Designs on the Sea

Starlog’s Science Fiction Explorer
December 1995
By: Bill Wilson

Excerpts:
“I take a script and an idea and I illustrate what it’s going to end up being in motion. [says Mark Simon, storyboarder of SeaQuest]…

“If you can look at storyboards and tell what’s happening without reading anything, they’re successful… Drawing a pretty picture does not necessarily make motion sense… It’s getting the idea across, more than the art itself, which makes a storyboard successful.

… in the film and television industry, a picture is not worth a thousand words, but actually much more than a thousand dollars. The importance of this visual blueprint of a production’s flow of action and design can’t be underestimated or overlooked…

..Simon brings years of experience in a diverse number of fields to his job as one of seaQuest’s storyboard artists. At age 12, he designed skateboards for Schwinn Bikes, and he later ran a small advertising company, published his own collegiate magazine, syndicated his own weekly cartoons and managed a custom home building company. It is this variety which lends a fresh perspective to his creative pursuits. “For the past 15 years, I’ve been running huge crews, overseeing a ton of money… What I’m doing now is totally creative, and that’s empowering.”

…Simon’s business experience has helped him avoid many of the pitfalls other creatives encounter, and his books share these valuable insights with his readers. “I’ve never been a ‘starving artist’ and I’ve never sold out. But I know business, and that has a lot to do with it. I write about the cold, hard facts: how you work, what the options are, how to make your stuff better. I’m not getting into the theory of design–you go to school to learn that.”

.. I’m passing along the little things I’ve learned that I wish I had known before. I’ve talked with tons of other art directors and they all said, “God, if I had only known… if there was some way to learn this stuff.”

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