Storyboards. They are.... BIG. O.o;

[Drac of the Sharp Smiles]

I really fell for a storyboard I saw for auction. This is odd because I've never previously had any interest at all in storyboards, not even look at them on other people's sites. The auction showed a handful of scans of pages. I bid and won and set aside a few pages in one of my Itoyas. Then a too-heavy package arrived and I opened it to see, not a few pages, but THE WHOLE EPISODE'S WORTH of pages for the given episode. Over forty pages. Obviously, I did not set aside enough space for this. (O.O);;

So, storyboard collectors... Advice? How do you store these sets? They're printed on both sides, which I hadn't expected, and photocopies (which I had suspected, but didn't know for sure until they arrived). My initial thought was to turn again to Itoya. On the site, they advertise a book similar to the ones I already use, but of more appropriate dimensions and with more than 24 pages. I thought I could strip out the black page inserts and put the storyboard pages in so that they could be enjoyed by turning the pages the same way you would read a book. Good idea? Bad idea? Also, these pages are only the second piece of copied art ever that's been welcomed into my collection and I know only to store them the same way I do hand drawn paper sketches. Again: Good idea? Bad idea?

I would love to hear how others have approached this and if there are pitfalls I'm not considering. ^_^

Many Sharp Smiles,
--Drac

[graymouser]

Yeah, storyboards can be quite bulky. I have several that are even bound like a book so separating the pages would not really work. I slip mine into a large cel bag with a couple of sheets of microchamber paper. I then put them in an acid free storage box. It does make viewing not very practical, but I do have a few scans (not particular good ones due to the binding) of my favorites pages.

[Yuuki]

I've kept my storyboards in the bag(s) they came in. Mine are stapled together though, so unless I disassemble the storyboard bundles (which I don't want to do) I just leave them as they are and store them in a plastic box thing I have that protects documents.

Once, one of my storyboard teachers brought in his own original pencil'd storyboards from TMNT and Gargoyles. He'd had them hole punched and stored in the same 3-ring binder for the last 20 years (and brought them a couple times a year for his students to look at). They were in great condition! Not EXACTLY the collector's method of doing things LOL, but storyboards are a little bit more versatile than other animation media.

About the photocopy thing though, that's pretty normal. The original storyboards aren't distributed to the production team, but the studio will make 20-100 photocopies (depending on staff size) and distribute them to the layout/background/animation artists. So if yours is stapled/shows signs of having been stapled/show signs of wear/marked up in red/generally handled, that's most likely because someone in the production pipeline actually used it. I have a storyboard bundle that was very well used, marked-up with notes, and had panels re-drawn in the margins to re-stage them. It's one of those few things (from a collector's point of view) where I'm not disappointing my item is a bit mangled - because I can tell the artist who owned that booklet loved all over it to make their shots in the episode better