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Your Education Is Right Around The Corner

After a studio green lights a new cartoon movie, TV series or video game, the first thing they do is assign a supervising director. Two of the first people with their online degree this director then hires are a storyboard artist and story editor. 

Now just because both titles have the word “story” in them does NOT mean they are the same jobs. In fact, they are quite different.

Story editors, at their core, are writers. They began their careers in entertainment by selling their share of scripts on a freelance level, then probably went on to regular post. Besides exceptional scriptwriting skills, the story editor has also proven oral and leadership skills, as part of his job is to direct other scriptwriters. He must also insure whatever is submitted is not only entertaining, but conforms to the project’s bible and the censors.

As implied before, story editors started as scriptwriters. To enter the profession, the best way is to go to an online college for the right Online Animation Degrees or brick-and-mortar counterpart with a good reputation for writing. From there, it’s a matter of submitting script ideas and hoping someone likes what you do, and buys it. From there, sell enough, and one gets the call to edit. 

Storyboard artists are a different breed altogether. A storyboard is the blue print of the project. It’s drawn much like a comic book, only on large flat pages that are posted on a wall. The storyboard artist is the person who fills all the frames. From there, they are shot onto film, frame by frame, into an animatic. The animatic is not only the reference for the animators, but what’s shown to producers before a project is green lit for full production.

Storyboard artists almost always are people who were animators. By this stage in their career, they usually know how to choreograph an action sequence, figure out when to go for a close up or pan, what camera angle and much more…and express all that in the storyboard. It should be noted that there are directors who don’t believe in scripts, too. They just develop the storyboards, get a green light and start producing.

Working in animation, just like just about anything else associated in entertainment, is basically all about going from one project to the next. Both story editors and storyboard artists are usually casting their resumes out the moment they start their latest job. Still, if one builds up a good list of clients both storyboard artists and story editors make over $100,000 a year. It all depends on what city they work in, what kind of studio (film, TV, video, etc.) and the project itself.

Yet there is one other important perk to being an editor or storyboarder, and that is the pro is now one stop away from being either a director, or even better, a creator. They now know how to manage personnel and stories. If they make the right impression, the next they may be doing is hiring their own story editors and storyboard artists with the right online school.

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