I am in the midst of my *final* Hell Week. Then I get a vacation.

Yipee for me!

So since I’m going to be quite strapped for time and content, you get a little potpourri of things in this post.

First off, if you read the comments you may have seen one from Toronto storyboard artist Dan Milligan. Go to his site and look at his stuff (for you geeks, he worked on the movie ‘300′).

Very cool indeed.

He also added a link to an interview he did on the site CG Channel. Some good reading from a pro in the film and advertising industry, so check it out here:

http://www.cgchannel.com/news/viewfeature.jsp?newsid=5733&pageid=0

_____________________________________

Next, I plan on doing some posts about dealing with dialogue. I just don’t have the time right now and probably won’t for a few weeks (that vacation thing). But I did come across a post on Carlos Baena’s blog that touched on this.

He’s an animator at Pixar and one of the founders of Animation Mentor (I don’t know him and he certainly doesn’t know me). He gives some great insights and tips for animators on his site.

I can’t seem to link to just that post, but check out the June 1st entry entitled ‘Internal/External Dialogue‘. It shouldn’t be too far from the top. Poke around that site if you’re an animator. He’s got a good book resource section too.

UPDATE: If you go to his site you might very well see a post about this blog! I’ve told him privately and now I’ll tell him publicly: Thank you Carlos…you rock!

_____________________________________

And finally just for fun, here’s the superb video “Take On Me” by A-Ha.

Why not? It’s one of the best videos ever and starts off all ’storyboard-ish’. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t love it.

Ahh, the eighties…(hey, I told you I’m old). Enjoy and I’ll see ya before the big ‘vacances’.

Read the Storyboard Blog by RSS Feed or by email for more blasts from the past.

Lollipops for Debi

In the last post I told you five things that storyboarding professionally is not. In case they came off with a negative feel, I’m going to flip them and show the positive side to those five things. Because there are two sides to everything and it’s always a good idea to find the brighter one, right?

So let’s spin these suckers.

1. I said storyboarding is NOT EASY. That’s right, it’s not. But who wants easy? Do you really just want to go through life without challenging yourself and pushing to do better? You can work in a factory or flip burgers if all you want is a paycheck. Do you really want to go through your whole life like that?

Some do. I don’t.

If you have the skills necessary to do storyboarding (or any other skill), you will be sought out. If less people are good at it because it’s tough, then there’s more job opportunities for the qualified folks. That very thing has kept me employed. Be good at something. Have a niche. The harder that niche is, the more valuable you are. Embrace it. I’m glad it’s hard.

2. I said storyboarding is NOT SOCIAL. Well, I don’t always have a problem with that. Yes, sometimes not talking to anyone all day can be tough. Yes, sometimes you miss the social interaction of a studio (if you freelance from home). But you also don’t have to deal with all the political crap that can go on in a studio/office too. All the wasted time. The stress of others that can rub off on you. You may not get along with everyone you have to work with.

It can get tiresome. And commuting sucks.

>>continue reading>>

I like to keep a positive feel here on the Storyboard Blog (sidenote: I have registered http://storyboardblog.com so it’s easier to tell your friends about it…so um, go tell your friends about it ). But I also like to keep it real for the people who want to do this for a living or who just want to do it better.

So here are a few ‘nots’ about the craft. Not to scare off or intimidate, but to inform. Hope it’s not too doom-and-gloom-y. I may have touched on some of these before but they are always worth mentioning again.

Here are five things that professional storyboarding is NOT:

1. EASY. This can be a huge misconception in the industry itself. I have heard burned-out animators say ‘maybe they’ll try storyboarding for a while’. Like their lives will be so rosy and laid back if they could board for a living. I’ve seen veteran layout artists (a job that could be viewed as the close cousin to storyboards) give it a go. And fail miserably because it’s a different animal and not easy. It’s hard work that requires many more skills than just drawing. It can also take a toll on your time, your sleep and your sanity and it’s not an easier ride.

2. SOCIAL. If you freelance or even if you work in a studio, this is a very isolating job. You may have the occasional meeting with the director, but you will be working many long hours by yourself. It’s not much of a collaborative effort in television storyboarding (it can be more so in feature films, but not every day). If you have a hard time being in your own head for hours on end (and possibly losing contact with the outside world day after day), this job may not be for you.

>>continue reading>>

So what’s better for storyboarding, the pencil or the computer?

Well, for most of my career I have used good old fashioned pencil and paper. I’m working that way right now. But for one of my jobs I did work by drawing on a Wacom tablet directly into Flash. So I do have some experience with both. I’m just going to discuss this on a basic level for now, giving my personal pros and cons for each.

In the future I’d like to give more in-depth reviews of specific software. But I’m not going to do that until I try them out obviously. And right now I haven’t used any others except for Flash.

If you’re an artist, nothing really beats a good pencil. Especially when you get that one that flows oh-so-sweetly. The feeling of it on paper is hard to duplicate. It just feels like that’s how we artists are supposed to work, doesn’t it?

Yes. Yes it does.

But then these new tools come along (yes, they ‘came along’ for me…I’m old) and they can make your life easier. You can change things at the click of a mouse or swipe of a stylus. You can fix mistakes without eraser shavings all over your desk. It’s sweet.

Sometimes.

Those tools can also make you want to toss many hundreds of dollars worth of hardware out of your eighth story window. I have contemplated this myself. >>continue reading>>

Well, I’ve taken the Aniboom Radiohead Contest banner down. I posted about the contest a little while back here. It looked like a pretty OK contest even though I stated later on in this post that I wouldn’t enter it myself.

But since it was primarily a storyboarding contest and this being a storyboarding blog, they approached me. They offered to give me a link in their resources section if I put up a banner on my site. I did and they gave me one. It wasn’t in a very promenent place and I seemed to be in the company of only their paid sponsors. Not many links there at all. Weird, but what the hey. No skin off my nose and I got a few click-throughs.

Fine.

Frankly, I’ve never really gone back to the site since. Just kind of forgot about it and then I’d take the banner down at the end of June when the contest was over.

Yesterday one of the search terms that found my site was ‘aniboom contest scam’.

Ohh-kay. Interesting.

I wondered what was brewing over there but again, forgot about it. Who knew if that person found anything about that subject, right?

Then I get an email today. Most of it wasn’t so much a message to me but a cut and paste from the Adult Swim message boards and some links to the message boards on the Aniboom site.

It didn’t look good.

They’ve picked their ten finalists that get the $1000 to make a minute of animated footage from their storyboards.

But there’s a problem. >>continue reading>>

Okey dokey. This is the second part of ’showing you your money’.

In the last post I covered the basics of starting to freelance in animation and/or storyboarding. I talked about setting up your invoices and for you Canadians, a bit about the wonder that is the GST. At the end of that I mentioned you can’t spend that GST money.

So here’s a little advice about handling the cold hard cash. Of course, you don’t have to do it this way. This is just how I did things when I started out and it worked pretty well for me. And if you’re young, you’ll thank me in your forties.

Separate your cash!

The GST you collect isn’t yours and about a third of your income isn’t yours.

“What?”

That’s right. You’re going to have to pay the tax man eventually. If you think and act like all the money you collect is yours, then you’ll be in big trouble, baby. There will be nothing worse then getting the news that you owe thousands to the government when you only have a few hundred in your bank account.

You may put off paying your taxes.

You won’t sleep at night.

You’ll get dark circles under your eyes and maybe develop a substance abuse problem.

I can’t let that happen. If you want dark circles and a substance abuse problem, just keep storyboarding.

But pay your taxes! Because it will catch up with you eventually. >>continue reading>>

OK, I’m back. And I even had four days off…guilt-free. It’s a gift from above, let me tell you.

So here is the first ‘real’ post about handling finances and taxes as a freelancer after a request from one of my readers. See? I read my email and answer your burning questions! As best I can, at least.

But first, the big disclaimer:

This is meant as a general guide for beginners just starting on a freelance career in animation (or otherwise). I am in no way shape or form an authority on anything to do with your taxes or your finances. I’m pretty good with my own money but I prefer having someone else tell me what to do with it.

This is just how I do things and it’s quite possible I could be doing them better. And some of this may take a Canadian slant, so my apologies to the U.S. readers (and all you other wonderful folks). This post had some links to articles geared towards Americans so that should balance things out. I have zero knowledge about other countries on this matter.

Have I beaten that to death enough? Good. >>continue reading>>