Brooke O’Flaherty 
1328 Powell Street | Emeryville, CA 94608 | (415) 497-0205| notsoaverageshark@gmail.com

Applying for 

Position as Story Artist.

Profile 
Experienced animator and graphic designer with six years work experience animating,
storyboarding/directing cutscenes, and working productively in groups for common goal.
Open to work through the creative process under stress, after hours, and with others. Puts
great passion into work, but willing to part with anything that does not fit the bill.

Work Experience 
Graphic Designer (Backgrounds/Character)
Yacht Club Games ​--- Los Angeles, California
● Collaborated on character/world design.
● Helped design cutscenes, remove irrelevant content and decided what would be most
effective animated.
● Incorporate exposition and mood through background art.
Disney Internship
Walt Disney Animation​ --- Los Angeles, California
● Experienced basic professional environment of the field.
● Experience creating and working on group and individual projects alike.
● General understanding of the jobs of Story Artist, Layout Artist, Editorial, and
Development.
● Experience not only with art but aspects of storytelling and filmmaking.
Freelance Illustrator
Various Employers​ --- Emeryville, California
● Experience creating someone else’s vision how they wish to see it.
● Working on strict schedule, having progress results.
● Able to work with low amount of communication, yield accurate result.
 
Education 
Masters in Visual Storytelling and Communication
Stanford University --- Santa Clara, California
Minored in:
● Graphic Design
● Kinetic Imagery

 
 
 
● Art

Skills
● Able to work under time constricts and with low amounts of communication.
● Able to create director’s vision, willing to part with inaccurate storyboards.
● Proficient with Photoshop, ToonBoom, Autodesk Mia, and Sketchbook Pro.

References 
Valerie LaPointe
Pixar Story Artist, Comic Artist, Filmmaker
● Email: valosaurousrex@hotmail.com
Jonathan Calm
Stanford University Assistant Professor of ​Art Practice
● Email: ​jxcalm@stanford.edu
● Phone: ​650-497-3824
Jan Krawitz
Stanford University Professor of ​Documentary Film and Video
● Email: ​krawitz@stanford.edu
● Phone: ​650-723-0704
Sean Velasco
Director of Shovel Knight
● Email: ​bizdev@yachtcubgames.com

Sincerely,

Brooke O’Flaherty
 
 
Brooke O’Flaherty

Ms. Gardner

Hon English Fourth

27 March 2018

Looking Forward and Back

When I was younger, I felt the crushing burden of a heavy question: “What do you want to be when your

older?” What a question. What would I want to be? It felt as though it should be phrased, “How do you want to

spend the rest of your life?” I had always felt stressed by this looming requirement to plan out my life, before I’d

even had one. I was only near age eleven, and really didn’t want to decide what to do with more life than was even

fathomable for me at that point.

I mean, I had only truly been sentient for about nine years at that point.

Art had already peaked my interest then, and I loved choreographing dances to the songs I listened to; of

course, I had quite a bit of background in ballet and singing that I didn’t want to waste. One day, while watching an

“after-the-movie” bit, I had an epiphany. There was a wonderful work environment, full of people who had clearly

worked through tension, yet been able to pull through; full of people that had traveled to the areas which they wrote

about, truly learning and loving each succulent moment of their subject matter. Part of this team spoke to me: the

Story Artist: a group of individuals who sculpt the script into the visual shown on the screen.

Going into this research, I had no clue what the actual job was. I had thought that they were given the script,

and drew out the movie key-frame by key-frame. According to Valerie LaPointe on her blog, the Story Artist

“do[es] everyone’s job before they do it” (LaPointe). They don’t just draw out their ideas, they sell them. It is their

job to create character designs if none are available; it is their job to act out the intentions of each character’s lines

to a crowd; it is their job to figure why each character is relevant to the scene which they appear in, and what in the

room (prop-wise and stage-wise) they interact with; it is their job to figure out the angle which would be most

effective conveying the scene’s emotions (cinematography); it is their job to figure out the pacing of the scene, and

which shots are needed to get the “story’s point” across; it is their job to figure out the thematic relevance of light

and dark in the scene, carefully implementing light sources, light shed, and shadows as visual cues; and finally, it is
 
 
their job to see what may be added into the writing to improve the quality of the scene. I also had no idea that a

Story Artist was near the bottom of a certain food chain: Story Artist - Story Supervisor - Director.

My contact for this project was Pixar Story Artist Valerie LaPointe (a few titles she has worked on are

Brave, Inside Out, and ​The Good Dinosaur​), the woman who eloquently answered all the technical questions about

animation and being a story artist that she had received from students in the past to the best of her ability on her

blog. I saw this as an opportunity to find out, from a professional creator, how she motivated herself and was able to

come up with ideas under time constraints? I’ve felt a connection with Ms. LaPointe from the first time I watched

Pixar’s video about Story Artists, as she knew from a young age that she too wished to be an animator; she wrote a

letter to Disney when younger, I shot an email to Pixar when younger. As of this moment, I have yet to receive a

response, but I hope to improve my work ethic regarding art and the creative process. Already off of her blog posts I

have found countless things to practice, and wonderful ways to get started in terms of internships and skills that

increase the odds of getting the job.

In the future, I hope for the opportunity to be a Story Artist. Still, the job sounds fantastically amazing. The

information I found has made me more determined than ever to pursue storyboarding, for now it seems like an

achievable goal. The information provided by Ms. LaPointe, other animators I’ve listened to, and the ‘bonus

features’ of animated films have helped alleviate the compressing pressure of the heavy question: you are supposed

to use a team to lift heavy objects after all. And that’s how a Story Artist works with the rest of the crew working on

the movie: as a team.

 
 

(her email is a pun of Tyrannosaurus rex and her name so I put a ‘rex’ pun in the title hoping to draw her attention)