Day Job – Storyboards

‘Day Job’ goes behind-the-scenes to meet some of our talented staff and take a look at their ‘skills to pay the bills!’ To kick-off this feature, we caught up with our Storyboard Supervisor, Sara Moon, for a quick Q&A!

Q1. Hi Sara, storyboarding is an important part of the animation process – tell us how you got into it as a career?

“I studied animation at university and discovered the many different roles and disciplines, but as I tried them, storyboarding really felt the most natural to me. I worked on previous shows across all departments, before working my way into storyboarding.”

Q2. You need to combine lots of skills – storytelling, drawing and have an understanding of narrative – but what are the hidden skills of being a storyboard artist?

“One of the most important skills I find is problem solving, and being able to make a sequence work. Thumbnailing is a key skill to this, as it helps to just sketch out all the possible ideas for the board and see which direction is working best.”

Q3. What do you draw away from the day job, and is practicing in your own time essential?

“I find that being able to visualise from existing scripts helps me with my own drawing skills from bringing text to drawing. I would say practising and taking inspiration from other works is great too, even media you don’t even expect can inspire!”

Q4. What are the fun things about your job?

“Seeing the final episode finished from a board I did is always exciting. I love seeing how the rest of the team have worked from my sketches. I love being able to just draw cartoony expressions and poses too!”

Q5. What has been your favourite episode of ‘Milo’ to storyboard so far?

“Farmer was one of the earlier episodes I did, and I just really love how it came out. It’s a lot of fun and all the animals are hilarious in it. I love a good chase sequence!”

Cheers Sara!