Start drawing scenes a crew could actually shoot.

Ted Kinyak has spent twenty years storyboarding for film and television, most famously on Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. Since 2022, he lives and works in the Netherlands.

For two days in Amsterdam, he teaches storyboarding in English to a group of ten people.

A storyboard is a thinking tool. Its job is to make a sequence legible before anyone spends money filming it, which is why the standard it gets held to is clarity rather than beauty. That distinction is the spine of the course. You will spend two days learning how professionals use shot language, composition, screen direction, and pacing to make an idea readable by other people — and then how to put those boards in front of a director or a client and talk about them without over-explaining.

Who this is for

The course does not require you to draw well. It requires you to draw — roughly, quickly, and legibly enough that someone else can read the shot. It is built for people who already work visually in some form, including illustrators, designers, animators, and filmmakers, and for anyone who thinks in images and wants a professional grammar to do it in.

How it works

Day 1 — Foundations | 11:00 - 16:00 (with a lunch break)

What storyboards are and where they are used. Shot types, camera angles, screen direction, continuity. The anatomy of a panel: arrows, motion lines, camera moves, notes, timing, and beats. The day ends with a hands-on exercise — a micro-storyboard of a ten to fifteen second moment, followed by group critique.

Day 2 — Storyboarding as communication | 11:00 - 16:00 (with a lunch break)

Beats, transitions, cause and effect, rhythm and pacing. How to pitch boards verbally to a director or a client, including a role-play. Then an extended work session with one-on-one guidance from Ted, and final presentations to the group.

What you leave with

A completed storyboard sequence, finished to a standard you can present or put in a portfolio. A working command of shot language and visual continuity. And the experience of having presented your boards and defended them out loud, which is the part of the job most people are never taught.

Practical info

Bring your own paper and drawing materials. Pencils and pens are provided.

Price: €329

2 days, five hours each. Only 10 spots. Amsterdam.

About the Master

Ted Kinyak, credited professionally as Ted Slampyak, is an illustrator, comics artist, and storyboard artist based in the Netherlands.

He storyboarded Better Call Saul between 2015 and 2020 and worked on Breaking Bad before it, alongside credits including Terminator Salvation, The Last Stand, The Ridiculous 6, Stargirl, Briarpatch, and most recently Coyote vs. Acme.

He drew the Little Orphan Annie newspaper strip for six years, writes and draws his own comic series Jazz Age, and illustrated the New York Times bestseller 100 Deadly Skills. He works on paper, then scans.