Uploaded August 2012 | Updated September 2026, 52 minutes ago
Not everyone will want to sit through this. I uploaded it for the select few who appreciate watching the process at this length.
Part of my day job is to do storyboard frames and comps for advertising and commercials. Here is a demo of the process captured and time-lapsed down to 3 minutes. The actual time was about 20 minutes. Depending on detail, I am known to be able to crank out a large quantity in a short time.
I did this demonstration strictly to be competitive. A LOT of artists these days in my line of work are resorting to using photos in their work-- doing some heavy photoshop work over top of them- which there is nothing wrong with doing- especially in rush job "art for commerce" as it were. (Even I have had my go of involving photos in a certain kind of storyboard technique in my earlier phases of this work) But speaking quite frankly- there are some that could NOT do it freehand so well if they had to, and the photoshop is a crutch.. Again-- not dissing-- just being competitive; but when it comes to jobs being bid out and artists chosen, it's a hard pill to swallow losing out jobs to other artists who can't even freehand draw that well-- and it takes them 4 times longer to find the right photos and assemble them than it does for one of us other types of artists to just outright draw it. ;-)
But it's all business. That's how we play it. Thankfully, the fluxes in these techniques turn as if on wheel-- and it always comes back to a need for freehand raw creativity. Whenever a software comes out and makes the job easier, it's always "Ooo, aaahhh" and amazing at first. But as soon as it becomes so common place that everyone and their 12 year old kid can do it on a home pc or app, suddenly the client sternly expects some kind of evidence that raw human effort is being put into their campaign or product or image. I have heard SEVERAL mentions lately of clients resorting back to "pencil style" concepts as it depicts a more raw honest creative thinking process.
As usual, photoshop freehand drawing with a Wacom Intuos 3. Timelapsed from 20 minutes down to 3 minutes.
Chris Scalf
chrisscalf.com
chrisscalf.deviantart.com
For fully painted comics (and comics simply featuring covers) by me, please vist here:
darkhorse.com/Search/Browse/chris+scalf/PpwNwkt8
Not everyone will want to sit through this. I uploaded it for the select few who appreciate watching the process at this length.
Part of my day job is to do storyboard frames and comps for advertising and commercials. Here is a demo of the process captured and time-lapsed down to 3 minutes. The actual time was about 20 minutes. Depending on detail, I am known to be able to crank out a large quantity in a short time.
I did this demonstration strictly to be competitive. A LOT of artists these days in my line of work are resorting to using photos in their work-- doing some heavy photoshop work over top of them- which there is nothing wrong with doing- especially in rush job "art for commerce" as it were. (Even I have had my go of involving photos in a certain kind of storyboard technique in my earlier phases of this work) But speaking quite frankly- there are some that could NOT do it freehand so well if they had to, and the photoshop is a crutch.. Again-- not dissing-- just being competitive; but when it comes to jobs being bid out and artists chosen, it's a hard pill to swallow losing out jobs to other artists who can't even freehand draw that well-- and it takes them 4 times longer to find the right photos and assemble them than it does for one of us other types of artists to just outright draw it. ;-)
But it's all business. That's how we play it. Thankfully, the fluxes in these techniques turn as if on wheel-- and it always comes back to a need for freehand raw creativity. Whenever a software comes out and makes the job easier, it's always "Ooo, aaahhh" and amazing at first. But as soon as it becomes so common place that everyone and their 12 year old kid can do it on a home pc or app, suddenly the client sternly expects some kind of evidence that raw human effort is being put into their campaign or product or image. I have heard SEVERAL mentions lately of clients resorting back to "pencil style" concepts as it depicts a more raw honest creative thinking process.
As usual, photoshop freehand drawing with a Wacom Intuos 3. Timelapsed from 20 minutes down to 3 minutes.
Chris Scalf
chrisscalf.com
chrisscalf.deviantart.com
For fully painted comics (and comics simply featuring covers) by me, please vist here:
darkhorse.com/Search/Browse/chris+scalf/PpwNwkt8










