Chess Adams To Teach Storyboarding at Escape

Francesca Adams

Storyboarding is back at Escape Studios! We're running a class in storyboarding here in Shepherd's Bush, starting on 21 March 2017. It costs £995 and it's a part-time course, designed to fit around jobs and families.

The class will taught partly by me, but mainly by the very talented Francesca "Chess" Adams (see left), a Storyboard artist at London's Blue Zoo animation.

At the end of the course Francesca will give all our students a live industry brief, so that they get experience of what an industry storyboard job is actually like.
What's this all about?
This class is an introduction to the art and craft of storyboarding, taught by industry professionals. Francesca brings her experience of working on TV shows for Blue Zoo - one of the UK's most successful animation studios.

Who is the course for?
Anyone who wants to learn storyboarding, whether for live action, animation, commercials, or your own private projects.

What's involved?
The course is divided into two parts, over 8 evenings. We believe strongly that learning involves doing, so every class will involve in-class exercises, completely with speed and spontaneity, to get your creative juices flowing. Then, each week, you'll get a homework assignment to bring in for review the next week.

Below is how the course breaks down, in a little more detail:

Part One - Introduction to Storyboarding
Week 1 - General Introduction to Storyboarding: Introductory Exercises. Creativity, ideas and inspiration for stories. Gesture drawing, fast sketches, and research.
Week 2 - Creating images which tell a story: Single images that tell a story. Gag drawings. Situations and character-driven ideas.
Week 3 - Standard industry storyboarding process: Script, beat boards, story reel and animatic. Movie structure analysis. Camera and Layout. Reverse-storyboarding a pantomime sequence.
Week 4 - Character Design and Art Direction: Introduction to principles of design and visual development.

Part Two - Storyboarding Technique
Week 5 - Structuring a Scene: How to break down script pages. Progression and punctuation in a sequence. Staging.
Week 6 - The Performance: Story beats, narrative structure, pacing, cinematography.
Week 7 - The Animatic: How to edit, cut and time storyboards in Premiere, to create a storyboard animatic. Music, sound effects, voice over and dialogue.
Week 8 - The Pitch: How to pitch your storyboards. Acting, performance and delivery.

What is expected of students?
You'll be expected to attend at Escape Studios in Shepherd's Bush one evening a week from 7:00pm-10:00pm. And there will be homework!

Plus there is an additional 8 weeks of online mentoring, where you get to practice your skills. It's going to be a great course, designed to train story artists to work in this growing field - where (by the way) there is a serious skills shortage here in the UK.

To find out more, take a look at the Escape Studios Storyboarding course here.

The Escape Studios Animation Blog offers a personal view on the art of animation and visual effects. To find out more about our new BA/MArt, now recruiting for September 2017, follow this link.   To apply, visit the official page here.