ehayes87:

Hi! You’re asking if there’s more to storyboarding than good drawing skills. And the short answer is: YES!!

Long answer: Drawing skills are the bare minimum when it comes to boarding. It’s the base skill that every other skill grows off of. Most importantly: cinematography! A beautiful drawing is useless is if your cuts don’t make sense. Or if you’ve got bad staging. Or tangents. Or you’re crossing the 360 too often. Or your acting is off. Or your pacing is weird. The list goes on and on!

Yes, you need to know how to draw, you need to know basic perspective and anatomy, and then from that knowledge, you need to learn to do it in shorthand; loose, fast, and efficient while still communicating everything clearly. That is why storyboards look the way they do! Gorgeously detailed drawings are near pointless in storyboards, and to be plain, there is no time for it. I actually know a storyboard artist who was fired (yes, fired!) for being too detailed. He was falling behind.

Background artists are responsible for beautifying the environment with wonderful detail and crisp, clean lines, and colorists are responsible for beautifying those lines with amazing hues and shadows and lighting. Our job is to rough! Out! That! Story!

 Hope this helped you. Good luck on your journey to boarding!