F.A.Q.

How did you get into the industry?

My grandfather fostered my ability to sketch and animate, while my Mom’s work at the newspaper as well as with libraries and telling stories to kids I’m sure gave me the writing/entertaining bug. I didn’t have comics so most of my personal influences outside books and movies came from video games, the booklets, and Nintendo Power, Gamepro, EGM, etc. With all that swirling around I grew into making my own little movies and games as a kid but never really considered that it was a job.

Moving to a new town and High School, my guidance counselor discovered I was making short films for fun, many of them animated and liked D&D and doing my own fan-design characters and levels for SNES games so she suggested I write to some animation and game studios. The game studios had no story positions in that time (Early/Mid 90’s), but Disney recommended a list of art schools and criteria to study, so that became my first roadmap. That counselor helped me re-structure my final year of High School to focus on filmmaking and animation (stop motion and 2D). I also convinced the art dept to buy some animation software that would let me digitize my flipbooks and color them, in exchange for teaching other students once I learned it myself. That short film ended up winning a state award in NY.

From there I moved west to the Academy of Art College (now University) in San Francisco and had the incredibly good fortune that in 1995 Toy Story had just come out to disrupt all of animation as we know it, and some of those founders were teaching at our school, as well as Disney Animators from LA working with PDI! They helped me refine my focus toward story and filmmaking while I worked graveyard shifts at a Kinko’s downtown to support myself through school and just did my best to stay awake heading straight to class from those 10 hour shifts.

On top of my classes, I also took on a leadership role for a large group project in the school for a couple of years doing storyboards, production design, and giving art direction. As that wrapped, some friends and I dropped out of school for a year to pursue an offer to found a small web-animation studio (it was the dot com boom - you had to be there). When we all realized there was no money in the internet (yet), we went back to school and I took a side-job freelancing for a game studio as a pixel artist which was such an awesome school job to have, and great opportunity to work in a game studio and the experience collaborating with each department. It was so much fun discovering things with our programmers that we could cheat the system into doing together. Then I also took some personal 1x1 studies in Production Design at Pixar as well as their short film class.

The school can only offer you so much, especially with an industry that was changing so fast, but all of those extra-curricular’s alongside what I was learning in school gave me the full scope of skills and experience I needed to be ready for studio level work. After graduating college, some of my instructors who knew my short film work began sharing it before I was done which led to PDI/Dreamworks offering me a position as a Story Artist (Madagascar), and so after some tests and interviews in both SF and LA, I was hired and it was off to the races from there. I still remember being yoinked out of orientation my first morning to go board my first assignment!

How hard is it to get into this?

The advice I give students or anyone interested in getting into the industry is that this isn’t a job you get into because you like it, or because it looks fun. That’s not enough on its own. This is something you get into because you can’t stop doing it, even when you are exhausted and you want to. It’s less something you choose to do, and more something you realize you are. It’s just who you are and what you do at an atomic level. That’s the only way you get through the high demands of a career doing this. If you don’t have that, I really don’t recommend it. On the flipside - if you DO have that, you have no choice. You’ll end up here regardless, just keep doing what you do.

What is a Story Artist?

In short, a Story Artist is half screenwriter, half director. Instead of solely writing with text, we write with sketches because the language of visual mediums is…well, visual. There’s a lot that can get lost in translation so this method eliminates a lot of miscommunication. We still have a main screenwriter, and then we are sort of like a mix of assistant writers in a TV writers room, and a Unit Director on a film set.

Imagine all the takes and setups you would try on a live action set, and then make re-writes and adjustments for. We can’t do that in animation, so that’s what we do as part of the story process. We take on a scene to develop for a few weeks, then present it as a storyboard we act out and do V.O. for as part of communicating it. As a story team we discuss, make notes on each other’s scenes, then iterate until it’s ready to be cut together in editorial. Usually there’s a launch, thumbnail pitch, rough pitch, and second/final pitch on each sequence. We do that for about 6 months to get the entire film up, then it’s screened for the studio execs to give notes on. After that we do it all again. That goes on for on average 3-4 years per show.

I was usually on for the first year or two to help find tone, break story, crack characters, and just overall help establish a vision for it people dug, then rolled onto another project - rinse and repeat. The last year or so is usually smaller adjustments and editorial fixes to sequences which is where people wanting to do this start out as interns or junior story artists. You can read more here.

What is a Head of Story?

Head of Story is similar to being a supervising director for TV. Where in that role you oversee the other directors of each episode, a Head of Story is overseeing all the other Story Artists, while working with the Director in sessions with a screenwriter and/or editors to ensure the story is working, being told clearly, matching the vision of the project, and getting done on time. It’s like the equivalent of being a Production Designer in the Art Department, but for the Story Department.

You prepare assignments for the story team, ensure they are in the loop on changes, and offer direction that gives them guidance to deliver what the director has asked for. Sometimes you’ll also take on a key scene from the film yourself as part of establishing a style and tone. You’ll also be ensuring that all department heads are up to speed on whatever the latest story changes are, and ideally able to hear their ideas as well in order to incorporate them into future launches or wherever opportunities arise as solutions.

What is a Story Lead?

A story lead is a newer role that’s in between Story Artist and Head of Story. Typically this is a story artist who just happens to vibe with what the Director wants to see in the show as its tone, and so they take the lead on spearheading scenes. The Story Lead is also sort of a ‘backup Head of Story’ there to fill in when the Head of Story is in other meetings or otherwise can’t make it.

What should I study to be a Story Artist?

First and foremost focus on filmmaking and screenwriting. You’re also going to need to know how to draw well and fast, so if that’s not already in your wheelhouse, it may not be a good fit. Mind you, this isn’t a job where you need to do the prettiest drawings, in fact the first thing my Story teachers from Pixar taught us was to NOT draw too ‘nice’ or ‘on model’ because it was a waste of time and actually led to less clear boards. It would also distract from the quality of the scene. People would ooh and ahh over the drawings, but then it gets cut into reels and suddenly becomes glaringly obvious the scene never actually worked.

A great cure to that I learned was to board on tiny post-its with fat sharpies. Nobody is going to see your drawings on screen, only your ideas. Once I saw people killing a room with just the barest minimum of sketches but a solid story and pitch of it, THAT is what you need. So, be able to draw clearly and appealingly enough, but don’t let that become the focus. Don’t try shoehorning your desire to be a comic artist, animator, vis dev artist, or anything else into this. This has overlap with so many things, but it is very much its own thing. Put more time into iterating on ideas and filmmaking choices, not making cool drawings. There’s an entire studio of people who will make it look better than you ever will and if that’s your passion, you’re better off in one of those roles. Your job as a story artist is providing them with the solid story and direction worth their talent.

Alongside filmmaking classes I would also recommend taking vis dev, acting, and animation training. You never know what you’ll need in order to sell an idea or do something new. You’re not going to be a pro in any of those, but enough firsthand experience to know how they work as part of the whole so you can fully utilize your medium, and set the rest of the team up to shine.

Are you teaching a class?

I’ve taught Story and Short Film classes in the past for Colleges and given lectures at studios. I would love to do a class but so far I’ve been too busy and if I do it, I want to give each student the focus they deserve, and that I was given by my own mentors. If you want to sign up for when I finally do one, you can do that HERE.

You also do games?

I do, but nowhere near the level of my movie career…yet? One of the things I’ve always been passionate about is the potential games had as a storytelling medium. While I was learning story in college, games like FF7 and Majora’s Mask were coming out left and right, totally changing people’s concept of what a game could be as a narrative medium. Since there were no roles for specifically story in games, I focused on film and hoped that one day those roles would exist and I could port that experience over.

Also, it’s not like you can just swap that experience over to games, it is after all a different medium and while there’s overlap, there’s also fundamental differences. So, I maintained studying game design as my side-hustle outside work. I studied from mentors at different studios and took classes to keep growing that skillset with experience in game design, level design, coding, Unreal, etc. I even managed to publish a couple of indie titles to experience creating something from start to completion. The purpose wasn’t that I would be some great game designer, but that I would at least have some firsthand experience making them myself to understand fundamental differences between story for games and story for film.

Why do you live in Portland?

When I started out, Dreamworks moved me from SF to LA and that’s where I built the first chapter of my career with them, then Disney. My wife had a serious cancer scare shortly after our first son was born and I really needed to be at home on caretaker duty as we had no family in LA and he was too young for a day care still. Illumination had already made me a standing offer to work for them from home (long before covid made it a thing), and Disney didn’t work that way but knew it was a good fit for me so they let me leave to go do that with a plan to come back after things were stable at home again.

What happened, was that being at home with my family in that time is something I realized I really loved. Long studio hours usually means missing so much of that, and here was this magical opportunity to be like the Dad in Totoro working while my kid plays in the background! So, once she made her full recovery (because my wife is an unstoppable force of nature I am in perpetual awe of), I ended up staying with Illumination working remotely, and no longer having to remain in LA we chose Portland as the place to raise our son. We still love LA, but this has been such a great place to see him grow up.

Are you willing to relocate?

We actually considered it for Pixar a few years back, but that process made us realize just how difficult it would be to uproot at this point as a family, so we’ve taken that option off the table for now. It does mean I have to turn down a ton of offers, but worthwhile to maintain the life we’ve built here.

Why can’t I see some pages on your website?

Those are there for studio clients that want to see more of my work. I have to keep it locked up because a lot of it I’m not allowed to share publicly, and have had problems with third parties sharing things they didn’t ask to share in the past. Ex: https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2024/03/new-mario-movie-concept-art-shows-princess-daisy-in-action

What are you working on now?

I’m not allowed to share what I’m working on currently, but I’ve been focused on writing scripts and treatments for clients, and developing some of my own.

What are you interested in doing next?

For movies, I’m gearing up to write and direct my own project. For games I would love to do more work in narrative design with a really great team. It’s such a fascinating field and is the closest role in games to my foundation as a Story Artist. I only wish it had existed when I started out.