Improving Your Board On A Budget

Have you ever come across exquisitely executed storyboards online, created by the most talented artists of the moment, then looking back at your last work, the one you were even mildly proud of, and wondered: what did I do wrong?

First of all, it is highly likely that you didn’t do anything wrong! A storyboard can be correct overall, but still be lacking something: it might be just about refining some technical aspects or injecting more life into it! So let’s discuss the refining process. How come some storyboards feel right and alive, while others don’t, despite being technically correct? Additionally, can I improve my storyboard on a low budget?

Let’s start by acknowledging that storyboarding is a complex matter since it involves many aspects that need to be mastered singularly before being able to successfully mix it all in a well-done board. Perspective, anatomy, gesture drawing, staging, composition, storytelling, cinematography – the list goes on. It’s a broad task, people! So let’s take a deep breath, and consider these aspects individually, ok? It is most likely that you have successfully mastered a lot of them, and maybe just a couple have slipped through the cracks.

We’re going to propose an exercise to you, hoping it will help, so if you’d like, let’s our first step in this process be:

1. IDENTIFY your weaknesses What does that mean? It means you have to be open and able to critically analyze your work as if you were doing an X-ray over it.

2. ISOLATE the areas that need improvement Is it perspective? Or maybe staging? Or acting? Whatever it may be, isolate it.

3. PRACTICE! Sounds easy right? Well not exactly

I am gonna tell you a story that might seem unrelated at first, but bear with me as I make my point!

When I was studying in scientific high school I was a pretty good student, with high grades and all, but I had a big problem with one specific topic: Latin! I couldn’t wrap my head around the importance of studying a dead language, and went around school protesting and asking why on earth it was so crucial. What made matters worse was that I was really bad at it! One day the headmaster told me that Latin engages your brain at a level that can be extremely beneficial for your studies, and if I got better in Latin I would have had a greater chance at improving in Math as well. There was no way I was buying it, even if possibly true!

To provide some context, translating an ancient language is not something you can simply Google, or just study in grammar books, no sir! The complexity lies in interpretation. It’s not about putting one word after the other, it is about understanding and interpreting the context as well as the author’s vision. You could translate the individual words correctly but the result would still be incorrect. It requires extensive knowledge and attention to detail to produce a well-translated piece.

Does that sound familiar?

In my case, Latin was my weakness, and I isolated the main issue: translating Latin texts into Italian (from the most difficult authors). Although I despised it, I had to do it as it was part of my curriculum. So, what did I do? I practiced!

Private lessons were not an option, I didn’t want my parents to pay for this (in my view, an N64 cassette was a better investment). The internet was very slow at the time, but it was there, and I stumbled upon a site that provided Latin excerpts from books, accompanied by Italian translations made by very talented students and teachers. So I used these texts to attempt a translation, at least one per day, if not more! I would then check the right translation on the site and correct myself. Practice does make perfect, you just have to find the right way to do it. Within just a few weeks of self training my grades improved, my curriculum was saved, and I still can’t stand Latin to this day.

You may not necessarily like what you are going to be practicing in order to elevate your board, but it’s all part of the game.

Back to the process then!

You are now in front of your storyboards. You are critically checking it and notice the staging is just not quite right. For some reason, you could have placed the characters differently, and overall the sequence is confusing. That is tricky, right? Let’s say we isolate this issue: “staging with many characters in a complex environment”.

It could also be that you don’t feel your character’s acting is lively enough, so let’s isolate “characters performance in a dramatic sequence”. Isolating and naming it is a very important step for your brain to accept the challenge and be motivated to make it. If you have trouble finding your weakness, try asking for help from a fellow story artist, a fresh eye could spot something you missed! There is nothing wrong with it. I still ask my brother for advice when I am stuck on a board, talking out loud is such an important step to figure out great storyboards!

How do we practice staging or acting? Just like the translations example above, the Internet provides us with many scripts from famous movies (free or for purchase), and it’s most likely we own a streaming service or DVD to watch said movies, right?

Then you are going to choose a couple of movies and the scripts they were based on, these should be ones you’ve never seen or ones you don’t remember! Choose classics or masterpieces! Check the script first, no peeking at the movie eh! find a sequence with an intense dialogue and as such a good acting training camp.

Then find one section with complex staging that you can tackle. You don’t have to go full board on this, just THINK and draw simple thumbnails to provide you with as many staging choices. You can rough out different options too, as long as you engage your brain! As for the acting, let’s draw this a bit more carefully and try to do this with your own body and face, interiorise the acting, try it on and then draw it.

All good? Put down your pen and check your sketches, they don’t need to be pretty guys! They need to be well thought out!

Storyboarding lies in the thinking process.

Finally, it’s time to correct yourself, search and watch the movie sequences based on the chunk of script you chose, without sound (no distractions, you are studying!) Watch it again and ask yourself:

• How does it compare?
• Why did the director of the movie choose to compose the sequence in this particular way?
• Can you guess what was the thinking process behind it?
• Can you track the motivation for each shot choice?
• What can you learn from this first attempt? And from the second? And the third?

Get to the 10th and you’ll probably get the satisfying sensation of getting closer to your desired result! Go back to your board now, and piece by piece, it will come together, improving every day, until finally, you will bring it to LIFE!

Regarding infusing boards with life, we will get into this topic more extensively in another post. It might get a little more philosophical but I think it’s worth giving this a thought. In animation we strive to give the “illusion of life”, don’t we? Then let’s chat about it on this blog in a few weeks, and until then, take care, story people!

Ciao,

⭐️

Cristina