Check Out Talya Perper’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Talya Perper.

Hi Talya, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I’m a storyboard artist living in Los Angeles, not far from where I work at Warner Bros. Animation in Burbank. I went to film school, not art school, and while I apply the lessons I learned from film school every day for work nowadays, it was difficult to find people who understood my ambition to work in animation until I moved from Boston to Los Angeles in 2014. I took classes on figure drawing and storyboarding while working various desk jobs; I made self-published comic zines and handed them out at conventions; I built connections with other artists who were at my level or a little bit above me career-wise – all of that together helped me get my first storyboard tests (essentially an audition where a production gives you a prompt and you have to storyboard it in their style within a set time, usually a week). The first one that hit was for Pickle & Peanut at Disney in 2016. Then I started on a Flintstones spin-off show called Yabba Dabba Dinosaurs in 2017. I became a director on that show in 2018. When that wrapped, I took a test for Teen Titans GO! and started storyboarding there in 2019 – I’ve been there ever since.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Certainly not! Haha~ I got fired from my first job in LA. In school, I was always a good student, so I thought as long as I worked hard, I could do anything I set my mind to, but the reality was that I was far from a natural at the work they were asking me to do, and I was perhaps a bit too vocal about the fact that I wasn’t interested in becoming a manager, but rather had aspirations for animation. I remember feeling so depressed during that time because it seemed unfathomable that I could put 100% effort into something and still fail. Support from my friends and family really carried me through those times. I was so excited when I got hired on Pickle & Peanut, but I only lasted there for one episode. Despite doing well on the test, the production honestly just didn’t have the bandwidth to train me to the professional level they wanted, which is honestly more common than not. You’d think I’d be more depressed getting fired from Disney than from a non-animation job, but weirdly it was easier, maybe because I was thinking “Well at least this time I have a process for being unemployed lol~” I really appreciate my former director, Ryan Gillis, for encouraging me to not see the departure as a reflection of my talent and to keep trying. When I landed at Yabba Dabba Dinosaurs at WB, it was so clearly a better match for my storyboarding sensibilities and everything started to click into place. I learned so much on the job, and I think the eagerness to learn is part of what kept me there.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
Storyboard artists essentially draw a blueprint of what every shot will look like in the final cut. Teen Titans GO! is script-driven (as opposed to board-driven, in which the board artists are given an outline and told to board and write at the same time), so when we begin storyboarding an episode, we’re given a script and essentially told to draw what’s written. Not everything is perfectly illustrated by the words of the script alone (Ex. “They fight” or “Chaos ensues”), so we as storyboard artists have to decide what we’re looking at for those moments and for how long. The voice acting is provided by our talented cast, but the body language of each character is decided by the board artists. On TTG, we use Adobe Animate to make animatics, i.e. boards timed to audio, which means that we also cut together an audioplay using the voice actors’ dialog plus sound effects and music from WB’s audio library. So being a board artist means you’re applying cinematography, acting, and editing skills on top of the baseline necessary drawing skills. Thankfully, since TTG is animated with puppet rigs in Adobe Animate, we don’t have to match the storyboards too closely to the final models. As long as the general proportions are correct and the drawings are clear, we can afford to draw looser, which is great because we only have 4 weeks to board an 11-minute episode (split between two board artists). It’s hard work, but the creative satisfaction of seeing a joke play exactly how I want it is really fulfilling. My speciality is character acting – it makes otherwise dry scenes that much more engaging.

Alright so before we go can you talk to us a bit about how people can work with you, collaborate with you or support you?
If you’re interested in hiring me to storyboard, write, or direct on an animated production, you can email me at [email protected].

I also offer Storyboard Coaching Hours outside of work – if you have a storyboard you want to take to the next level, a portfolio that needs some polish, or otherwise need some guidance for approaching storyboarding as a career, you can also email me at the address above to make a 1-hour Zoom appointment with me.

You can also follow me on social media, @taretari or talyaperper on most platforms:

https://linktr.ee/talyaperper

Pricing:

• Storyboard Coaching Hours – $90 for a 1-hour Zoom session

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.talyaperper.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/taretari?r=nametag
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/talyaperper/
• Twitter: https://x.com/taretari?lang=en
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8taI-OuKtLJdM5EY5hYLng
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@taretari?

Image Credits
The four Teen Titans GO! storyboard images are property of Warner Bros TV Animation.
The remaining four images are personal artwork by Talya Perper.
The image of Dr. Theodore Cuddles is from “Therapy Time with Dr. Cuddles,” credited to Talya Perper.