Prague and Rio in one night

Who but a storyboard artist can visit Prague and Rio in one night ? This was the usual rush overnight assignment and in spite of the deadline was a fun project to do. I had to find very specific reference material which sometimes can be a real problem, especially if you have a tight deadline. Before I stopped doing storyboards in 2004, every assignment I received for the last year had an overnight deadline.



I can't remember if this is actually Prague or not, but in this frame I had to depict a specific area in a specific European city.


usually I could count on finding reference like this in my large collection of National Geographic magazines or on the internet


Reference material is very important, you can't just make up stuff like this.




The next few frames were of Rio de Janeiro


The happy folks must have been celebrating New Years Eve.




All these frames were rendered with markers on high quality layout paper and delivered over the internet.

Comprehensive ad illustrations

Often when doing a storyboard campaign there are also a group of ad comps to render. The two renderings below were done for a Chicago ad agency, Crammer Krasselt, they were one of my best clients for a number of years.



These ad comps are done much larger than storyboard frames and take quite a bit longer to plan and render. If time permitted I would frequently do two versions of an ad if I had different thoughts on the subject. Sometimes this was done at the early pencil sketch stage.



The renderings below were part of a series of ads, I did two versions of this airport scene. This was done for a New York ad agency, I can't remember which one or who the Art Director was.




I enjoyed creating dramatic rendering and I would often get assignments from Art Directors that wanted an unusual approach.

Craig Smith Gallery invitational party

Last Saturday Craig had another one of his great invitational dinner parties, these events are always great fun, The artists and guests mingle and chat and the food is always first class.


Craig was too busy to pose for me, so I took a couple of photos of him doing some last minute things, changing burnt out light bulbs.


Some of the guests enjoying their meal. That's Craig standing by a Dale Threlkeld painting. If you haven't seen his paintings, drop by the gallery, you'll enjoy his wonderful work. Craig displays a lot of great work, his gallery has 4000 square feet of space. Some of the other artists exhibited are Scott Covert, Stephen Moss, Syvia Ziontz and Judy Mullen.


Here's Gloria, glamorous as usual, standing next to my new painting MUSE.


Yesterday Gloria and I had lunch at Soe Cafe in Sawyer, Michigan, a great local restaurant.


They have one of my new paintings on display, this one is titled RECLINING NUDE.

Storyboards for BP

This was an interesting, but tough assignment. The agency wanted to show a BP gas station with the people in kind of a transparent form, indicating a lot of activity. Storyboards are not always just renderings of scenes, but often the artist must also depict special effects. With markers you have a somewhat limited range of things that can be done, so this can prove to be a difficult task. I had to try a few frames before I was able to come up with the effect they were after. To add to the problem, of course, was the usual tight deadline.




They were very pleased with the result which was fortunate, as there was no time to redo anything. I can't remember the Art Director or ad agency this was done for, I'm pretty sure it was for one of my New York clients.

A fun board to do

This was an interesting assignment, although a rush overnight job as many of them were. The art director was Michael Brennecke of Y & R New York. The locale in the commercial was China and they wanted to show a certain area that had a very distinctive mountain landscape. I had to do a search through all my National Geographics and came up with nothing. Time was flying by and I was getting a bit concerned. Luckily, after searching the internet I found the reference material that I needed. These frames had to be in New York the next morning, delivered over the internet. It's amazing how the computer has changed everything.


These storyboard frames were rendered on high quality layout paper using Chartpak Art Markers. This assignment only had six frames, sometimes I would get twenty or thirty to do overnight. There is always a great deal of deadline pressure when doing ad comps or storyboards.

Storyboards for Doner

Some of the last storyboard work I did was for Doner in Southfield, Michigan. They used to have me come in for a week or two to work on premises when they had a big campaign in the works. Working in house has it's limitations as you can't bring along reference files and books. It also takes a while to get used to all of the activity that's going on in the agency when you're used to working as a loner. Here's part of a series of storyboards that I did about five years ago. The first two frames are typical of my preliminary sketches.



It was kind of fun working back in the Detroit area as I could meet with some of my old buddies that I used to work with. I have a daughter that lives in the area as well.

Squeaking through the night

Sound familiar, fellow storyboarders ?
If you work as a storyboard artist in advertising you can relate to this. Artists that do their work on the computer don't get the squeaks.



These storyboards were done for O & M in New York sometime in the late 1980's. The client was Smith Barney and the art director was Parry Merkley. I also did a whole series of ad comps for the same client. In 1983 I came back from Europe where I worked in Paris for about seven years. Yes, they have tough deadlines over there also.


For most of my time in New York my rep was Diane Boston of Way Art. Diane is a delightful person as well as a great rep, she also kept me very busy even after I left NY and moved back to Michigan.