Should storyboards be fully animated pieces?

We're seeing storyboards that are just full on rough animation - or almost short films themselves. Is this the new standard of what a storyboard artist in the industry should be?

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[PedroRuizReyes]

What happens is that they confuse the function of a storyboard. The storyboard must not have movement, it is static and must only have the text of the script that accompanies each scene and some camera direction, annotations, etc. If it has movement and a soundtrack to have the time of each scene, that is already an ANIMATIC.

[wotwott]

In film school, I learned that these highly detailed storyboards are not storyboards, these are called animatics and they're used to block out the animation for the final product.

[TheApoke]

I'm an animator so i like when the boards are really detailed. However I don't like that board artists are doing too much work and overworking themselves for the same pay. If they are expected to do more work they should get more pay

[lunab]

My deepest sympathies to anyone who has to do anything animation related in Photoshop

[myfriendsnoopy]

Man Rise was incredible but when I saw those boards I was like… this should not be considered normal.

[amberbydreamsart]

As an animator, there's nothing I hate more than a producer or executive who's in love with the boards. One of the shows I was on was over-boarded, and they generally wanted the animators to pretty much recreate the board. There's nothing worse than seeing your coworkers push a pose or expression, make some beautiful keys, and get told to scrap it and just copy the board. It turns the art of animation into treating us as computers that make the boards move.

The most fun I've had as an animator, by far, was on pre-school kids' shows where the boards were made to just show framing and almost nothing of the acting and we were told to ignore the board acting and make it look how we think it should feel. I don't know why it seems like only young kids' shows give that freedom to their animators, but it's so much fun for the crew and has created some great acting moments that would never have come up otherwise.

[JMarme]

On my first storyboard job the studio treated storyboards as animatics and I was expected to churn out 11 minute animatics weekly, with walking cycles, fully animated actions, 3d backgrounds and keeping the drawings in model because the client wouldn't receive them otherwise. The quality expected of my 4 person team was ridiculous. We worked everyday from 9 to 6 (not really we stayed every day overtime until 9-12 pm to reach the quality asked of us) and we never got paid overtime.

One of my teammates accidentally set the standard of staying late because his father would pick him up late and my bosses thought he was working overtime but he was actually messing around on the computer until they picked him up, and they would scoff at the rest of the team for leaving at the normal exit hour.

Also, the cartoons were 11 mins in the end, but all the scripts we're really long and required around 20-25 mins of animatic to completely tell the stories and the client refused to edit the scripts until they saw them animated, so we had to make the 20-25 mins and then they would trim them down in editing. Plus we had no direction, so the storyboard team was left to its own devices directing the show without credit in many areas, like character and environment design, coming up with ideas for the story, animating, 3D layout, etc. So much work thrown away...

I quit and have been happily freelancing for the past 2 years. My mental and physical health was more important to me than a steady paycheck. The animation industry is tough, but at least I learned a lot from that terrible experience.

[unnurhrafnsdottir]

God, Rise of the TMNT deserved so much more. what an incredible high quality show. Kevin Molina was beyond thriving and Flying Bark was turning out actual animation Gold. Highly recommend. it's fantastic.

[SpookyGhostpeppers]

As an animator myself, as long as the posing and staging is clear- animation over any parts of a boards isnt needed. Maybe you could do a tiny bit with keyframes to emphasises them, but I personally dont think boards need to be fully length features on their own. Do a lot of them look amazing? Yes! If I was running a studio would I want every single one to be like that, especially if we were on a tight schedule? Hell no. Storyboard artists shouldnt feel pressured to overextend themselves...but if they want to go that extra mile then they're free to! I just don't want fully animated boards to be the standard because that just places too high of expectations on a process thats basically supposed to be a proof of concept.

[ManuMercurial]

Love the video Niko!
Having worked in outsourcing for Western animation, to now working on Anime, the contrast is VAST.

Japanese directors send us doodles that sometimes are borderline unintelligible, but have enough information to give us animators 'freedom' to DO our job.
Where in contrast, friends working as story artists tell me they basically ‘'do everybody else’s job before them”. And then I have animator friends who say they have No creative input in their scenes, they are basically doing problem solving for what was already in the 'storyboard'.

I know this should make some happy, as it makes animators' work much easier AND gives directors more "control" (since it is still all preproduction.)
But in reality all this is at the expense of the story artists, and leaving no creative input for the animators either, so I'm debating if this is truly the best way to go about it.. I have to say I don't have an answer either.

I think what bothers me the most is the fact that no credit is given for wearing all these hats. And I hope the pay matches the amount of effort to make works like this happen in the coming years.
Anyone who is defending this practice as it is, has no skin in the game, clearly. The job creep is real.

Thanks for bringing attention to this topic. We HAVE to talk about it, and it has to be now!

[mmmk]

Lauren Faust does a great interview with creative block where she talks about the problems of over animating boards. and how she would prefer well composed, and well thought out shots, with less panels, rather than over animated boards.

[anastasialobanova]

At my first job at an animation studio I learned a clear distinction between a storyboard and an animatic. Storyboard is a "sequential art" and the main goal is to deliver a message while animatic focuses more on the transitions and editing, plus matching a sound sometimes. These are the two completely different jobs that require different amount of time and skill and were done by different people at that workplace (and very often the editing was done by the directors themselves).

[kineographBOT]

I've noticed this definition slippage for some time now. I've always asked myself, aren't these animatics? It would seem a lot more is expected of a storyboard artist given what can be done quickly with digital programs.

Your description of a storyboard work is what I was taught in school a decade ago.

[stevie]

There needs to be a distinction between what's being produced. An animatic, or rough animation isn't a storyboard, and if storyboard artists are being expected to create to this standard outside of their actual role, then they should be paid accordingly for what they're producing, which is beyond storyboards, as well as being afforded the extra time, because expecting this level of work, on the schedule expected of storyboards is unreasonable.

[pennylavendar]

Makes me think of old Stephen Silver talks where he talks about how all these different roles artists used to have just slowly kept turning into one person's job. But it seems like those problems are helped along by artists themselves.

[dirtiestharry]

In films, here in Korea, you board 1panel for each shots. That's it. If it's a long take, or many things happen in a single shot therefor requiring more context, you might write stuff like cont'd and draw more panels for that shot but normally it's 1panel for each shot. I don't know if animation peeps do this too but there's also a concept of "cut list" that the Director and DP makes based on script(sometimes storyboarder and scenarist join too). They basically make a list of shots needed to complete the film. So storyboarder has a reference to which the Director wants for each sequences or scenes and won't have to make the call for every single shot.
Listening to what American animation storyboarders are expected to do, it's as if they are script writers, storyboaders, directors, DP rolled up into one. If it's a independent short film, sure why not. I've been a director writer storyboader too. But if this is expected on professional work it must be stressful.

[Matthimeo]

I feel the the point of boards is for them to be disposable and iterative. If the boards are already basically fully animated there's pressure to make it final or risk wasting a ton of work. Also ties the hands of the animator to basically copy your work or make all the extra work you did useless. All in all, I like my board artists time to be spent making scenes clear and flowing nicely, rather then using their limited time on something I could do without.

[LutherTaylor]

entertainment industry just sounds incredibly toxic at times that i imagine that it actually kills people's desire to do art.
those boards from rise and alberto's work are incredible I've seen them but i do not class them as storyboards, farrrr from it. Albertos work for love death robots i'd class it as an animatic but even that is over kill. the only reason a story artist should do that is because he/she is the director, so they have the final say of it.
no one should be getting hyped up from storyboards or animatics to the point people think it could be its own final thing to watch.
sorry you guys are going through that Toniko. it sounds similar to the mess of promotional art getting touted as concept art back in the day.

[aditi]

If some board artists enjoy making animatic like that, they should do so. But the clients should not be expecting the same from us because those boards require years of skills and also, an eye for things which only those particular artists would have. All of us artist approach boards in our own way.

[tjangpricot]

I'm a college student considering to be a storyboard artist. When I looked at these almost fully animated boards, I almost feel discouraged since I'm not really good at animating and classes on storyboarding is only a few in my country. I just wanna say thank you for bringing this up since now I know that boards don't have to be that detailed and it really encourages me again to learn!