Making a video can be a complicated undertaking. You’ve got to come up with a storyline, manage lots of small details, and decide how to edit the finished product. Luckily, there’s a low-tech tool that can make every aspect of video creation easier: a storyboard.

So, What is a Storyboard?

A storyboard is a plan, a way of figuring out the story of the film before you put in the enormous amount of work of the animation itself. A graphical representation of how your video will unfold, shot by shot. 

Basically, it is the story of the movie drawn in pictures, very much like a comic strip.

To start a small definition borrowed from Wikipedia will open the ball:

The storyboard (often called drawn continuity, storyboard) is a technical document generally used in cinema in pre-production to plan what will make up the film.

It describes all the details of the film, with the greatest possible accuracy, in order to view and plan the shooting of the film. It, therefore, constitutes a reference tool during the production of the film. It is the central pillar of a project, written by a project manager in a firm. It is a documentation that will be describing each functionality that the application contains. Though the description will always be functional, not technical. All animation colleges in India teach the art of storyboarding as it is an essential tool for the young animator. 

Initially, the storyboard was used in the cinema sector. However, due to its visual impact and its ease of use, it is increasingly replacing the specifications in project management.

What is a storyboard for?

In addition to the script, it is possible to create a storyboard: it is a kind of comic strip that describes all the shots in the film. If the script describes the film in written language, the storyboard introduces a first visual approach. It will allow you to transmit your vision of the story to the rest of the team, and it is also a good way to prepare the shooting.

That said, the storyboard is not a work of art, it is a simple working tool. It is, therefore, unnecessary to spend months making very detailed drawings, simple annotated sketches are enough. There are many animation degree colleges that give value to drawing. It is not necessary to know how to draw, “stickmen” can do the trick very well. There is not really a rule when it comes to creating a storyboard, everyone is free to adopt the format they want, for example by detailing the entire film plan by plan or simply by sketching the outline, or still showing camera movements by arrows, etc.

Having a very detailed storyboard will allow you to be very well organized, on the day of filming you will know exactly which shots must be shot at this will allow you to advance more quickly. The disadvantage is that this requires considerable preparation time. Besides, some directors find that it tends to make filming more rigid and harms creativity: with a storyboard, we often just roll out the plans without thinking too much. However, in the heat of the moment, we may very well have the idea of ​​an original plan which would have been impossible to think of without having the scene before our eyes. A few things to help convey the story:

• Write captions under the drawing
• Use arrows to show camera movements
• Color the object to differentiate it from the background.\

So, how does this process take place?

Design your canvas

It will be the support of your storyboard: it is simply a sheet on which are drawn simple rectangles, each thumbnail corresponding to a plan. Now you have to decide how many thumbnails per sheet: two, four, eight? There is not a precise rule, it will depend on the level of details you want to give to your storyboard.

Also plan to leave a notes area for each thumbnail to add annotations (camera movements, desired light, etc). Optionally, consider leaving a good margin around each sticker, in case you want to add details on the sides. Finally, you can also add a title and or numbering area, to find your way there later. Degree in animation teaches different aspects of storyboarding, learning to perfect is important.

When your canvas is established, you can simply photocopy it in multiple copies, and voila!

First draft: Test, try, iterate

The first pass consists of drawing a very rough draft, useless therefore at the beginning to launch out in a very detailed drawing worthy of the fine arts. Bring your script, and just start reading the sequence you’re working on. For each sentence or action in the scenario, draw a corresponding thumbnail in the simplest way possible, as you think.

A technique that is followed by many is to follow the use of a table, and to cut out each sticker (or to use post-its), so that one can very easily reorder, move, delete a sticker, decline it in another version, separate it into sub-thumbnails, etc. Again, the idea here is to try different combinations of planes, transitions, compositions, etc.

Rendered clean

After the first step, you should now have a more precise idea of ​​the structure of your sequence.

So you can start cleaning on another blank canvas. It will now be necessary to further detail the composition of each plan, as well as to add annotations which may be useful to the production team:

• Camera or character movements. You can indicate them by arrows or use a color code
• Technical information on the light, the type of framing (eg close-up) or even the type of lens desired for the shot in question.

In short, the idea is to provide all the details possible so that the teams can understand the intention behind the storyboard. Again this is a communication tool, so favor clarity, and try to add all the possible indications so that everyone can project themselves.

Sometimes the dialogues are inscribed under the thumbnail if this can help the understanding of the storyboard. But beware, it is not recommended to write them in bubbles like a comic strip! Though many animation colleges will give you an insight about this. Your bubbles could hide an important area of ​​the image, it is a distraction that could affect the readability of your thumbnails. Do not forget that the storyboard is used to describe the images in your film, the dialogues are detailed in the scenario.

Objectives and challenges

The objective of a storyboard is to have a comprehensive overview of everything the user will be able to do in the application, both in cases of normal use of the application, and in cases where the user is wrong, and this, so that it never reaches an impasse, and that it is always guided in its navigation.

Having a storyboard that describes in-depth all these case management is, therefore, a crucial issue because it will allow the client to have a real overview of his application and define it for development. When the client is satisfied with the storyboard, it is validated, then it serves as a reference document for the development teams.

How to build a storyboard?

The storyboard must, therefore, be a very easy document for the client to understand. To do this, each page is structured in the same way: a visual model represents a functionality accompanied by an explanatory text, which will describe this functionality and its case management.

Is the storyboard and specification the same?

No, at first glance, a storyboard and a specification seem identical, because they both serve to describe a project in depth. The two main differences come from the fact that a specification will be drawn up from a technical angle, because it is mainly intended for developers, and that it does not integrate models concerning functionality. There is, therefore, a double risk of having a forbidding document to read. The first being that the client does not understand all the challenges of his application, and the second, that the development teams do not read the entire document. 

How hard is it to become a storyboard artist?

Usually, multimedia artists and animators, including storyboard artists, need at least a bachelor’s degree. While there is not a specific degree for storyboarding, aspiring artists may pursue a wide range of artistic majors, such as fine arts, animation, game design, and development, or other related fields. 

Animaster College of Animation & Design is one of the best animation colleges in Bangalore. They offer BVA Degree in Animation & Multimedia Design where storyboarding is a crucial part of the course curriculum. They are renowned and known as the best animation college in Bangalore and they are also affiliated to Bangalore Central University.

For more details, please visit our website: http://www.animation.com