Another important thought. Your sketches do not have to be graphic or visual masterpieces. Shame it isn’t readily available, but in 1993 New York’s Pace Gallery had a show entitled “Drawing into Film: Directors’ Drawings.” The show’s accompanying exhibition catalogue shows storyboards produced by well-known directors. Examples of storyboard drawings range from simplistic, almost stick figure sketches of Fastbinder and Hitchcock to the colored drawings of Kurosaua and Fellini to the detailed, visually striking, drawings of Tim Burton. Their storyboards saved millions of dollars in production costs. The cinematic nature of storyboards, as a serial or sequential visual planning tool, along with your narrative, captures and brings clarity to your clients’ imaginations (and yours) by enabling their eye-level participation in the emerging design.
When you have a good draft of your written narrative, your storyboard drawings and text are then shared with friends or work associates. Again, ask them for feedback on the extent to which the storyboard’s moments support and are supported by the written narrative; confusing points along a walkway, foreshadowing, transitions and so on. As you present your narrative, taking your group step-by-step toward, up to, and into and through your design ask them to identify vague moments, limited clarity or association with surroundings, middle ground, and background; flow, continuity. Basically, your team helps refine the clarity of the interplay between the unfolding of your written narrative and its accompanying storyboard.
Reviewed with coworkers, clients, and possibly a sample of end-users, gaps in the emerging storyboard narrative become readily apparent. Comments common to the review include such observations as “Wait a minute. One moment your character is here and then the next drawing shows her there. What happened in between?” Or, “Your character is thinking x, y, or z. What is she seeing, smelling, touching, and hearing that is triggering her thoughts?” Backfilled and made more complete, the combined narrative-storyboard presentation introduces two beneficial kinds of designer-client and designer-end user iterations. One benefits you as the designer. The other involves the degree of involvement of those to whom you are making your presentation.
Pace Gallery, 1993. Drawing into Film: Directors’ Drawings. New York: The Pace Gallery.