How things have changed! These days there is a reasonably affordable ‘Art Of’ book for every animated film, and you can have it delivered right to your front door. And if you’re a poor art student, you can find ridiculous amounts of concept art and production design online for free. In fact, there’s so much out there, that at times you might feel a little overwhelmed.

Storyboard artist Joscha van Deijk is a new contributor. He will be writing about cinema, comics, video games, and other things that inspire him on a daily basis. His first Top 5 features artists with an impressive body of work a strong personal style. These are his five concept artists you should know:

Alberto Mielgo

Alberto Mielgo has worked on some extremely commercial projects like the Harry Potter films, a Beatles game and the Disney TV show Tron Uprising, for which he won an Annie and Emmy award as Best Art Director / Production Designer in 2013. But make no mistake, Mielgo has the sensitivity of a true fine-artist.

Alberto Mielgo was born in Spain and studied under the famous painter Antonio López García. Apart from his commercial assignments, Mielgo also does personal work in oil and gouache. In 2012 he held a gallery show of his oil paintings. Large, intimate paintings of adult movie stars and confronting self portraits that radiate feelings of loss and loneliness.

His signature style has an abstraction to it that, at times (paradoxically), manages to create an almost hyperrealistic effect. A great example of this can be found in the amazing backgrounds he did for the The Beatles: Rockband game intro. An amazing video (directed by Pete Candeland, with stunning character designs by Robert Valley) that, in my opinion, is one of the greatest examples of commissioned work ever done in animation.

Site: www.albertomielgo.com
Instagram: www.instagram.com/albertomielgo

Kevin Dart

In his still short career, Illustrator and Animation Director Kevin Dart has already worked for pretty much all the major animation studios. He interned at Pixar, worked as a Character Designer for LAIKA, did visual development at DreamWorks and Disney, and he created backgrounds for Genndy Tartakovsky’s short-lived Cartoon Network series Sym-Bionic Titan.

Dart is also the creator of Yuki 7: a 1960’s spy character that feels like a mix of the classic James Bond, Danger: Diabolik and The Thunderbirds. A similar vintage vibe can be found in the award winning commercial A Year of Sun with Mr. Persol and in his more recent short FORMS IN NATURE: Understanding Our Universe.

Kevin Dart’s work has a classic and vintage feel to it, without it ever becoming a blatant rip-off of an existing style. Instead, he manages to combine his modernist influences and his love of sixties cinema into something fresh and very personal that feels traditional and contemporary at the same time.

Tumblr: kevindart.tumblr.com
Yuki 7: www.yuki-7.com

Brittney Lee

Just like Kevin Dart, Brittney Lee’s work is very much inspired by modernist artists from the 1950’s and 1960’s. But where Dart primarily gets his inspiration from book illustrators like Charlie Harper, Lee seems to be channeling the legendary production designer Mary Blair. So it is perfectly appropriate that Lee is now working at Disney, the same studio for which Mary Blair did her famous designs.

Some years ago Lee began experimenting with paper sculptures. Three dimensional illustrations painstakingly built up out of cut-out pieces of paper. These stunning dioramas have since become a major influence on other artists. In fact, Brittney Lee is probably one of today’s most influential animation artists.

Apart from her strong visual style, the thing that makes Lee’s work stand out is the appeal of it. ‘Appeal’ is one of the 12 animation principles defined in Disney’s animation bible The Illusion of Life, but the exact meaning of ‘appeal’ is hard to describe. Similar to something like charisma, it doesn’t necessarily have much to do with the level or skill of the artist. It’s pretty much the X-factor of animation. If you want to know more about appeal, Brittney Lee’s blog (which goes back all the way to her student-work) seems like a perfect place to start!

Blog: britsketch.blogspot.com
Instagram: instagram.com/britsketch/

Ian McQue

The work of ‘Pro Doodler’ Ian McQue is far removed from the fairylike images of Brittney Lee. It has more of a blue-collar vibe to it. Recurring subjects in his personal work are: astronauts (spacemen), robots, funky vehicles, anything with cables or tubes attached to it, and especially flying boats. He has done many illustrations of these rusty ships docking at floating scrapyard harbors or being worked on by rough welders.

McQue has a background in game design. From the mid 1990’s until 2014 he worked for Rockstar Games, where he was an Art Director and Concept Artist on the best-selling Grand Theft Auto games. These days he is working as a freelance artist for games and film.

Ian McQue works in a very clean and clear style and he is a superb draftsman. His digital work has a directness to it that is far from the meticulously rendered digital paintings that are most commonly associated with game design. Looking at his work you get a sense that he might not not be unlike those rough welder types he likes to draw: a guy that gets the job done.

Blog: mcqueconcept.blogspot.com
Twitter: twitter.com/ianmcque

Florent Sacré

Like Ian McQue, Florent Sacré has worked for some of the hottest games out there. He has been working for Ubisoft since 1997. Most recently he worked as a Creative Director on Assassin’s Creed Unity. Aside from his work as a Concept Artist, he also draws comics.

Florent Sacré is a bit of an enigma. This is a rare thing these days, now that everyone is throwing the most intimate details of their lives online. And although Sacré shares his work on Blogspot, Tumblr and Facebook there is little to be found about the artist himself.

The work of Florent Sacré is another example of concept art with a strong personal style. Sacré works in the tradition of the Franco-Belgian comics (Bande Dessinée). The thing that stands out most in his work is his bold line-work. Even when he is working digitally it feels as if his work was inked with an old fashioned crown nib. When we think of concept art we probably don’t think of work in the tradition of Tintin and Spirou, but Florent Sacré’s work perfectly shows that great concept art isn’t limited to a single style.

Tumblr: fsacre.tumblr.com
Facebook: facebook.com/florent.sacre.artwork

The post Concept Artists You Should Know appeared first on Submarine Channel.

There is one thing I don’t see mentioned in those ‘another reason not to go to film school’ comments online, and that is the importance of a curriculum. If you do decide to create your own schooling by watching tutorials and video essays online, how do you select what to watch? How to challenge yourself? You need a ‘curator’ – someone who can assemble a broad selection of material for you to study. Sometimes it might be about stuff you already know, other times it might introduce you to things that are totally new to you.

Please allow me to be your curator today, and let me introduce you to some of the great film lessons that can be found online. I hope these videos will inspire you. If you have a favorite video essay, lecture or presentation that is not on this list, please leave a comment.

This is Joscha van Deijk’s Top 5 of film lessons found on YouTube.

1. Mark Andrews; CalArts Story Lecture (2 parts)

You might know Mark Andrews as the co-director of Brave, but he started as a storyboard artist, working on films like Spider-Man, The Iron Giant & The Incredibles.

In this lecture he shows his take on a Pixar internship assignment. In the first video we get to see him pitch a storyboard based on the Greek myth of Icarus. In the second video, Mandrews explains his approach to storyboarding and visual storytelling.

These videos are well known amongst storyboard artists, especially Andrews’ rant against the use of thumbnails. (“Waste of time!”) This isn’t a lecture on storyboarding though, it really is about storytelling and filmmaking – relevant to anybody who is interested in the art of (visual) storytelling. The biggest lesson to learn here, is that the story process is messy. You need mistakes and approaches that don’t work, before you can get to the stuff that does.

If you’d like to take a better look at the Icarus board he pitches in the first video you can check it out on his blog.

Further Watching

Andrew Stanton: The clues to a great story
Curiosity, Collaboration & imagination – Nate Stanton

2. Tony Zhou (Every Frame a Painting); Joel & Ethan Coen – Shot | Reverse Shot

Editor Tony Zhou is the man behind the much loved YouTube channel Every Frame a Painting; a channel filled with beautiful, slick videos in which Zhou discusses different aspects of filmmaking (with a slight emphasis on editing). All of Zhou’s videos, ranging from the composition of movement in the films of Akira Kurosawa, to the insane action comedies of Jackie Chan, are highly recommended.

This one is probably my favorite, because it deals with such a fundamental technique of filmmaking. Unlike many other contemporary filmmakers, the Coen brothers plan their films to the extreme. Instead of shooting a lot and composing their films in the editing room, the Coens shoot only what they need. It is nice to see how they use this basic, often under-appreciated, technique to strengthen and personalize their films. I also love the little interlude where Roger Deakins (probably the greatest cinematographer of our time) demonstrates why he shoots dialogue the way he does.

Further Watching

Directing – The Fine Arts of Blocking and Composition
The Coen Brothers with Noah Baumbach: Where and How to Begin a Film?

3. Joey Scoma (Rocket Jump film School); Die Hard Editing Concepts

The Five Star Collection DVD of Die Hard came with an extra, where the viewer could remix a series of used and unused takes from the film, to recreate his or her own version of two iconic sequences from the movie franchise. In this great video, Joey Scoma explains how this awesome DVD extra was his introduction to film editing.

Scoma illustrates three of the basics of film editing: the A-B-A structure of a point-of-view cutaway, cutting between camera movement, and breaking the 180° rule. What I love about these examples is that you can actually see why most of the possible variations don’t work. It is one thing to know you shouldn’t do something, it is something else to actually see what happens when you do it anyway. And it’s pretty cool to have examples that were created with outtakes from this classic action film.

Further Reading

Cuts & Transitions 101
David Lean’s Scene Transitions

4. Evan Puschak (The Nerdwriter): Batman v Superman: The Fundamental Flaw

I’m not too fond of articles and essays about things that don’t work. I prefer to hear about the stuff that people do like: what actually inspires them, or gets them excited. But there are exceptions, and at times you can learn a lot from looking at something you don’t like, and try to figure out why it isn’t working for you.

It helps if the analysis is done respectfully, which is the case in this video essay by Evan ‘The Nerdwriter’ Puschak. Instead of stringing together a series of insults and jokes at the expense of Zack Snyder, Puschak has carefully researched the flawed way in which Snyder tells a story.

The Nerdwriter posts a video every Wednesday, which is impressive, especially since every single one of them is very well produced, mixed and edited. I love his essays on film and art. He also makes videos on politics, music and literature. The Nerdwriter’s bite-sized videos always have an original hook, and his careful and solid wording make these some of the finest film articles I’ve found online thus far.

Further Reading

The Social Network – Designing Dialogue
Mr. Plinkett’s Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith Review

5. Mike Hill: The Forgotten Art of Blockbuster Cinema

Now that we are almost done with your introduction into the YouTube School of Film, let’s end this Top 5 with an hour long lecture! Designer Mike Hill knows a thing or two about storytelling. In this lecture, Hill uses Terminator 2 as a case study to illustrate the story fundamentals of Joseph Campbell’s monomyth structure, as well as the use of Jungian archetypes.

This might sound seriously boring, but if you take the time to watch this, you’ll be surprised by how entertaining the lecture is. T2 is the perfect case-study to explain these classic subjects. And the video shows just how solid the storytelling in those great blockbusters from the 1980’s and 1990’s really was.

This lecture is a fun and very understandable introduction into some film school essentials. More than the other videos in this Top 5, this one encourages you to seek out more information: new movies, and books by Campbell, Jung and the likes. It does what all good schools should do: it motivates you to look beyond what you already know; encourages you to search out new inspiration. And, by doing this, it pushes you to grow.

Further Watching

JJ Abrams: the mystery box
The Spielberg Oner

The post Great Lessons from the YouTube School of Film appeared first on Submarine Channel.

One of the most popular story games is the Next 5. To play this game you need a photo, or an illustration, or even a word (more on that later). You then use this photo to come up with the next five shots of the story. The idea is to take a random photo and treat it as the first panel of a story. You have to come up with the next five panels – each one picturing a unique, individual shot. Together these six should convey a complete idea. Dialogue is sometimes added, but ideally the goal is to use only images to tell your story.

If you’re a student interested in story, or you just want to put some storyboards in your portfolio, this game is a great way to get started! It is fast and fun and it will give a pretty good indication of your story skills. It shows what kind of crazy stuff you can come up with on the fly. It’s also a great exercise in clarity; one of the most important things in storyboarding. And because of the limitation of panels, you need to be very economic in the way you tell your story.

Here is my top 5 of Next 5 stories done by professional board artists.

1. Emma Coats

You might know Emma Coats from her 22 story basics. This series of tweets about the things she learned while working as a story artist at Pixar went viral a few years ago.

For this Next 5 storyboard, Emma started with this Flickr photo. I like how she cuts from the (given) close opening shot to a wide establishing shot. She shows us how this scene is laid out before going close to introduce the characters. This little sequence is also a good example of maintaining screen side. Note how the bird man is always on the left side of the frame, while the girl is kept on the right.

Emma’s tumblr (which unfortunately hasn’t been updated in two years) is a fantastic place to gather story wisdom. When somebody asked her where she got the inspiration to come up with this particular storyboard Emma explained that she starts by asking herself, ‘What wouldn’t happen next’. She looks at the situation shown in the photo and wonders what would never happen here. Then she asks herself, ‘but if it did happen, why would it? (…) You have a situation and something interesting + contradictory; the story is in how you justify what’s going on. How you explain it.”

2. Mike Yates

Many storyboard artists are already in their late 30’s by the time they start working at one of the major studios. Michael Yates on the other hand is still a young guy, but he has already worked (or interned) at Moonbot Studios, Walt Disney Feature Animation and DreamWorks. These days he is working as a story artist at Pixar.

As a student at Ringling, Michael used to post a lot on his Blogger. He still updates his Tumblr every once in a while. Browsing through these blogs you can see how he always keeps working on his story skills, and you’ll see he used to do a lot of these exercises. Back when I was in school I loved browsing blogs by professionals I admired. I still do. It is so cool to see their growth. And it’s comforting to discover that they didn’t start out as the art superstars they are today.

Michael did this Next 5 back in 2011. It was based on this picture. As you can see Michael is deviating from the original exercise a little. The first three images are actually one single shot. There are only five images instead of six. But that’s okay. The objective of games like this is not to be dogmatic about it. It should be a fun way to jumpstart your imagination while at the same time improving your skills. If you have a great idea that’s just a little different, go for it!

3. Lissa Treiman

This is probably my all-time favorite Next 5. And, by the way, I also love seeing these different Next 5’s together. I don’t know about you guys, but I can immediately feel what kind of film all these sequences are from. Lissa Treiman’s Next 5 is of course from a super romantic Western drama.

Lissa Treiman works at Disney Feature Animation and is also known for drawing the comic Giant Days. She occasionally updates her Tumblr and she shares her art on Twitter.

The board was inspired by this photo. As you can see to make the photo fit a film-sized frame, Lissa had to adjust the aspect ratio. Just like Michael she ‘cheats’ a little, she has added a panel to show the horse’s foot entering the frame in the first shot, making this more of a Next 6, I guess.

Lissa gave some insight into how she likes to start with these exercises for another Next 5 she posted on her Tumblr. While looking at the photo she wonders what question the photo poses, that she’s going to answer in her boards. “Where are we? What/who are we looking at? What/who is looking at it (the answer to this can be ‘the audience’)? WHY are they looking at it? etc.”

Lissa also mentions how she renders her Next 5’s in more detail than her storyboard assignments, adding, “In storyboarding the important thing is to draw quickly and clearly. I chose to get fancy :)”

4. John Nevarez

Some time ago John Nevarez shared his take on the Next 5 on his Facebook. He started with a vintage pulp illustration as his source of inspiration and drew the next six panels (instead of five).

John Nevarez drew three different boards instead of just one. This being the third and final take. The great thing about this is that it pushes you to go beyond your initial idea, which tend to be a bit more obvious.

John has worked both in story and as a vis-dev artist at most of the major studios. These days he is working at Sony. John is a fantastic draftsman, but you can tell that he didn’t care to much about drawing pretty when he was doing this. Not that this board doesn’t look good, I think it looks spectacular. But you can tell he was working fast. Just look at the raw energy in that sketch of the cat attacking the axe murderer!

The final two panels of this board are a perfect example of how rough and messy a board can be, while still clearly communicating what’s going on in the story. If you have time you can go over your rough drawings and clean ‘em up, but you don’t need to. All you need to convey the idea is here.

5. Austin Madison

Why use six or even seven panels to tell a story, if you can do it in just four? About five years ago Austin Madison would post these four-panel story challenges on his blog. The challenge was to do a mini sequence of only four panels based on a word or phrase. The challenge for this one was ‘Tournament Squirrel’.

This little storyboard is a perfect example of compiling information. If you work with such a limited amount of panels, you’ll need to show more than one thing in each frame. In the first panel we see the squire putting the squirrel in a boot. We are also introduced to the knight with the red cross, who is preparing for a tournament. And in the last panel we see the squire getting paid by the opponent, as the first knight is being carried away on a stretcher.

If you would board this out in detail these moments wouldn’t happen simultaneously. But by putting them in the same shot, you’re being more economic than when you’d have to cut to a separate shot with the second action.

Austin Madison has worked both as an animator and as a story artist at Pixar. (He’s still there. If someone knows at which department he’s currently working, we’d love to know!). He regularly posts art and tips on his Tumblr.

If this article inspires you to do one of these please do leave your link on Twitter or Facebook. We’d love to see what you come up with!

The post Next 5 Storyboards appeared first on Submarine Channel.

J Todd Anderson, regular storyboard artist of the Coen Brothers.

Storyboards can be especially useful in visual effects and action sequences. But they can also be a great tool to visualize written scenes or to help overcome productional challenges, as J Todd Anderson, who I talked to for this article, explains.

The technique of storyboarding was invented in the Walt Disney Studios sometime in the 1930’s.*  It didn’t take long until live action filmmakers also began to use storyboards. In 1939, Gone with the Wind was one of the first films to be fully storyboarded. As of the 1940’s storyboarding became an essential part of the filmmaking process, and it still is today.

Presenting, in chronological order, my Top 5 Storyboards from Famous Films

1. Psycho, storyboards by Saul Bass (1960)

Click image to see the full size.

“Any improvisations are made in the office, while the film is being put on paper. I mean to improvise on the set, with all those electricians and carpenters around? I personally don’t see how it’s done. Imagine a composer with sheets of blank lines in front of him. And a 100 piece orchestra. And he’s thinking and then he calls up, he says: ‘Flute, give me a note, would you?’ And blob, you get the note and he writes it down. Now that’s what improvisation is on the set. I don’t believe in it.”

The above quote comes from a very entertaining and interesting interview session with Alfred Hitchcock, in which he answers questions about what would be his final film, Family Plot. It should not be a surprise that Hitchcock liked working with storyboards. He claimed to see a film in his mind completely and storyboards were a perfect way for him to show the images he saw in his mind to his cast and crew.

These famous storyboards were drawn by Saul Bass, who is best known for his legendary work as a title and poster designer. During the 1960’s Bass, working as a visual or pictorial consultant, did storyboards for a number of films. There is some controversy surrounding his work on Psycho. After Hitchcock’s death, Saul Bass claimed that he had also (partially) directed this iconic scene, which was disputed by other people involved in the production.

2. Alien, storyboards by Ridley Scott (1979)

Click image to see the full size.

Like Alfred Hitchcock, whose first film job was designing title cards for silent films, Ridley Scott, has a background as a draftsman. After he graduated from art school he founded a production company together with his brother, Tony, through which they primarily produced commercials.

In advertising, storyboards are used extensively. Not just as a productional tool, but also to convince the client of a creative concept. For inexperienced people it can be difficult to read a script. Sketching it out makes it is easier to communicate an idea. Because this can be a way to increase a commercial’s budget, advertising storyboards are often rendered in much more detail than those made for feature films. Ridley Scott brought this way of storyboarding to the production of Alien –and not without success.

After he agreed to do the film, the studio asked him to wait in England for his contract to come through. When he returned to the studio a month later, Scott had drawn out the entire screenplay in storyboard form. Seeing the way he wanted to visualize the script, convinced the studio to double the budget.

On his recent films Ridley Scott likes to work with professional storyboard artists. They usually start out with the director’s own thumbnail sketches, which are now lovingly known as Ridleygrams. In a DVD extra from Hannibal Scott explains that the process of talking through the script and his sketches with a storyboard artist totally prepares him. So that when he hits the set he knows exactly what he wants to shoot.

3. Jurassic Park, storyboards by Dave Lowry (1993)

Click image to see the full size.

These storyboards from the iconic final raptor sequence in Jurassic Park, were drawn by Dave Lowry. Lowry is an incredibly experienced artist who has worked on more than 70 feature films. He is a regular collaborator of Steven Spielberg and has worked on all Jurassic Park films, including 2015’s Jurassic World.

Steven Spielberg himself doesn’t have a background as a graphic artist, but he still likes to brief storyboard artists with rough sketches of his shots. (As he explains in this video [https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=nBH89Y0Xj7c]) Even when a director is not a skilled draftsman, it is not uncommon for him or her to do sketches that are then turned into storyboards by a sketch artist. It is often very helpful for both the director and the storyboard artist, because it forces the director to think about the best way to visually tell the story. Like Ridley Scott saying that his talks with the storyboard artist are almost a preparation for the actual shoot, these rough thumbnails are a first step towards the final image.

Spielberg used to work with a number of storyboard artists. There were 6 different artists doing storyboards for Jurassic Park. He even liked to have one or two sketch artists available on set, to quickly sketch out ideas that might come up last minute. But is seems that Spielberg is using less storyboards these days. Films like Amistad, Lincoln, Bridge of Spies and even Saving Private Ryan were not storyboarded at all, except for the occasional sequence.

Is this a good thing? Well, Raiders of the Lost Ark was fully storyboarded from beginning to end, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Chrystal Skull was not…

4. No Country for Old Men, storyboards by J Todd Anderson (2007)

Click images to see the full size.

As mentioned in my previous Top 5, Joel and Ethan Coen are known to be extremely economic in the way they shoot their films. There are no deleted scenes because they plan everything out in detail before the shoot and pretty much film only what they need. Storyboards are an important part of this economic process.

Ever since their second film, Raising Arizona, the Coen brothers have been cooperating with storyboard artist J Todd Anderson. Together they storyboard the entire film. They’ll get together very early in the process, when the Coens have a version of the screenplay. But this will be an early draft, as they know a lot of things will change during the storyboarding process.

For J Todd Anderson this is not a creative process, he sees it as interpretative. “What the storyboard artist has to do is ask the right questions and draw what is in the director’s head. Your job is to get them what they want.” Because of this Anderson will not read the script in detail before getting started. He will glaze over it, to get a feeling of what it’s about and what is happening in the story, but he doesn’t want to develop too many personal ideas that might get in the way of the director’s images.

Anderson says that the Coens work “very conditional, step by step. What the Coens do is, they don’t go from script to camera, they go from script to storyboard. The way they work is by drawing out every set-up. Boarding out your set-ups is the best way to get you movie drawn.” If there are set-ups where the editing goes back and forth between the same shots (i.e. shot / reverse shot) Anderson will draw each set-up once. But if there are big changes or visual effects in the shot, it might be necessary to draw multiple versions of a single set-up.

Throughout the process there will be between three and four storyboard passes of every scene. Sometimes the storyboard drawings give the Coens new ideas. In this way the storyboards will influence the next versions of a screenplay. Anderson will have an office with the rest of the crew and people will come in to check up on his boards hoping to get early information about sets, props or costumes. “When the boards get drawn, what happens, is that a lot of information is being made public to the people working on the show. I have this rule that they can’t take the boards out of my office when I’m still working on them, but they can look at them in my office. And so people from different departments will come in and try to find out if I know in what direction the brothers are going. Like costumes, ‘are they talking raincoats here or something else?’ And sometimes I know and other times I have to tell ‘em you’ll have to wait on that a bit longer.”

According to Anderson the idea of storyboarding is bringing the idea to everybody. Making sure that everybody understands it. “A picture will top a word every time.” He still likes to work traditionally, although he occasionally does use an iPad Pro to draw with. But paper is often still faster because of the immediacy of pencil on paper. He’ll draw 25 to 30 panels per day. Rough thumbnailing can be done even faster.

“My boards are pretty basic. Even when I’ve done my final pass they won’t look like comic books but everything will be there: eye lines, and angles. It’s about information. It’s not about pretty pictures, it’s about conveying the shot. When the boards are done they’ll make them into a book so that everybody on the set can look at it. And everybody knows what we’re going to do, which set-ups there’ll be and such. You can save all the usual problems ahead of shooting by working with a good artist and a floor plan.”

5. Mad Max Fury Road, storyboards by Mark Sexton (2015)

Click images to see the full size.

The fourth installment in the Mad Max franchise was a long time in the making. Director George Miller had been working on it going back all the way to 1998. Mark Sexton, who drew these awesome storyboards, worked on the film as a Lead Storyboard Artist between 2000 and 2002. Due to a combination of productional difficulties it would take another 13 years until the film would be released.

Every image in the film was carefully thought out in storyboard form. (The final storyboard existed out of more than 3500 panels) The film notoriously started without a written script and was actually ‘written’ in storyboards, Miller felt that the film had to be put together visually because it is easier to design action that way. This visual way of scripting helped to make Mad Max an iconic piece of visual storytelling.

Many of today’s big action scenes will be shot from several angles using multiple cameras, only to be put together in editing. In Fury Road they used a more classical approach, making sure that there was a strong visual narrative and that the audience could always follow the story without being confused. In a story that features multiple characters chasing each other through a desert in more than 80 vehicles, this is no small feat. By designing all the shots in storyboard form Fury Road turned what could easily have been a chaotic mess into a streamlined action classic that would go on to win 6 Academy Awards and currently holds a 97% score on rotten Tomatoes.

Special thanks to the wonderful Submarine Channel intern Asya Sagiroglu who helped me with the research for this article.

* It is unknown who exactly was the first artist to sketch out shots on separate pieces of paper, but Walt Disney supposedly gave the credit to animator Webb Smith.

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