About the role
Historically is an animated history YouTube channel creating highly visual, comedic and educational videos about everything from Ancient Greece to World War II and beyond.
We’re currently looking for a new storyboard artist to join our production team long-term.
Preview our pipeline and your future position here!
This is not a traditional storyboard position where you are simply given a script and asked to draw exactly what it says.
At Historically, the storyboard artist is one of the most creatively important people in the production pipeline. You take the script and turn it into the actual visual experience of the video: deciding compositions, camera movements, character acting, visual storytelling, historical references, jokes, transitions and how each scene will eventually be animated.
Your storyboard effectively becomes the blueprint for the entire production team. Our line artists, background artists, colourists, animators, VFX artists and editors will all be working from what you create.
What You'll Be Doing
- You will receive a completed script divided into scenes, often with initial ideas from the director.
- From there, you will be responsible for turning those ideas into clear production-ready storyboard scenes. This includes:
- Creating interesting compositions, perspectives and camera angles.
- Designing the sequence of events within a scene.
- Deciding character poses, expressions and acting.
- Showing camera pans, zooms and transitions.
- Thinking about how the scene can actually be animated with limited animation.
- Finding and including historical references for characters, locations, weapons, vehicles, clothing, architecture and props.
- Creating accurate map sequences when necessary.
- Adding visual information that improves the educational value of the video.
- Coming up with additional visual jokes, background gags and ideas where appropriate.
- Clearly explaining movement, masks, VFX and animation instructions.
- Organising everything into a clean, understandable layered PSD.
We actively encourage storyboard artists to improve upon the initial scene idea rather than simply execute it. Some of our best visual moments have come from storyboard artists adding ideas we never originally considered.
Our Storyboarding Philosophy
Historically is first and foremost a history channel, not an animated sitcom. The visuals should entertain people, but they should also help them understand what is happening.
If the narration says that Japan lacked certain resources, for example, simply drawing a funny Japanese character isn't enough. The scene might visually show which resources Japan lacked, where those resources existed, and how that connects to what happens next.
We regularly use the visuals to communicate information that isn't explicitly spoken in the narration. The goal is to give the viewer additional things to notice and understand rather than simply illustrating every sentence literally.
The Kind of Artist We're NOT Looking For
We're probably not a good fit if your approach is:
- Narration says "Germany invaded Poland" -> draw Germany punching Poland.
Sometimes that works. But we want someone asking: How did they invade? What should the viewer learn from this shot? What vehicles were involved? What direction are they moving? What happens in the background? Can we communicate Blitzkrieg visually? Can something transition into the following scene? Can we sneak another historical detail into the shot?
The storyboard should add something to the script rather than merely repeat it visually. Creative angles, unusual perspectives and visually ambitious compositions are very strongly encouraged.
About Our Characters
Our characters are called Doodlies.
They're intentionally simple, but their posing and expressions are extremely important. Storyboard artists have considerable freedom to exaggerate their anatomy, facial expressions and poses when it benefits comedy or readability.
Education First. Entertainment Second. (But We Absolutely Want Both)
Creativity, visual comedy, exaggeration, memes and weird ideas are encouraged when they enhance the scene rather than distracting from it.
How We Build a Single Scene
If the script says: “November the fifth is the day. We’ll crawl below parliament, stuff it with explosives, and then light the match. Boom goes parliament,”
We have to make this into a fun scene:
Let's understand the sentence. It's from a video about Guy Fawkes, who was close to nuking the British parliament, but failed. In this specific sentence we have Guy talk and explain the plan.
Our job is to visualize this in the classic Historically style and allocate the assets. We should take the sentence apart to fully understand it:
- November the fifth is the day: We need to show what day it happens, and probably also the time
- We’ll crawl below parliament: We need to show them get into the basement below parliament
- Stuff it with explosives, and then light the match: We need to show them putting explosives down, and lighting them
- Boom goes parliament: The place explodes. Obviously we need to show them disappear then because they didn't die in that plan
A lot of things to show here, but we only have ONE background per scene. We can not show multiple camera angles. At the same time whatever we put in the storyboard, our line-artists and background-artists will draw, and we don't want to give them 20 poses in a single scene because we decided to make Guy Fawkes and his friends walk in the place. We need to be efficient with the asset allocating.
This can go in a lot of different directions:
- Attempt 1: This scene suffers from a couple things. Firstly the scene is flat, and requires a lot of work for our artists. There is a whole crowd, and on top of that Guy Fawkes and his goons need to crawl a long way. Too much work, and the approach is too simple.
- Attempt 2: This attempt is better, but Parliament is not historically accurate, it's right now a simple castle, meaning we lose out on the teaching aspect of the scene. The background being extended is a very good touch, and the camera notes are smart too. I like how the wall disappears to show them being inside already, which is efficient on the resources. Them throwing a smoke bomb to show them going away is smart too. I'd say the only improvement to this scene would be the camera angle (as it's a bit flat still) and maybe some visual gags, such as them placing TNT from Minecraft and maybe there being a nuke already in the distance.
Expectations, Workflow, and Compensation
After that, we upload it to our online environment, the creative director will approve it and it will be sent to the next person. When you get started the creative director will help with ideation, but after a while the training wheels have to come off.
- Output Expectations: We expect you to do 12 of these scenes per day, from Monday to Saturday. A video takes 144 scenes, and is finished in 2 weeks.
- Compensation: Paid $650 per completed video. With 2 videos a month that makes it $1300 a month as a starter salary! :)
- Commitment: It's difficult to make a scene perfect, but we really have a strong goal and vision for Historically. We need someone who is super energized, excited and creative while also being knowledgeable or willing to learn about history. We need someone to stick with us for many years on end, and grow along us just as their salary would!
Creativity > Corporate.
Tell more with less.
Company Information
Arch Channel Group
Arch Channel Group is a collection of YouTube channels based in the Netherlands working worldwide with remote colleagues.