Look, you already know you will end up drawing a lot of images as a storyboard artist or visual storyteller of any sort– no Shocker on Shock Street there.
And we’ll assume you came into this by your own free will– not by gunpoint, guilt trip, threat of blackmail, or any other manner of coercion.
Which is to say we’ll assume you actually want to draw a lot of images over your career.
Even so, it can be hard to nail down just how many images you should draw to cover off your scripts, or scenes within said scripts, or actions within said scenes within said scripts.
We’re talking about a multiple-choice problem, and one with largely arbitrary solutions at that.
Five different artists will approach a thing five different ways while five different directors will expect five different results from each of them.
The next time you’re not sure whether you need one storyboard, two, a dozen, or good-lord-so-many-storyboards-you’ll-need-multiple-hand-surgeries-afterward, here’s a thing to try (and if this looks familiar-ish, well, it should– it’s good ol’ three-act structure):
Approach each action with three beats to start– a beginning, a middle, and an end.
That character who’s about to light a cigarette before launching into a monologue… Do you need more than three beats to get them there?
Probably not.
You could choose to hold on a medium-close shot, draw the character bringing the cigarette into the frame to their lips, draw the character flicking the lighter, then draw the character exhaling.
You could also probably do more.
Is the character angry? Nervous? Maybe it’s worth pulling that shot back to show them fumbling in their pockets for the lighter– that’s another drawing or two.
Or maybe it’s worth pushing the shot in as they flick the lighter, so their need to feed the demon right then shows as the flame lights their features– that’s another drawing or two.
But maybe the moment is better served by that character just lighting the damned cigarette, then exhaling an f-bomb along with the smoke– you could probably scrap that first drawing and call it in two.
Draw your three thumbnails, then take stock.
If it reads, leave it.
If the gaps seem a bit too airy, or if you see an opportunity to sell a little subtext, add something.
If you’re drawing the same thing with only minor changes for no good reason, or you have a clever way to call it in two or even one, trim the fat.
Every so often, you will legitimately need to produce a few dozen drawings to show some particularly intricate action the way it needs to be shown if anyone else is going to make sense of it later.
But more often than not, you probably won’t.
Cheers,
Damien
Great little article.
Nicely done, Damien.
Short, sweet and to the point.
For Comic book artists, this would refer back to the Pacing of the action.
You can tell a story with one panel or 15 panels.
Depends on what sort of Pacing you need to effectively tell your story visually.
Greg Capullo (Comic Book artist) did a series back in the days called “How To Draw” which was portrayed in the Wizard Comic book price Guide every month. He did a wonderful lesson on this topic which I recommend to get a hold on if you can manage to find it. It’s probably out there roaming the digital noise of the Net.
He was basically telling the story of a young kid going for the cookie jar at his grandmother’s house. I won’t sell out the punch line because lol…well it was too nicely done but point being is, Greg showed visually how to tell the story in 3-4 panels vs 12-15 panels (I can’T recall the exact number here).
But you could see the tension and drama building in the latter version of it which was just amazing. A very effective and powerful lesson to learn from.
Cheers,
JC