Storyboarding is Back on 29th October

Panel Forge

Storyboarding is back; our next evening class in storyboarding starts at our central London campus at 190 High Holborn on 29th October, running through to 17th December 2019.

This 8 week evening class is led by Francesca "Chess" Adams,  a story board artist at Blue Zoo, one of London's leading animation houses.

Chess brings her experience of working on shows like Digby Dragon and The Go Jetters, reflecting the huge increase in animated content being created right here in London in recent years, and the growing trend towards digital storyboarding tools such as Panel Forge, which speed up the process and help to bridge the gap with 3D Layout.

Francesca "Chess" Adams

Storyboarding
This storyboard evening class is an 8 week introduction to the art and craft of storyboarding, taught by industry professional, Francesca "Chess" Adams.

Chess is a full-time board artist at Blue Zoo animation in London, with many years experience in the industry. Chess also supplies a live industry brief to give our students experience of what a standard industry storyboard test is actually like.

The class is aimed at anyone who wants to learn storyboarding, whether for live action, animation, commercials, or your own film independent projects.

Course content
The course is spread over eight evenings. Each class involves a blend of one-on-one feedback, lectures, and simple in-class exercises, completed with speed and spontaneity.  Each week students will receive a homework assignment to complete and bring in for review the next week. This way, students will get meaningful feedback on their work over the full eight weeks of the course.

Francesca Adams boards at Blue Zoo Animation

Summary
Course: Storyboarding
Duration: 8 weeks
Start date: Tuesday 29 October 2019
Principal Tutor: Francesca Adams
Price: £995

Course Outline
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.
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.

Panelforge

There will also be a session on Panelforge, the 3D storyboarding software pioneered by Blue Zoo.

Where and when
The course will take place at Escape Studios at 190 High Holborn, London WC1, on Tuesday evenings from 7:00pm-10:00pm

Jobs in storyboarding
Skilled storyboard artists are in high demand, and industry tells us that there is a serious skills shortage here in the UK.  Storyboarding is a complex craft that involves the ability to tell a story visually using both traditional drawing and also (increasingly) 3D skills.  Storyboard artists must also understand acting, performance, cinematography - and also have a sense of fun and entertainment about their work. Above all, they must learn to be clear.  Great board artists often become directors - storyboarding can be a route to the very top of our industry.

Success Stories
To see one of our recent Success Stories, read this post about Escapee Fred O'Rourke.

Official page
To find out more, take a look at the Escape Studios official storyboarding course page here.

Inspiration
Finally, to take a quick peek behind the scenes at Pixar, and see a story pitch by the late (and much-missed) Joe Ranft, one of Pixar's most talented storyboard artists, watch the video below. Storyboarding hasn't changed a whole lot in the years since it was pioneered at the Disney Studio in Burbank. It's still about story, story, story.




Official page
To sign up, find the official page here.

Finally, don't forget we are also running a new MA in Storyboarding and Previsualisation, starting in September 2019, for those who want to dig deeper into the story and previs skillset. 

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 2019, follow this link.   To apply, visit the official page here.