Pixar story artist Mike Yates about his process (video)

Another example from the amazing Pixar in a Box Khan Academy course. Starting at 2:02min in this video, storyboard artist Mike Yates talks about his process when doing storyboards: 

When I was given an assignment, it would usually be a table-read first. Where you’d get the script pages and you’d read it together, with you, the director, the head of story —usually the writer as well. And you read it, you take notes, you ask questions. After that I’d usually go back to my office and I’d kinda sit for a while, with my eyes closed sometimes, and I would just visualize, like, what does this scene look like to me? 

Which is basically me, just as quickly as possible, and as roughly as possible, doing these really quick and small drawings  about what the progression of the scene is. And I’ll just do this until I go through the entire script. And then I’ll have a full page of all these little squares, with what they’re saying underneath it and everything there. And then I’ll look at it, and then I’ll decide is this what I pictured in my head? And then if it’s not, I’ll usually scrap it and then I’ll do it again because it’s so quick and such an easy way to do it. Because I’m not putting much effort or time into it. So I can see it as quick as possible, and understand where the mistakes are -before I even move into the storyboarding process. 

It’s like a plan before you move into the building of the scene. 

It is interesting to me to read Mike's careful thought process, especially when you compare it with Mandrews' passionate rant against the use of thumbnails. 

After seeing that Mandrews lecture for the first time I moved away from using thumbnails, but to be honest I often get lost when I dive straight into digital boards. There are so many options and I'll have great difficulty to find my way. For some time I have been working on getting back to doing thumbs on paper. I'm realizing that this is actually one of my favorite steps in the process. And it was silly to try to skip it. 

I think I can learn a lot form Mike Yates careful process. I have a tendency to want to rush through the process. It rarely works and will cost more time later on, with notes and adjustments. I am going to try to take more time working things out on paper before starting the storyboarding process.

Note: Mike's self-portrait at the top of the article comes from this tumblr post.