Television Storyboard Considerations
The storyboard artist is the visual director. It’s his job to tell the story as creatively as pos-
sible, to be clear and maintain continuity, to increase emotion with dynamic visual story-
telling, to add humor, and to set the stage for all that follow, especially the layout and
background people, but also the timing director and animators. All the information must be
shown; no viewer has a script. If the storyboard person is not the writer, he won’t see the
script in exactly the same way that the writer sees it in his head. Sometimes (and ideally)
what the board person sees is better than the writer can imagine! The storyboard artist has
the authority to change any visual direction that the writer has in the script. I’ve found that
things normally doneed better staging. Even if you as the writer have storyboarded pro-
fessionally, you will already have so many other concerns as you’re writing your script, that
obvious things can get left out and other things are better staged in another way. As the first
visualization of the script, the television storyboard must be approved by the producer/
director and executives involved, such as TV network people.
In television today some companies request that their writers provide a script that’s
written in master scenes like a live-action script, as opposed to a script with each camera
shot included like a traditional animation script. In this case the board artist does all the
detailed visualization and acts as the visual director. Other studios still ask for the tradi-
tional animation script with each (or most) shot written directly into the script.
Length of the script can be a major problem for a storyboard artist. If the story editor,
director, or producer has not monitored the length well enough, then an overlong script must
be cut at the board stage or later. This wastes time and money. Scripts and boards should be
exactly the correct length.
The storyboard artist considers the audience (the kids or other viewers, the executives
that grant approval, the production people that use the board), the needs of the script and
the production, the medium, the budget, and the time available to complete the job. In
daytime television time is usually very short.
Boarding a Script
The artist reads the script to familiarize himself with plot and characters and their person-
alities. He asks to see previous boards to get the feel and style of an existing show. Then he
looks at model sheets, available backgrounds, and any stock animation. He determines size
and scale of characters to backgrounds and props and to each other. A large character like
a giant in the same scene with small characters causes special problems. Characters should
be drawn correctly on model. All effects and cycled animation must be discussed with the
producer/director and indicated properly for that show. If the sound track has already been
recorded, the board artist listens to the track and matches the visual acting to it. Any ques-
tions or suggestions are covered in a phone call or meeting with the producer/director.
Whenever possible the storyboard person works with the character model artists, the prop
artists, and the background artists to give them what they need to do their jobs well. All the
information must be on the board for the overseas artists who might be enlarging the panels
for their layouts.
Storyboard for Writers 155