Beyond Print

Preparing to Enter the Motion-based World

Preparing to Tell Your Story

Storyboards are a great way to communicate your artistic vision and organize your creative concepts.

A storyboard is a sequence of pre-rendered graphic elements in a timeline that serves as a guide for the entire production process. Creating storyboards is a logical extension of your work as a designer because it allows you to take your still images and apply it to a motion-based timeline.

Just as you might choose Photoshop to retouch a photo, it is important to choose the proper tool when creating a storyboard. You can create storyboards in Pages, Illustrator, iMovie, Keynote, Toon Boom, Final Cut Pro, or another graphic-oriented program. For the following example, we are going to use StoryBoard Artist by PowerProduction Software.

How to Create an Animatic Using StoryBoard Artist

Step 1: Launch StoryBoard Artist and a new project window appears. Go to the File menu to specify your project details, including your Production name, aspect ratio, and frame size.

Step 2: Add your images to the frames by selecting from over a thousand images that come with the program, or import them from existing sources. The easiest way to import images is to drag and drop them into the frame from the desktop. StoryBoard Artist will automatically create a new frame for each image.

Step 3: Select Timeline in the Window menu to see all of your frames on the timeline as thumbnails.

Step 4: Set the duration of each frame by dragging the edge of the thumbnail to the desired duration. This can also be done in the Frame Details window. You can also add transitions between frames.

Step 5: To use the new pan and zoom feature to create movement within a frame, select a thumbnail by double-clicking it. Now, choose Pan & Zoom from the main toolbar. A green box appears indicating the start of the pan and zoom. To set the end point, drag the red box to adjust the pan, and drag its corner to adjust the zoom. Click Run Show in the Main Toolbar to preview your Pan & Zoom transition.

Step 6: Add any other desired transitions, graphics and audio by dragging them into the timeline and adjusting them to your specifications.

Step 7: From the File dropdown menu, click Export and select QuickTime. Choose H.264 as the compression type to keep the file size small, and use default settings for Key frame, data rate, and quality.

Step 8: Click OK, choose a name for your movie and watch it in QuickTime.

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Tips

Scanning

StoryBoard Artist features a new Pan & Zoom tool that creates in-frame motion to zoom in and out, and pan in any direction. To ensure your images will still look good when you zoom in, be sure to scan your images at a resolution between 150 dpi and 300 dpi.

Be consistent in how you scan and crop your images. For all of your images, use the same image resolution and size you will use in your final project. If you will be working in widescreen, scan in the frame size for widescreen. This approach will help your storyboard look as close as possible to your final concept.

Name your files with a numeric sequencing structure to maintain the order of your scans. For example, name the first file story#0001.jpg. With a large number of scans, it is easy for the images to get out of order.

Making a Background Transparent in StoryBoard Artist

A storyboard should look as close to your creative vision as possible. If you designed a logo with no background, for example, you should have it represented that way. In StoryBoard Artist, you can easily make the image background transparent by using the Key Color function under the Object menu. Check the Eye Dropper box and select the color you will be knocking out. Creating an alpha channel will give you more control over what is masked, but for a quick and easy transparency, use the Key Color function.