Storyboards for Animators

June 1, 2012 10:06 PM

Please help my animator friend find inspiring storyboards.

My friend is an animator here in South Korea and she let me know that she would like to improve on her storyboards. Being someone who can't even draw similar stickmen from one panel to the next, I'm not sure where I can look to find some inspiring works for my friend. I am wondering if perhaps some of you might point me in the right direction, or perhaps share some of your own favourite examples. I would appreciate any kind of advice.

From what I have seen, her work tends to be on the Asian cute side. She does professional work of all kinds, but a lot for young children. I also know that she likes a lot of French animation. Beyond that, I would also like to give her an eclectic taste of Western and International works. Perhaps I can find something that she hasn't seen yet.

I appreciate your help.

posted by Knigel to media & arts (2 answers total)

She should start collecting every "Art Of.." book she can find. Most have storyboard breakdowns that are invaluable to visual storytellers. The Amazon List I linked to is pretty comprehensive in terms of being a buying guide.
posted by These Birds of a Feather at 10:26 PM on June 1, 2012

awww shoooot...at last, something I can kind of answer!

What kind of boards is she looking for? Is she looking more for TV boards or more for feature boards?

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I'm offering these mostly from an American animation standpoint (I work in the animation industry in socal), so I don't know if it's exactly what she's looking for, but here are some links:

- There are a whole bunch of story artists on blogger, and Toby Shelton (Dreamworks) is one of my favorite story artists. He posts tons of beautiful boards on his blog.

- Rad Sechrist (also Dreamworks) also has some awesome boards on his how-to blog (which is chock-full of good information). He's also posted some handy storyboarding tips on this other art-learning blog.

- While draftsmanship is important to storyboarding, humor and appeal also play a huge factor. Erik Benson proves that with some of the stories he posts on his blog. They aren't the most technically perfect, but they are utterly hilarious and it's easy to see why he's working at Pixar.

- The above are all story artists for feature films, so here are some board examples for TV. That site is run by Sherm Cohen, who also offers a storyboarding course. While I haven't taken it, I've heard that it's very useful.

All of these artists have fellow story artists linked from their blogs, so she might want to explore there, too.

- Here's another storyboarding blog that covers more of the basics, though it hasn't been updated in a while.

If she's looking for more live-action boarding reference, this was posted recently:

- Ridley Scott on storyboarding

- Also, some boards for the Avengers by Jane Wu.

And agreed! The "Art of" books are really great, though a lot of them don't focus too much on storyboards...but the recent Art of Brave book is PACKED with storyboards (watch out for spoilers, though!). The author is a story artist herself, so she made sure to include a ton of boards.

It's kind of late and I can't think of anything else for now, so hope this helps!
posted by sprezzy at 12:46 AM on June 2, 2012 [8 favorites]