Today we’d like to introduce you to Sam Tung.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I grew up in St. Louis, Missouri and attended Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, where I studied English and focused on medieval literature and screenwriting. After college I moved to Los Angeles, intending to be a television writer — but I always loved drawing and comic books, and ended up getting pulled in that direction.
After landing an internship at Nickelodeon, I realized there was a job called “storyboard artist” where you get to write and draw, but they pay you grown-up money and you can have health insurance, so I decided to pursue that. I landed a dayjob as a production assistant at VFX studio Digital Domain and took night and weekend classes to learn storyboarding, mostly at Concept Design Academy in Pasadena.
Eventually, while working as a coordinator in the Virtual Art Department on The Jungle Book, I was given a shot by Production Designer Christopher Glass to to some commercial storyboarding work for him. Chris then brought me with him to storyboard The Dark Tower in Cape Town, South Africa, which got me into IATSE Local 800, The Art Directors Guild, which represents live-action storyboard artists.
Since then, my career has been a wonderful journey of storyboarding for commercials, film, television, animation, and video games. Some recent highlights include Twisters, X-Men ’97 season one, and the upcoming Metroid Prime 4 and The Odyssey.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
A smooth road is pretty rare in Hollywood, I think. I graduated at the height of the Great Recession, and had to figure out what skills were required, and how to acquire them, to work as an artist in Hollywood. I think a liberal arts education has served me very well in the long run, but it can make for a slower start when you’re up against people graduating with more technical training in film, art, or animation.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I work primarily as a storyboard artist in film, animation, and video games, and I tend to focus in dramatic, action-adventure, and genre-focused projects. Anyone working in Hollywood knows that a good crew is more important than a fancy brand-name project, but when you can get both, it’s really something special. I’m so honored to have gotten to work on properties I loved growing up, and with directors I idolized from afar before moving to LA.
I am a bit of a rare beast in that I move around between mediums — most storyboard artists work in animation or live-action. I love storytelling in every medium, and the variety in my career has really diversified my skillset and network in a way that’s been very beneficial. When work is slow in one area, I can hide out in another. Live-action has cultivated a good sense of camera lenses, light, and camera movement in my storytelling; animation has cultivated the drawing chops and pose-to-pose acting needed to deliver compelling animatics.
I am currently working on pushing into the writer-director space, and my short film, KNIGHTS & RELATIONSHIPS, is currently on the festival circuit while I work on a couple of feature film screenplays.
So, before we go, how can our readers or others connect or collaborate with you? How can they support you?
E-mail is the best way to get ahold of me. I love talking about new projects and figuring out if my writing, illustration, or storyboarding skills will be beneficial to it. I’m also on Instagram and Bluesky.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.stung.art/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stung_art/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sam-tung-3219711a
- Other: https://bsky.app/profile/stung.art
