or in Feature animation. Both are different and both have things that are great about them. :)
It’s also good to note that you can learn so much about storyboarding in TV animation, so if you don’t get into feature storyboarding right away don’t worry! You’ll learn a lot in every job you do and it will help you in the next job ^^.
So let’s go over what recruiters would look for in a Feature storyboard. Again, the more input you can get on this the better :).
Firstly about Presentation. There are 2 ways that you can present your storyboard. One is “a single sheet with 3 panels next to each other”, the other is to create “one image per page”.
For FEATURE STORYBOARDS, it is better to create a PDF that has one image per page. As the recruiter or the head of story will flip through the images, they will truly be able to feel the story and the emotions that your trying to tell, because each image flips to another image just like animation. Toby Shelton’s blog has lots of examples of this. If you don’t have time to search through his blog, this is a great example:
https://tobyshelton.blogspot.ca/2012/02/pig-who-cried-werewolf-2010.html
As you can see you can really feel the movement of the characters and their emotions. That is your main job as a feature board artist…..to convey emotion. Of course you need to know about composition and about shot choices and how to cut between shots, but all those things should be natural once your storyboarding (if they’re not yet, don’t worry, that will come :)). What a feature storyboard should really show is character and emotion. What is a character feeling, why are they feeling this way, how does that effect the situation, how does it effect the other characters?
Disney in particular has said that they’re looking for character moments from their storyboard applicants. You don’t need to do something big, or you don’t even need to do a full story. It’s ok just to choose a moment in a characters life and to truly make us feel what the character is going through. You do want to have a beginning and an end to the sequence that you’re doing, but it doesn’t have to be something epic.
If however you’re creativity leans more towards doing action, that is great too. But even in action, your storyboard should be character based. My supervisor, who boarded on “The Incredibles” said that when he looks at an action storyboard he can tell right away if he would or would not hire that person. If the action is just about action, he would not be interested to hire the person. But if the action is motivated and routed in true character moments and motivation, then he would be interested.
Lastly, most Feature storyboards are done in Photoshop, or proprietary software that studios provide.
Now for TV STORYBOARDING. If you can get your hands on Storyboard Pro, that would be very helpful. This is what TV productions currently use to create their storyboards. Also within Storyboard pro, there is a setup which will automatically organize your boards in 3 panels per page. This is how you want to present a TV- Storyboard. The Storyboard pro setup also has action notes and dialogue boxes that you can fill out. Presenting your board this way, will show the studio that you can be put directly into production.
Another difference between Feature storyboarding and TV storyboarding is in the amount of drawings you might do to convey an action. In Feature storyboarding you might flush out an action to show what kind of acting the characters are doing and you might do some really subtle animation/acting to show how slowly emotions are unfurling and what the characters are feeling. All of these drawings are made so that once the editor creates an animatic (a storyboard that is timed and has dialogue and sometimes music), that you can really feel the pacing and emotions that are happening. A TV storyboard will still have a lot of drawings, but often less acting then a feature board might have. Instead they will communicate movement with red arrows. For example, they will use red arrows to indicate the direction a character might walk, or if a character will exit a screen.
A TV Storyboard artist also has to consider if he is storyboarding for a 2D show or a 3D show. In a 2D show there might be a limit to the amount of backgrounds that they can have in the entire show. So you might choose to reuse some angles. For example you could have a far away shot, and then later in the episode cut to a closer version of the same angle. A 3D show might not have to worry about the amount of backgrounds they can use as much.
Both 3D TV animation and 2D TV animation have to be conscious of how many characters you have in a shot. They call this “character count”. So you might be told that you can only have twenty 10 character shots in your storyboard. (I’m just using random numbers here)
Also when you are applying to a studio -> Always know who you are applying to and cater your portfolio to each individual studio. For example, Sony does not have the same sense of humor as Disney, nor does Bluesky. Also know if you’re applying to a studio that has a 3D shows or 2D show. If you have time try to cater what you do to the place that you’re applying to.
My supervisor told me that “You only need one great board to get a job, you don’t need more.” He personally makes the interns at our studio do one of two assignments. They’re called
1) The chase
2) The waiting room
ad1) The chase can be anything. You get to create the scenario and the characters involved. Is it about a husband that is chasing after his wife who got on the bus angry, trying to apologize for their fight this morning. Whatever you do, this assignment is not only about the chase. That is only a small part of the assignment. Probably the smallest. What the assignment is really about, is character. How are the characters interacting, what are the characters feeling, what are they going through. Every storyboard should be about evoking an emotion. What emotion am I trying to make the audience feel, what emotion am I communicating.
ad2) The waiting room
My supervisor mentioned that he does not really love this assignment. But let me explain the scenario. This story is about two or more people in a room. You get to choose the characters and what they are doing. Because you are limited to one room, this assignment shows your creativity in staging and in storytelling. A good film example of this assignment is the 1957 version of 12 Angry Men
My supervisor did say however, that the only successful waiting room assignments that he’s seen went way above the waiting room creatively. Unfortunately he did not elaborate so I’m a bit in the dark for this as well lol.
A few more notes that my supervisor gave were:
- good comedy always sells.
- Even though boarding is not about drawing, pretty drawings impress. As does good compositions. People will stop to look at pretty pictures.
I also asked him if you might be able to use an existing scripts to help you if you don’t have a story.
He said, yes you can totally do that. He recommended that, if this board is meant to go into your portfolio, rather then just to be a study piece that you should stay away from animated film. More then likely if you re-board an animated film, your work will simply not be as good as the version of the film. But if you take something like the life action GI - Joe, if you think you can do that better, then go for it. You might also be able to use the script as a launching point to get yourself an idea.
These are two websites where you can find scripts.
http://www.imsdb.com/
http://www.script-o-rama.com/snazzy/table.html
Also note that, if you are a student and your school lets you make a film, your film doesn’t have to be your portfolio. Sometimes you’re trying to accomplish so much with your film that it ends up not being the best piece to represent yourself. You might have a small personal project that you’ve done on your own time that feels really authentic that represents your skills better.
Ok that’s all the information I could think of for now.
Please let me know if you guys have any more questions. There is so much to go over with storyboarding, it’s hard to know where to begin and where to end :)
Wishing you guys all the best
Bianca
