Storyboarding MasterClass with Chess Adams

Francesca "Chess" Adams teaches our storyboarding evening class at Escape Studios. Chess recently recorded this excellent video for the "Summer of Animation", the summer outreach program for 13-18 year olds which is hosted by Access VFX and supported by Escape Studios. It's a great starting point for anyone who wants to learn the art and craft of storyboarding for animation, and is completely free.

"Brodiaga" Storyboard by Anastasia Gurova

What are storyboards?
In this video, Chess explains the purpose of storyboards, what they are for, and how they are used. Storyboarding are the visual blueprints for making an animated film, so understanding their purpose and how they are used is an essential tool for animation film-makers.

Best of all, Francesca shares her own personal workflow, showing how she begins with rough "thumbnail" sketches, then developing these further to clean up the boards and produce polished final drawings.

Chess Adams teaches at Escape Studios

In-class exercise
This is a workshop, not a lecture.  There is a short exercise you can do yourself at home, telling a short story about a person entering the scene, picking something up, and then leaving. You can interpret this any way you want. To download the storyboard template, so you have something to work with, follow this link.

Chess Adams
Francesca "Chess" Adams is an experienced Storyboard Artist, a storyboard supervisor at Blue Zoo Animation Studio in London, and a regular guest tutor at Escape Studios.

TV Credits
Chess's TV credits include shows such as The Adventures of Paddington, Numberblocks and Digby Dragon.

Storyboard template
You can download the storyboarding template PDF at www.summerofanimation.com/go

Film-making Resources
For more information on making animated short films, follow the links below:

• Why Animators Need Mood Boards
• Why Animators Need Colour Scripts
• Managing Group Projects
• Why Animators Must Wreck Their Rigs
• What Does an Animation Editor Do?
• Why Animators Need an Animatic
• How to Record Voice-Overs
• Why Animators Must Check Their Hookups
• What are CBBs? (Could be Better)
• Colour Grading your film
• Thanks and Special Thanks - Getting film credits right
• How to Create the Perfect One-Sheet Movie Poster (and why you need one)
• Getting Yourself (and Your Film) Listed at IMDB

Storyboarding at Escape Studios
At Escape Studios we offer an MA in Storyboarding & Previsualisation, now recruiting for September 2020. And, if you don't have the time to commit to a full MA, we also run evening classes in storyboarding. The next class, taught by Chess, starts on July 2nd and runs for 8 weeks.

The Escape Studios Animation Blog offers a personal view on the art of animation and visual effects. To apply for our BA/MArt in 3D Animation, follow this link.  To apply for our storyboarding evening class, visit this page here.  For the next 12 week animation course, click here.