Week 3 - Storyboard artist

Becoming a storyboard artist is actually a hard task, since the storyboard artist has the responsibilities to link the work between Director and Producer. If the storyboard didn't go into the right way, the whole production may fall into the wrong way.

A Storyboard artist is often a freelance, they are typically get hired by art directors or film directors. Storyboard artist interpret scripts and sketch ideas to create the storyboard, illustrate the narratives and plan the shots often in the way the director planned. They also work with many people, obviously the Director to get the ideas of what exactly you need to draw out on the storyboard, then you pass on to the producer which they will be producing the animation based on the storyboard that you have created, also needs to follow the storyboard supervisor's advices and making sure the storyboard actually makes sense, whether its following the requirement of the production or making sure the notes are clear especially for the oversea studios.They work either individual or as a team.
Storyboard artists needs to know the dialogue of the animation well, also the character performance and the camera moves. Their work does not always have to be perfectly neat clean, for example, if the storyboard is for the Computer generated film then they are less likely to require the clean work since the production will go ahead with Computer, whereas if the storyboard is for oversea studios then the work needs to be accurate and clear, so that it will be easier for other studios to understand what is going on.
Storyboard artist has a huge responsibilities for following the schedule, the delays will affect the whole production since the producer cannot do much without storyboard so overnight working is often required. They also need to be aware of any relevant technical restrictions related to the production, they cannot just create a random storyboard that has nothing related to the whole production. In terms of producing the storyboard they may require some skills of the software that they might use for the production, the popular ones are Adobe flash, Adobe Photoshop, Corel painter etc. 
They need a good skills to be able to tell a good story, not just following the dialogue they needs to know the good skills to perform the story in good ways to make the work more interesting. They also need to have a good understanding of layout, composition, sequential drawings and editing. Storyboard will require a lot of editing so Storyboard artist needs to prepare for a lot of editing and drawings to get the final result.

To become a storyboard artist... many Storyboard artists have graduated from Animation degree course, who has the understanding of basic film theory and also has experienced producing the storyboard for the personal work or the graduation work. Often it is unlikely that people who is a new graduate will become a Storyboard artist straight away, they often needs an experience to become the part of the animation studio system since the storyboard artist are very important part in the pre-production pipeline.