David Alegre: How I got Into Storyboarding (Twitter Transcript)
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| Storyboard process by David Alegre, via Tumblr |
Over on Twitter Cartoon Network story artist David Alegre gave a great and elaborate answer to the question of how to get into storyboarding as a profession.
I recognize a lot of what David talks about. As an (aspiring) professional artist you'll discover that your path is super personal. The lessons you will have to learn are different from those of anybody else. This sometimes makes it difficult to judge how far on your path you are, because you can not easily compare it to the road your fellow artists are taking. Just like David I have gained a lot from meeting people, both online and in real life. Your network is super important. Don't see people and relationships as something you can use to move up on a ladder, but try to make real and lasting connections with people.
I compiled his thread into this post. As usual I did some minor editing:
David Alegre: Someone tweeted at me asking how one gets a storyboard job and I wanted to give them my take on it.
First off: I’ve received this question a lot from a lot of aspiring storyboarders, and I’ve also received a fair amount of distress and despair over the fact that it’s a question that is often ignored and unanswered . . . I don’t speak for the entire animation industry, but quite frankly, it’s a hard question to answer. Because in my experience, everyone’s journey into the industry is a highly personal and specific to the individual: there is no one way, and certainly nothing that can be explained sufficiently in a series of tweets. And because everyone’s journeys are calibrated to how they work, how they socialize, what their own work ethic is, it’s hard to suggest that another person follow their path, which was likely rife with stumbles and lessons hard learned, firsthand.
So, to people that I may have slighted by not answering or dodging this question, I’m sorry! My bad! Just know that it’s a question that definitely puts me on the spot, and on the defensive, because it essentially means looking at a lot of unsound choices in the face. So, while I can’t prescribe a universal or reliable roadmap to a storyboarder position, I can share my own personal journey -what’s worked for me. No guarantee that it’ll work for others as well, because we are all different and vibrate at different frequencies
I never went to art school! I went to college for computer science and couldn’t hack it, so I switched to graphic design on my very last semester and did the bare minimum to graduate. I didn’t have any drawing repertoire to speak of, save doodles that were made during classes. When I switched to graphic design, I joined DeviantArt so I could learn how to art. And boy, looking at my first submissions on dA makes me cringe real hard. Take a look! I haven’t deleted a single thing, in an effort to be completely transparent about my very humble beginnings.
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| Old DeviantArt post by David Alegre |
My ‘art school’ was dA, and I drew my ass off on the daily, chasing my art heroes. I didn’t want to do art for cartoons though, I thought it was too hard for me. I wanted to do concept art for video games. And through dA, I landed a few game-related jobs. All small time no-name gigs. I eventually lucked out and got a job that brought me to CA, and in time, I started to get sick of the games industry.
Time check: I’ve been working in concept art and games for almost ten years, from the Philippines to NJ to Philly to Chicago to San Francisco. I finally give animation another look in 2013-2014 and it finally seems like something I’d be into, and I decide to shift gears completely. I wanna do storyboarding now!
I start making (imho) genuine friendships with people in and around the industry, over social media. It’s around this time I wanted to ‘break-in’ to the industry. I had about ten years of experience drawing for a production, I just didn’t know specifically where my skillset overlapped with the cartoons pipeline. So I asked around.
Big caveat though: I shied away from asking complete strangers & made sure to hit up real friends in the industry that I could confide in first. Hitting up someone random for life changing career advice seemed a bit imposing. Some may ask where these conveniently knowledgeable friends appeared from, the answer to that is through social media and conventions that I attended throughout the years. I always had a burning desire to meet people in real life whenever I could, because it made friendships more real and tangible to me. It made it easier to work up the nerve to ask them to spill their guts. I followed the advice I received to the best of my ability -mainly just hitting up studio recruiters and asking if/when productions would be hiring- and took a few storyboard tests. I actually bombed my first one because I read panel count in the test and thought they wanted a comic. And finally, eventually wound up in the right place at the right time and took a test at DreamWorksTV, which landed me my first storyboard job.
The rest wasn’t just history, I had so much more to learn that ten years drawing for myself hadn’t prepared me for! My takeaways: The biggest one is that workin in animation is something that is hard earned and NOT a god-given right. Before I joined the industry, I thought I deserved to be in cartoons because I was such a huge fan with archival knowledge of voice actors, etc. This kind of thinking stunted my growth. Animation is such a technical and collaborative industry. No one cares that you know minutia from cartoons that were cult hits. They care that you do the work, and that you work well with others. Bottom line!
Second is that, at least for storyboarders, in my opinion your artistic voice is a big factor in whether or not you get the job. It shouldn’t be confused with experience. A lot of people get discouraged when they don’t pass a storyboard test and think their lack of experience is to blame. When simply, it was probably more the fact that your voice didn’t align with the show’s voice. If it were truly based on experience, I wouldn’t have gotten a job in the first place. I learned most of my skills on the job, following other people’s examples in real time.
The most important thing that I’ve learned is that you have to PLAY NICE WITH OTHERS! Like, all the time!! This falls in line with the ‘don’t get a big head’ sentiment -cartoons is such a huge collaboration, you’re only creating a bottleneck by being a diva. Everyone suffers!
Oh yeah, also: be patient! Shit’s gonna suck a lot and times will be tough for a long time before things go your way. It took me TEN YEARS of abruptly changing career paths & hometowns before I landed in a place that felt like it was meant for me. Get ready to grind, JRPG style!
That’s pretty much all I have to offer about this subject: be nice, work a lot, be patient! Stick with it, you will success! I’m living proof that you can come from nothing and still find work in cartoons! Also please please please keep in mind that this was just my journey! One person’s irresponsible happy go lucky waltz into cartoons is not necessarily an example to be followed! I sacrificed a lot of time for this. I just had to make with what I had, in order to do a thing I love!
