Yes, writing AND storyboarding

One of the biggest misconceptions about story artists is that they draw storyboards…and that’s all. While that can be true in live action or games where storyboard artists are part of the art dept, in animated films where I’ve spent my career, story is its own standalone department. There, we work directly with the Film Director(s), and Lead Screenwriter(s) meeting in our story room (writers room) to break story, review beat boards, pages, and pitches.

A typical story team has about 6-8 core story artists each focusing on various sections of the film to write/re-write, storyboard, and pitch back to the rest of the story team. Feedback is given, round and round we go until we have a full screening of the film up for studio executives. They give their feedback, rinse and repeat until the story reels are ready to be sent into production.

Story Artists are writers who choose to sketch vs type.

The comparison to live action would be that we finish all of our editing BEFORE production, instead of after. This allows us to ‘make the film before we make the film’. Walt Disney created this method 100 years ago because you cannot edit animation when it’s complete the way you can with live action during a shoot. The work we create is essentially ‘footage’ which means we have to know how to write, direct, edit, act, and perform our scenes. It’s a lot of hats for one job, often mistaken as just the one storyboard facet of it - as that’s the part which understandably attracts all the attention.

Working in Story

Most of my work now is development/writing/directing, but people want to know how I worked in the past as a story artist. Every studio and production is different but this is the usual process:

Launch

First a section of the film (sequence) is chosen and assigned to a story artist. Sometimes there are pages the directors like, but most often ones they want either re-written, or completely written from scratch based on some very broad goals (Ex: We meet characters X, Y, Z, here. We have some concept art of the location, but you can re-imagine if you need to. Mainly they come into the sequence upset about A, confront B, and leave with a plan to C. Also this character is boring, try to find a way to make them appealing/authentic).

Writing

I begin by writing story. This is typically done as a standard ‘beat board’ with index cards, miro boards, or whatever tool allows for mapping out the story as a whole. From that I then write a simple story beat outline, so that I’m clear on what major story points to hit. I like this better than typical screenplay pages which can get overly focused on dialogue (glib) or stifled by legacy formatting conventions. A rough beat outline lets me focus more on narrative pacing while ensuring there is enough conflict and choice driving each beat - a better complement to sketching too. Sometimes I’ll just thumbnail those beats straight ahead instead of writing them out. Usually it’s both at once.

Storyboarding

From there I’ll focus on thumbnails, not as a 1:1 ‘tiny version preview’ of the scene, but just to ballpark key shots and narrative conceits. Think of it like doing key camera setups. We work in a cinematic medium, so we need a cinematic language that minimizes misinterpretation, and also opens up storytelling opportunities with a level of clarity that text struggles to provide.

If you’re a solo auteur director left mostly to your own vision that probably isn’t a problem, but for large collaborative projects like feature animation it becomes essential to have everyone on the same page, and story provides that audio/visual language our medium is written in.

From thumbnails, I’ll do a rough pass, then a cleanup pass - though now I’m usually only doing thumbnail passes as clear enough to cut with, as they would rather have me writing another section than spending time prettying up the drawings. Rough passes aim for the bare minimum of panels, then as the scene comes into focus, there may be additional panels added for acting/action clarity.

Pitching

Every time we share a scene whether writing, thumbnails, or boards - we pitch it. Storyboards aren’t simply images meant to sit silently on a wall. Like sheet music, they are not actually in their final form until we pitch (perform) them, adding the components of time and audio, making it a complete cinematic experience harnessing the entirety of visual and audial storytelling tools into a single telling, or in our case the impression of what we intend it to be in production.

Editorial

Once a sequence is approved, it gets sent to editorial where the story panels are cut into a story reel with timed audio and temp V.O. (Scratch). Often, because of our pitches, we are asked to also do the initial voice-over recordings. As a Story Lead and Head of Story I’ll also work in editorial alongside the directors as we review sequences, advising on narrative and ensuring I’m informed on what edits to launch story artists on.

Screenplay

This is actually the LAST step in the process, where our pages are adapted either by myself or a script coordinator, then compiled into a central ‘master-script’ document used by the production to keep track of the latest iterations of the story, and for voice recording sessions.