2026-01-21-posts.md 3.2 KB
title: Storyboard slug: storyboard description: Today I learned <!--- authors:
- name: David Windham title: Something Else url: https://davidawindham.com image_url: https://davidawindham.com/wp-content/themes/daw/img/opengraph_image.jpg --> tags: [art, ideas] image: https://davidawindham.com/wp-content/themes/daw/img/opengraph_image.jpg hide_table_of_contents: true ---
This morning I read what I think is a great essay entitled Immigrant Song[^1] written by Alex Hillkurtz[^2]. I'm mostly writing this as a reminder to read that essay every so often for inspiration.
It's a reflective look at painting as a process and it's Jack Handy deep.
I'm also writing it because the author is a professional storyboard'ist or whatever it may be called - likely a storyboard[^3] artist. When I first started into web publishing, it always reminded me of creating a storyboard. In college I had a class where my professor had us storyboarding up everything and anything. I remember doing one from a mythology book I had and another from a burger king television ad.
I remember at one point building out a plugin designed to create and publish storyboards but I never really polished it up and got it off the ground. It's such a skilled specialized form of communication. It's somewhat universal and it's at the heart of our multimedia communications. I'd imagine it closest to comic strip artist and somewhat invaluable to screenwriters[^4]. It's basically what every Power Point, Google Slides, or whatever new fangled flipamadoozie app you're using[^5][^6].
Every piece of art is a bit of a storyboard sans the format specifics. I recently noted^7 a fella[^8] who goes to great lengths, like buying antiques, to stage his paintings. Here's a painting referencing classic comics[^9].
But back to the essay. The better half and I have been joking recently that folks are just cosplaying roles and it reminded me of what the author wrote:
We chose to paint ourselves into existence.
Don't we though? It's empowering when you really embrace it that way. I don't know if I've just had my head up my arse or if it just requires a certain amount of self awareness or experience, but the feeling of writing the chapters however I'd like is coming more into focus. Perhaps I should storyboard it out for fun.
"One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things" – Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch[^10] - Henry Miller, 1956.
[^1]: immigrant song - https://alexhillkurtzart.substack.com/p/immigrant-song [^2]: Alex Hillkurtz - https://www.alexhillkurtzart.com/about [^3]: storyboard - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storyboard [^4]: Final Draft - https://www.finaldraft.com [^5]: Storyboard Hero - https://storyboardhero.ai [^6]: Boords - https://boords.com
[^8]: William Rochfort - https://www.williamrochfort.com [^9]: The Soda Shop - https://www.williamrochfort.com/previous-work/the-soda-shop [^10]: Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Sur_and_the_Oranges_of_Hieronymus_Bosch