CRAFT
FEB 20, 2026 · 5 MIN READ
WHY WE STILL BOARD EVERY PROJECT BY HAND
A short essay on why pencils outperform algorithms in pre-production.
WORDS BY
Yasmin Khoury
LEAD STORYBOARD ARTIST
There is a physical friction to graphite on paper that slows you down just enough to think. When I sketch a frame with a 2B pencil, my hand is answering questions before my conscious mind formulates them: Where is the light coming from? What is outside this frame? Who has the power in this room?
THE SPEED TRAP
Digital tools make iteration too cheap. When you can generate twenty variations of a scene in ten seconds, you stop interrogating any single one of them. You become a curator instead of an author. And curation rarely leads to point-of-view.
We use screens for almost everything else in this studio. But our treatments start on paper, in graphite, by hand. It’s not nostalgia. It’s just the fastest way to get to what matters.
[ ABOUT THE AUTHOR ]
Yasmin Khoury
LEAD STORYBOARD ARTIST
Yasmin has boarded over 200 commercials, films and series at XPANSE since 2017.
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