Storyboarding Around the World

And across time.

A storyboard panel by Jiří Trnka for A Midsummer Night’s Dream (courtesy of the book Jiří Trnka: Der Puppenfilmer aus Prag)

Happy Thursday! This issue of the Animation Obsessive newsletter is about storyboarding — as it’s been practiced around the world.

In a past issue, we wrote that there “are as many valid ways to storyboard as there are ways to animate.” That’s gotten even clearer to us since then. For many animation artists across time, storyboarding is like handwriting: it’s unique to them. For some, it may be the most personal stage of animation, where idea meets page in its purest form.

Today, we’re looking at animation storyboards from the past 70+ years — from Britain, Japan, France and beyond. Just seeing how the artists approached each project reveals so much. It reminds you that great filmmaking often starts on paper, before any of the time and expense of tools, pipelines and studios.

Here we go!