[PRE-PRODUCTION] Storyboard Research - Modern Storyboards

Story-boarding has come a long way since story-boarding of the 1920s to 30s, modern day story-boarders take roughly around 20 minutes just to do a single panel in a story-board with the average length of an 11 minute TV episode storyboard takes roughly six weeks. However, on more current projects, deadlines have dropped the time to create a storyboard and artists are being squeezed to create the same amount of work within five to four weeks.

A fully cleaned-up panel should be made up of the following things:

• A background of suggestion
• A full, on-model character acting/expressing story point
• Scene description, camera action and special effect direction.
• Initial rough timing for the shot

Before creating a storyboard, you must have a completed script to begin planning. You need to think about staging; to see where and how a shot is set up in relation to location choice and camera position, acting; to see how the character(s) will act in the shot in relation to the personality of the character, style of the show and dialogue delivery, and continuity; to maintain continued visual plot points in relation to the costumes, on model character proportions and to maintain point of interest to the characters.

Once you have finished the planning, you need to begin creating the image in the panel. The first thing that you should draw is the thumbnail; which is the initial skeletal composition, acting, staging and action. After you should create the rough drawing, which consists of reworking the initial ideas, background drawings and refined acting action. Finally, once the rough is complete you can start on the clean up, tightening all character acting and visual information.

Once you have a finished drawn panel, you need to put in the information and scene description, tis can consist of; camera information, dialogue, special effects, sound effects, description of action and any staging requests. 

"Storyboarding for animation is NOT just rapidly drawing a sketch. Even if a story artist is doing a pitch session and is quickly throwing up post-its, those sketches have to be taken down, reworked, and put into a blueprint like format so that the team working on the film can use them effectively."

Hulett, S. (2016). Storyboard Deadlines ... Storyboard Timelines. [online] Animationguildblog.blogspot.co.uk. Available at: http://animationguildblog.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/storyboard-deadlines-storyboard.html [Accessed 10 Nov. 2016].