Writing and Practical Skills for Creating Animation Storyboards by Kidoo Kim

If you want to make animation that actually gets produced, you start here. Kidoo Kim breaks down 32 years of real studio work into a practical storyboard system – from planning and scenario to composition, camera, layout, and rough cut.

🎯 What you’ll learn

• Understand the full series animation pipeline from planning sheet to final film
• Write scenarios, character setups, and background props for pre-production
• Draw production-ready storyboards with eye-level, image lines, and perspective
• Control composition, placement, and screen direction for clear storytelling
• Direct camera work, follow paths, and camera effects for animation
• Manage time with extension, cut-down, and cut distribution techniques
• Board convincing daily-life scenes and dynamic action scenes
• Move from storyboard to layout, key animation, and animatic rough cut

✅ Requirements

• Skills: Basic drawing skills, basic understanding of 2D animation and film terminology
• Tools: CLIP STUDIO PAINT 1.11.4 or higher, Toon Boom Storyboard Pro 20 for demos (optional), drawing tablet recommended

📝 Description

A storyboard is not a sketch. It is the production manual. Directors pull ideas from it, producers pull timing and layout from it. If it is vague, the whole film wobbles. Kidoo Kim hammers this home early: about 70% of quality is locked in at the ideation stage, long before inbetween, color, or filming.

This class skips empty theory and shows the work. You get the full pre-production flow for series and film animation – planning sheet, scenario writing, character design, background and prop setup – then you go straight into board writing. Eye-level, image lines, perspective lines. Short vs. long shots, lens choices, placement vs. movement path, and how screen transitions actually read.

Then comes time and camera. You will practice stretching and compressing time, distributing cuts for rhythm, and using camera work and follow paths that make sense for animation cameras, not live-action. That includes camera terminology, effects, and how to show speed, tension, and impact without confusing the viewer. Daily-life scenes get their own method because, honestly, quiet scenes are harder than fights. Action scenes get broken down into one-to-one vs. one-to-many, with real demos.

The last stretch connects boards to production: layout, key animation timing, and the animatic rough cut. You will see how eye-level and vanishing points carry over into layout, how to adjust animation and camera timing together, and how a five-minute trailer-style animatic locks story flow before staff and tasks are assigned. All of it is taught through 17 hands-on exercises built around real film workflows.

🧑‍🎓 Who this course is for

• 2D animators and illustrators who want to get hired as storyboard artists
• Animation students and indie creators who want to run a proper pre-production process
• Directors and producers who need to read, fix, and communicate with boards better

🧑‍🏫 About the Author

Kidoo Kim is a director and storyboard artist with 32 years in animation. She started as an inbetweener, moved into key animation and layout, then worked in Japan with teams on Detective Conan Movie 4: Captured in Her Eyes and Movie 5: Countdown to Heaven.

Since then she has worked across Korea, Japan, China, and the US – including SUNRISE, MADHOUSE, Warner Bros, Bilibili, HAOLINERS, D.R Movie, and Seoul Movie – on projects like Ultimate Spider-Man, Young Justice, The Animatrix, Dungeon & Fighter, Fairies Albums, and Shinbi’s Haunted House. Now Director at STUDIO SHOE, she teaches the exact writing and directing system she uses on commercial film and series work.

🏁 Final Result

• A complete set of storyboard exercises covering daily-life and action scenes, plus layout and key animation studies finished with an animatic rough cut ready for your portfolio.

📢 Guys, this is a Group Buy campaign, check the GBC forum thread to get access

You can find the course preview in the download section below.