By Janet Price, Regional Director of Community Education and Transition CLE Rockville
CLE Rockville student Justin Bury can often be found in the student lounge sketching his latest anime-style characters. Justin hopes for a future as a storyboard artist. While he has just started out with college classes in the subject, taking Intro to Animation at Montgomery College, Justin has been drawing and creating storyboards pretty much his whole life. His talent shines through, and his eyes shine as well when he talks to us about his passion.
Have you had much formal training in drawing or art?
No, I’m self-taught for the most part. I’ve been drawing my whole life and learned mostly through trial and error. I’ve learned by looking at books, and by watching artists on YouTube experimenting with different techniques. I switched over to the anime art style because you can express emotions better.
Tell us about some of your characters and their stories.
Wow, where to begin? I have about 32 characters to pick from, most of them developed over the last couple of years. I like to create characters with depth. They have pet peeves, prejudices, and passions. They come from different walks of life – rich, poor, saintly, evil, noble, peasants…
Do you just do the drawings, or do you create a story to go with it?
I create the story in panels. I do the drawings, and there’s usually words accompanying it.
Can you give us an example?
Sure, there’s Kichiro Hatomoto. He’s based on a samurai, a very chivalrous character with a profound sense of honor and a natural curiosity about the world around him. He wants to go exploring. I’ve done a bunch of panels. He’s part of a bygone country ruled by an emperor. There are rival clans that want to take over his clan. He and his father needed to evacuate the country and find a new place to live.
I also do OC fan art, which is a fan-made character for an existing show. One of my characters is Orek Krovich, an OC for the show RWBY. Orek was born into a warrior society, trained to fight monsters from 7 years old. There are academies in four cities where people are trained to fight the monsters with weapons. Orek’s story is that he got scared and abandoned his post during a fight, and his friends were killed. He carries that guilt around, and was exiled for his actions. He decided to become a mercenary, because all he knew was fighting, and unintentionally hooked up with the bad guys, not realizing who they were. Orek is depressed, stern and angry, and now trying to find a new place in the world.
What advice do you have for other students who want to pursue storyboard art?
Study movement. Look at something, and think about how it works in frames. For example, making a fist. You have to think about all the little movements that go into it, like an open hand, then partly closed, then half-closed, then three-quarters closed, and finally a fist. Also, watch animated shorts and try to imagine how they do it. Other than that, it’s all practice and experimenting.
