Because of the overwhelming popularity of Storyboarding Fundamentals since it’s launch in 2015, we’ve added another chapter to the story (see what we did there?). Intermediate Storyboarding will help you continue on your journey to becoming the best storyteller you can be. It’s time to take your story ideas to the next level! Learn more about our new workshop and its incredible mentor, Mike Kunkel.

Whether you’re an animator, director, concept artist, or actor—storytelling is at the heart of what you’re doing as a filmmaker. Without a great story, even the best animation, acting, or special effects can fall completely flat.

Example Storyboard Panel by mentor Mike Kunkel

Becoming a good storyteller takes practice. And if you can have an award-winning cartoonist/director/storyboard and development artist/character designer/screenwriter/animator—aka Mike Kunkel—as your mentor, even better!

Mike has worked as a director, story and development artist, character designer, screenwriter, and animator at studios like Warner Bros, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, Sony Entertainment, Universal Pictures, and Walt Disney Studios. Not bad, right?

Example Storyboard Panel by Mike Kunkel

Mike’s newest workshop, Intermediate Storyboarding, will build on the fundamentals of visual storytelling that students have learned in his first workshop, Storyboarding Fundamentals. To help you get a better idea of what you’ll learn in each class, here’s a little breakdown.

Storyboarding Fundamentals

• Foundational techniques for staging, clarity, emotion, and other fundamental pieces of visual storytelling
• Studying film and TV examples to analyze the how and why of storytelling and framing
• Students create storyboards of well-known existing stories in the form of beat board sequences and image files for practice

Intermediate Storyboarding

• Builds on those foundational techniques learned in Fundamentals
• More in-class demos and hands-on assignments to help students fine-tune their skills
• Students will generate and present their own stories in the form of animatic sequences and image files
• Students will leave this workshop with a start to their own portfolio
• Students will learn how to present and pitch their own idea and stories in the context of a studio

It’s highly recommended that students take Storyboarding Fundamentals and then move on to Intermediate Storyboarding to build on the skills learned in the first workshop! These workshops were designed to work together and to give students a solid foundation for visual storytelling.

Mike says, “I’m excited for this fun new story workshop and its deeper projects to help students continue to build their storytelling instincts.”

We’re excited too!

Storyboard Example by Mike Kunkel

If you want to see more proof that our workshops are amazing, check out some of the great student work that’s come out of Storyboarding Fundamentals alone.

And there’s much more where that came from. Our students continue to impress us with their incredible work term after term! If you want to read about one student’s experience learning storyboarding from Mike Kunkel, be sure to check out this post by Amanda Robertson.

Registration is open! Save your seat for Intermediate Storyboarding or Storyboarding Fundamentals.

Learn Storyboarding Fundamentals or Intermediate Storyboarding from award-winning cartoonist Mike Kunkel, who has worked as a director, story and development artist, character designer, screenwriter, and animator at studios like Warner Bros, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, Sony Entertainment, Universal Pictures, and Walt Disney Studios.