SIMON ARDOIN
"The Boy" Storyboards
Beginning in the summer of 2021, I was asked by my friend Jonathan Gibney to assist him with his senior film - a story of growing up, loss, and vikings entitled "The Boy." As it turned out, his team was lacking any trained storyboard artists, and as someone with a storyboarding minor, I was more than happy to jump on board. The film revolves around Leif, a young English boy who has to care for his sickly mother and fetch firewood in her place. Little does he know that his life was suddenly about to change, as the vikings chose that very night to continue their early raids on the northern English shores.
When given the script, Jonathan and I spoke for a long time to develop the background of the story and the world around the characters to make sure everything was historically accurate. The film takes place in the late 8th, not long after the first viking raid Lindisfarne. To begin, I primarily started sketching up some small, quick boards while I was at work. They definitely weren't clean by any means, but they were a start to where we wanted to go. The real work began a week or two prior to the start of Fall Quarter.
From there, I started actually working on cleaning things up, added more shots, changed things up, and so forth. It became apparent that I was a little weighed down with all the stuff I had taken on, so after roughing out some quick sketches, a couple of the other people on the team were kind enough to help me out and clean those up. Below, I've put together all the boards I've done myself. At the bottom is the animatic, which shows everyone's work put together.