Other uses for marker renderings

Marker renderings are great for any type of presentation. Below is a presentation that I did for the City of Emeryville Civic Center sculpture competition. the presentation was mounted on large styrofoam boards and included a few photos of the models that I built out of wood and metal


My cat Jpeg wants to get in on the act and this gives you an idea of how large the presentation was.



These renderings were 8 x 15" and were done on high quality layout paper. I did not win the competition but it still was a fun project to be involved with.



Being able to do comprehensive renderings has come in very handy at times. When I was an Art Director at Campbell Ewald on the Chevrolet account we had to prepare ideas for ads to present at meetings I often had an edge as most of the other Art Directors could not do comp renderings.

The last of the Dannon frames

I found a few more storyboard frames done for Dannon. This is not the complete commercial, I only could locate five frames in this series, there probably was at least ten frames in this group. These assignments would often be sent to me as a group of six or more commercials on Friday with a Monday AM deadline. That's the life of a storyboard artist.




Because of tight deadline these frames are rendered loosely and it works quite well to indicate motion in the above frame.

Even more Dannon storyboard frames

Here's another group of Dannon storyboard frames. These were also done in the 4 x 5" size and probably had the usual overnight deadline, but it was a fairly simple assignment as I didn't have to look up a lot of oddball reference material. I probably took some Polaroid photos of my wife to use as reference.













All in all, an easy group of frames to render as they were basically done using only two or three colors.

More Dannon storyboard frames

I did a whole series of storyboards for Dannon, I don't recall the ad agency of the Art Director, but it was for one of my NY clients. they were all rendered with Chartpak Art Markers on high quality layout paper in the 4 x 5" size. These are just random frames that I picked out, they are not in sequence. Another tough deadline as usual and delivered to the client over the internet.

Storyboards for Dannon

Storyboard artists get a fantastic variety of assignments, just about anything that you can imagine. Even though the deadlines can be unbelievable, it does make life interesting.









Frame number 8 is the fastest one that I ever rendered, I was well paid for that one !

Not one of my best jobs

These frames were part of an assignment that, if I remember correctly, were created in a very, very short time, overnight of course. These are not examples of my best work, but show the impact of an extremely tough deadline. I can't remember how many frames this series had, but they were still acceptable to the agency because of the circumstances.

Large 6 x 9" storyboard frames

I'm not quite sure just why the agency wanted these frames so large, it probably was an animatic without moving parts. Animatics were normally rendered much larger than the normal storyboard frames and usually had cut out elements that could be moved to make it appear more like an actual live film commercial. Often these assignments would be very complex and they would give me a week or more to produce the images. I do believe that this was a simple animatic and judging from the looseness of the renderings it must have had a pretty rough deadline. I don't recall the product, ad agency or Art Director.

Automotive related storyboards

Having worked on many automotive ad comp renderings and storyboards, Art Directors would often think of me for automotive-related assignments. Automotive work is a very specialized field and it helps if you've had experience in this area. If an artist has rendered cars in paint it is a breeze to do them using markers, for the inexperienced, cars can prove to be difficult subjects. With the deadlines involved in this kind of work one doesn't have time to make mistakes.

More automotive work

Here are a few frames from another storyboard featuring a car, I think this was for a motor oil product. I don't recall the ad agency or who the Art Director was.








Again, these frames were all scanned and delivered over the internet. If the Art Director needed any changes I could quickly do them any send them back in a short time.

Fast renderings for automotive storyboards

Being from Detroit a good deal of my work was automotive related. Most storyboard assignments had tight deadlines and often it was not possible to render the cars in great detail as seen in the examples below. If time allowed, I would normally have added detail such as chrome trim using white paint. These frames were all done 5 x 7" using markers on high quality layout paper.















These frames are from several different automotive storyboards done for a Detroit ad agency whose name escapes me, but they are typical of my fast marker renderings.

Rendering ad comps

Ad comp layouts were done much larger than storyboards and rendered tighter with more detail.


This was a rendering for a magazine ad and was about 11 x 14" in size. I don't remember the ad agency or the art director, but it was for one of my New York clients and was one of a series of ads.


Above is an actual size section of the rendering which gives you an idea of the detail. I used a Pilot Razor Point pen for my basic drawing, then rendered it with markers on high quality layout paper. When I received assignments like this there were usually six or more in a series and they often came in on a Friday with a Monday AM deadline. After the year 2000 I delivered everything over the internet.

The first stage of rendering storyboards

Here is a storyboard assignment that was killed after I did my final drawings before rendering the frames in color. I traced my sketches onto a high quality layout paper using a gray marker pen that had a brush point. I don't recall the product name for the marker, it was a new tool that I was trying.
















You can see that these drawings are quite accurate and detailed. Usually I would draw these with a black Pilot Razor Point pen.