Storyboard Portfolio Tips by Ben Juwono

Earlier I shared a twitter thread by Disney TV director Ben Juwono on workflow and efficiency for storyboard artists. The other day Ben tweeted out another amazing thread, this one about story portfolios. It is great to get a chance to read how a director browses through a portfolio.

If you don't have the time to read all of it, make sure to browse to the end. Because he has some great tips for students and artists who are building up a story portfolio, including a four week curriculum to build a sequence. Great stuff!

The original twitter thread has been edited by me, to adjust for this blog's format. Also, to add a few pictures to all the text I added some storyboards by Ben Juwono, that I found on his Tumblr.

Ben Juwono: A few tips on making and presenting a storyboard portfolio

Caveat: I'll try to be generic, but keep in mind that all the insight offered here is what I look for as a director. Other directors may care about the stuff I don't care about, and vice versa. 

First is the thing everyone's banging on about: HAVE A WEBSITE WITH NAME & CONTACT INFO. 

The process of hiring usually goes like "hey you know anyone?" "ya, try this person" so it would be great if googling up “[your name] storyboard" leads to a site that contains your storyboard work. It doesn't matter if you use Blogspot/Tumblr/your own. Just have a site that's easily accessed from anywhere when someone looks you up. As directors, we don't attend a formal meeting to go through portfolios, usually we get someone's name during lunch or while getting coffee. Your portfolio doesn't always land on a director's desk while he's in a position to review portfolios. We may see a retweet of your art while we're in the toilet. If your contact info/site isn't readily available, we might forget by the time we get back to our desk.

On the subject of sites: do NOT constantly change your URL. Don't keep changing from iamjohnsmith.blogspot to johnsmithdraws.blogspot to jsmithart.tumblr to jsmithstory.com . It's likely that your new site will show up BELOW your old site on google searches and get missed.

Now is the question of format: single-panel PDF? 4x4 contact sheets? or video animatic? I will say that it never hurts to have all three. Recruiters like 4x4 contact sheets cuz it's easy to see a lot at once. I personally prefer single-panel PDFs I can flip through quickly. I think single-panel PDF is a great general format because the file can easily be shared between directors who are looking to hire, and they can flip through at whatever pace. I tend to go tap-tap-tap-tap-tap fairly quickly, while others tend to look at each panel more carefully. I flip through panels quickly because I personally look for board artists whose stuff plays as a whole- as in the shots cut from one to another nicely and each panel has maximum clarity: you don't need to stare at them for a long time to understand what's going on.

Good drawings are low on my priority list. Someone who can visually show me a story (doesn't even have to be a good story) with maximum clarity, without me having to stop and pause to read dialog, is an instant yes in my book. This is how I work, can't speak for other directors. 

Another benefit of PDF is that for NDA work, you can also easily password protect a PDF to ensure that only someone in a hiring position such as a producer/director/recruiter can see the content. You can also choose to password protect your site, but that seems more complicated.

Video animatic is almost always a bad idea, unless your boards are timed to perfection and presented with well-chosen music, well-acted dialog, and proper SFX. That's all extra work that isn't necessarily going to get you hired, so just avoid it altogether. A video animatic also takes several minutes to get through depending on how long the sequence is. And when SB artists edit their own boards, they tend to be sluggish cuz they wanna show every drawing. This is an era of 45-60sec video content because anything longer gets people bored.

If you present a video animatic that is NOT fully polished, I guarantee you that out of a 4-minute content, about 80% of people won't watch past the first 45 seconds. I know this because that's data from Youtube Analytics. That's why videos these days are all short contents. 

It goes back to the idea of never presenting something that's unfinished. We follow this principle when we do our animatic screenings.  If we present a rough WIP, things that will work with a bit more timing tweaks and sound/music design, may get rewritten because they fall flat. You might say, "But Ben! Your portfolio website is all animatic!" Well, yes, because they're edited and timed and scored and spotted by one of the best animatic editors I've ever worked with. Without that level of polish I would stick with a single-panel PDF or a web-gallery.

Now about the CONTENT of your portfolio: I believe in the magic number three, because two is too little and four is too many. THREE well-done sequences is more than sufficient. The idea is to keep making new sequences and replacing your OLDEST sequence with the NEWEST one. 

You're always going to be judged by the weakest thing in your portfolio. So if it's not that great, better to just leave it out altogether. If you have three great sequences and then a fourth one that's several years old, it'll put people off that you might drop from a YES to a MAYBE. 

How long should each sequence be? I suggest having no more than 150-200 panels PER sequence. Each sequence should have a clear BEGINNING, MIDDLE, and END. If you've drawn 300 panels and your story is just getting started, then you have a feature film, not a storyboard portfolio.

DON'T TRY TO MAKE AN EPIC TALE IN YOUR PORTFOLIO. You're not trying to sell a movie to a studio, you're trying to show a director you can be used in a production pipeline. Pick a simple story with an interesting premise, something fun in the middle, and a satisfying conclusion. Example: A cat chasing a butterfly is separated from his owner & has to navigate 3 mazy blocks, a hungry raccoon, & a crazy cat lady to get home. Plenty of visual fun & games there. At the end owner shows up in the nick of time to rescue cat from crazy cat lady. Simple yet satisfying.

No, that story isn't gonna make thousands of people cry or win Oscars, but that story will showcase your storyboarding ability to tell it CLEARLY and VISUALLY and your storytelling ability to START and FINISH a story. That's sometimes more valuable to a director looking to hire. 

I also highly recommend making your story SILENT. This forces you to figure out the clearest way to convey your story VISUALLY without the cheat of exposition. Also, whenever there's dialog usually you end up with a bunch of panels of talking heads, which is very uninteresting. Remember: your job as a storyboard artist is to tell stories VISUALLY. Yes, sometimes you gotta write additional dialog, but your main job is VISUAL. A board artist who can tell a decent story with ONLY visuals is always going to be at an advantage over ones that have to resort to dialog.

There are shows that are BOARD-DRIVEN, and these shows want to see your ability to write stories. I can't speak from experience because I've never worked in board-driven shows, but I can't imagine them hiring someone because of a few clever lines in their SB portfolio. My understanding is that board-driven shows tend to gravitate toward artists who have dabbled in webcomics anyway, because that's a stronger evidence that they can carry a story from beginning to end than, say a few clever lines of dialog in their SB portfolio. 

I can't imagine a board-driven show turning down someone who visually tells an amazing silent story just because they didn't throw a few lines of dialog in there. Being a storyboard artist is not about the story, but about the clarity with which you tell the story.

Take for example that Carl & Ellie montage at the beginning of UP. That to me is the PERFECT example of visual storytelling without the cheat of exposition & dialog. It hits every emotional beat with maximum impact and clarity and does it VISUALLY. Legendary.

How long should you spend on each sequence? This question comes up a lot and I can't provide a specific answer. If you're unemployed and working full-time on your portfolio, I wouldn't spend more than 4 weeks per sequence. Anything more is dwelling and it's probably best to move on.

Here's a curriculum: 

Week 1: get the story down- who's the lead? what do they want? why do they want it? what's the obstacle? what's the goal? how do they overcome the obstacle? what's the ending? These are all problems that you need to solve. Solve them first before you start.

Week 2: Rough out the seq from beginning to end. If you're stuck somewhere (and you will), keep going. DON'T DWELL. Make a point to FINISH. Problems you've solved earlier may end up creating another problem, but that's what storyboarding is, it's constant problem solving.

Week 3: Finish the sequence as best as you can and send it out for feedback to your friends, teachers, fellow professionals, etc. (it's what networking is for) Politely ask them for their time. Not all the feedback will be useful, so it's up to you to filter the gold from the trash.

Week 4: Apply the feedback you think is useful and revise the sequence. From discussing it with friends, solutions to your problems might appear! Continue to revise and make it a point to FINISH, even if there are still problems. ONE REVISION PASS ONLY, then move on.

Once you're done, start a new story and repeat the process. I guarantee you that the problems you've encountered in the first story will come up in the 2nd and you'll have a better solution for it. You'll also encounter new problems, which is great, that means you're learning! Keep doing this and as soon as you finish your 4th sequence, THROW your 1st sequence OUT of your portfolio and use the 4th to replace it. I guarantee your 4th sequence will be better than your 1st. And your 7th will be better than your 4th, and so on. Until you get a job offer. 

In summary: have a website, be easy to find/contact, have a portfolio with three storyboard sequences, each with a clear beginning middle and end, in 200 panels or less. Keep making new sequences, replace the oldest with the newest. Be nice to people. Maybe one day we'll get to work together!