Since I lately work also as freelance storyboard artist for short movies, I felt need to expand my knowledge in this area. I found out, that there are not many books about storyboarding or storytelling through pictures. Except brilliant book, what I would like to review in future, written by Marcos Mateu-Mestre – Framed Ink (Design Studio Press) there is also The Art of Storyboard by John Hart and some others. I will review today book by well known storyboard artist Giuseppe Cristiano – The Storyboard Artist: A Guide to Freelancing in Film, TV, and Advertising. Book was published by Michael Wiese Productions in 2011. Giuseppe Cristiano is artist who is in the industry for more than 20 years. He worked on projects for film, game or comics industry. He is originally from Italy, nowadays living in L.A. and giving lectures about storyboarding and storytelling around the world. This book was created mainly as his handbook for the lectures and also as insider look into the industry, because there is a lot of practical examples and stories “from life”.
Technically, the book is not at good level. I must admit, that cover design of book is one of criteria what tells me to buy or not to buy it. This particular book has nice cover with decent graphic solution and nice illustration. Graphically and typographically the book is decent. Its quite clearly divided, the problem is, that pictures are not numbered. Therefore, sometimes you don’t know to what image author refers in the text. The book is black and white without any colored examples, what is quite shame, because author also writes about using color in storyboarding. Paper quality is low, but because of that all, so is the price. The biggest problems in the book are the mistakes in text and missing words. There are paragraphs, where author wanted to mention reference movies or names and they are just missing, so the reader is also missing the point and it happens quite often during reading. Next time better “doublecheck” everything.
Film Production Design 