Working Remotely with a London Storyboard Artist

Updated: May 2026 · Written by Seb Antoniou

TL;DR

Why remote works for storyboards

Storyboard work is one of the most remote-friendly disciplines in commercial production, because the deliverable is portable in a way that almost nothing else on set is. The artist draws, sends a flat file, the agency or director reviews, sends notes back, the artist revises. None of that requires the artist to be in the same building as the people commissioning the work.

Three structural reasons this is true:

• Boards are async by nature. A first pass is a static file. It doesn’t need to be drawn live in front of the client. The drawing happens in one block, the review happens in another block. Timezones become a feature, not a bug.
• Revisions are async too. Notes get written down somewhere — Frame.io, email, Slack — and the artist reads them when they start the next session. The communication doesn’t need to be synchronous.
• The scheduled comms slot solves the timezone gap. A 30-minute overlap call once or twice a week handles everything that genuinely needs to be talked through. Most things don’t.

Working remotely with a senior London storyboard artist for a US, EU, or APAC brief is now industry-standard for commercial production. It has been since 2020. The post-COVID norm stuck.

The timezone math

London works on GMT in winter, BST in summer. The offsets that matter for commercial briefs in 2026:

• US East Coast. -5 hours in winter, -4 in summer. London 2pm = New York 9am. Overlap window: 2pm to 6pm London.
• US West Coast. -8 hours in winter, -7 in summer. London 5pm = LA 9am. Overlap window: 5pm to 7pm London, or early morning for the LA team.
• Continental Europe (Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam). +1 hour. London 10am = Paris 11am. Same working day, no math.
• Dubai / Gulf. +3 to +4 hours. London 10am = Dubai 1pm to 2pm. Overlap is most of the London afternoon.
• Singapore / Hong Kong. +7 to +8 hours. London 9am = Singapore 4pm to 5pm. Overlap window: 9am to 12pm London.
• Sydney / Melbourne. +9 to +11 hours depending on daylight saving. London 8am = Sydney 6pm to 7pm. Tight but workable for a daily handoff.

The practical version: pick a 2 to 3 hour daily overlap window with the artist’s working day. Schedule one fixed check-in slot inside that window. Everything else handles itself in writing.

How a remote brief actually runs

The standard three-week rhythm for a 30-second TVC, briefed from outside the UK:

• Week 1 — Kickoff and brief lock. Day 1: 30-minute video kickoff call inside the overlap window. Brief reviewed live. Open questions logged. Day 2 to 4: brief is finalised in a shared doc, references uploaded, contract and PO signed. Day 5: artist confirms start date.
• Week 2 — First pass and revisions round 1. Day 1: artist starts drawing first pass. Day 2: first pass delivered end of London day; client reviews during their day. Day 3: notes back to artist by start of London day. Day 4: revisions delivered end of London day. Day 5: client reviews and signs off, or one more small round.
• Week 3 — Final delivery and pre-pro support. Day 1 to 2: final files delivered in agreed format, on Frame.io or a shared drive. Day 3 onward: artist available for pre-pro meeting attendance (video) and any on-set queries that come up during the shoot.

The rhythm flexes for longer formats — a 90-second hero film usually adds three to five days to the middle week. The structure stays the same.

Comms tools that work

A working set of four tools, used by most senior remote commercial briefs in 2026:

• Slack for chat. One channel per project. The artist, the producer, the agency creative lead, the director if they want to be in it.
• Frame.io for board review. Frame-level commenting beats email chains by an order of magnitude. The agency creative draws on the frame, the artist reads the comment in context.
• Loom for direction notes. A 90-second screen recording from the director walking through what they want is faster and clearer than a 300-word email. The artist can re-watch on their own schedule.
• Notion or Google Docs for the brief. One canonical document, version-tracked. The brief is the source of truth.

What doesn’t work: WhatsApp for project comms (gets lost), email chains for visual review (impossible to find the latest note), Zoom calls for things that could have been a Loom (timezone-burning).

Pre-pro meetings and in-person moments

The pre-pro meeting is the one event in commercial production where remote attendance is worth flagging. Most agencies and production companies run pre-pro as a hybrid meeting — director and key crew in the room, others on video. The storyboard artist’s role at pre-pro is to walk the team through the boards, take notes on any last-minute adjustments, and confirm what’s locked.

Remote attendance via video covers this comfortably. The boards are screen-shared, the artist talks through the camera moves and blocking, notes get logged.

In-person sessions in London are available if your production team is flying in for a shoot. Soho and Shoreditch are the usual venues. Worth flagging during the kickoff call so the dates are held early.

When remote doesn’t work

Three situations where you want the artist in the room or in the same timezone:

• Live-talent boards needing on-set adjustment. Some shoots — particularly with high-profile talent who’s only available for a 4-hour window — require boards to be adjusted live as blocking changes. That’s an on-set role and benefits from local presence.
• Same-day pivots inside a 6-hour window. “We need the boards re-cut by lunchtime today.” If the artist is 8 timezones away, they’re asleep. Plan for this by either commissioning early enough that no same-day pivot is needed, or by briefing locally for the high-pivot moments.
• Deeply embedded creative team work. Some agency cultures want the storyboard artist sitting at the desk in the creative department for a month-long campaign cycle. That’s a different working pattern and usually a different fee structure. Remote freelance briefs don’t replicate it.

For everything else — and that’s the overwhelming majority of UK commercial briefs in 2026 — remote works.

Working across timezones — practical setup

Five things to agree on day one:

1. The overlap window. 2 to 3 hours a day where both parties are at desks. Lock the slot.
2. The async sign-off model. Whether you’re going to send a single batch of notes per round, or rolling notes throughout the day. Pick one.
3. Turnaround commitments. “First pass by end of London Thursday, notes by end of your Thursday, revisions delivered Friday morning London time.” Written down. Numeric.
4. The escalation channel. If something’s urgent and the artist’s asleep, who do you call? Usually the artist’s agent if represented, or pre-agreed “ring my mobile” for genuine emergencies only.
5. The handover format. Where the files live, how they’re named, who has access, who closes the loop on each round.

Examples — recent remote briefs

Recent remote and international briefs include Bentley Flying Spur Hybrid, Honda HR-V with Max Verstappen, Coca-Cola × Premier League “Make Your Home the Home End” with Harry Kane, Amazon Audible, and the Premier League 30-year anniversary commercial. Briefs originated variously from London agencies with international clients, from production companies running multi-market campaigns, and from creative teams in the US and EU. All boarded remotely against the rhythm described above.

What to ask before you commit

• Have I agreed a daily overlap window with the artist’s working day?
• Have I picked one tool for chat, one for visual review, one for the brief?
• Are my three timeline dates set against working days in both timezones?
• Have I flagged any in-person pre-pro or shoot dates that need local attendance?
• Is the brief written down once, in one document, accessible to everyone in the loop?

Sources

1. APA — Advertising Producers Association. https://www.a-p-a.net/ (Accessed 2026-05-23). UK commercial production conventions and remote-work practices post-2020.
2. Frame.io — Review and approval for commercial production. https://frame.io/ (Accessed 2026-05-23). Standard remote review tooling for board and animatic sign-off.
3. Loom — Async video for creative direction. https://www.loom.com/ (Accessed 2026-05-23). Async video tooling used for transmitting direction notes across timezones.
4. Slack — Workplace messaging for production teams. https://slack.com/ (Accessed 2026-05-23). Primary async comms channel for distributed production teams.
5. ScreenSkills — Storyboard Artist job profile. https://www.screenskills.com/job-profiles/browse/animation/development/storyboard-artist/ (Accessed 2026-05-23). Scope of the storyboard artist role across in-person and remote production.

About the author

Seb Antoniou is a London-based storyboard artist with 10+ years across Premier League, Bentley, Coca-Cola, Nike and BBC Sport campaigns. He boards for advertising agencies and production companies in the UK and globally, working from script, shot list, or a 20-minute call with the director. About →

Related

• Guide: How to hire a storyboard artist in the UK (2026)
• Case study: Bentley Flying Spur Hybrid
• Service: TV Commercial Storyboards

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