Do you ever wonder how to use your creativity to grow your business? What if we told you that one of the simplest ways to make your brand successful and prominent is to utilize a concept called storyboarding?
Storyboarding can take various forms and designs, depending on the project. It can take many forms if you are wondering what storyboarding is or want to know how commercial storyboards work.
An interesting fact about animated storyboarding is that its market value is predicted to reach from USD 115.30 Million in 2022 to USD 302.21 million by 2029. This shows how much brands are interested in benefitting from this immersive way of growing their businesses.
Paper-and-pencil hard copy storyboards are one of the most conventional techniques, whereas digital storyboards provide the option to design complex presentations on the computer rather than on paper. In flat storyboarding, all the pictures are 2D.
However, if you choose 3D animation services from a reputable company for your brand’s storyboarding, you can illustrate the plot using different camera positions and movment instead of words.
Other than animatics, some images, such as storyboards, are usually used to provide visual cues or notes before shooting. They are called pre-visualization storyboards. The kind of storyboarding you choose can influence the effort, time, and money required.
We know there is a lot to unpack. So, without further ado, let’s get right into it.
What is a Storyboard?
A storyboard presents visual cues of how a clip, animation, or video will play out. Each cue visually represents a scene, usually with a side note explaining the scenario. Storyboarding helps in understanding the concept behind a project before going into a detailed production.
Different Types Of Storyboards
Whether the project you are working on is a film, animation, or advertising, storyboards help tell visual tales. They allow 2D and 3D artists to visualize every scene before a production phase officially begins. But what is storyboarding anyway? It is a process where several techniques are used, each bringing different and useful storyboarding features.
This brings us to the types of storyboards available today, how they assist in developing the story content, and some available storyboard examples.
1. Traditional Storyboards
The first and most commonly used one, ‘classical storyboards’, is ‘traditional storyboard markings’ created using a pen and paper. These hand-drawn storyboards consist of images divided into panels or frames that present important scenes and compositions of the story.
They are visuals that pop into your mind, and you can sketch them on paper to roughly explain the scenes in an animation or a video. This type of breaking down the film is beneficial when formulating wild ideas.
Even stick figures can work here! It’s all about the action, how the different camera angles are held, and where the actors are. Normally drawn boards present an easy and economical solution for most beginners and those catching up with the early work concepts of the storyboard.
2. Digital Storyboards
In our modern world, digital storyboards have gained massive popularity. When it comes to drawing, using applications such as Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator or specialized art software for storyboarding such as ShotPro or FrameForge allows the creation of cleaner and more comprehensible visuals.
The first and most obvious advantage of digital storyboards is that you can rotate, scale, and alter your drawings within the program. You can also add 3D models, camera movements, and even pre-visualization effects.
If your project depends heavily on picture editing or 3D animation services, the storyboarding process becomes easier when using a digital storyboard. As for those who can’t decide how to make a storyboard because of a lack of visual concept, there are many animated storyboarding websites and storyboard software free.
3. Animated Storyboards
Working with animated storyboards is the next level for those who aim to benefit from the magic of animation like 3D animation, for their work. Rather than limiting the image solely to scenes, animated storyboards add motion and time to the design of your scenes.
You can add camera sweeps, characters’ movements and other lively visuals that enable you to understand what your scenes will look like. Animated storyboard examples are particularly helpful for sketches of complicated scenes that require a lot of action or moving around the camera.
Nowadays, more and more people are opting for animated storyboards as they offer more brand engagement and user attention, making 3D animation services high in demand.
4. Thumbnail Storyboards
Thumbnail storyboards cover the entire span of your storyline on just a single extension using many tiny panels per page. These quick sketches help you map out the full sequence of events without getting bogged down in details. Thumbnail storyboards are useful during the initial stages of the project as they help you brainstorm different ideas for the storyboard.
They enable you to explore any story concept in its broadest sense before you start developing the artwork. While each panel may be light in content, how the overall storyboard is constructed will help you determine and organize the flow of the story.
5. Written Storyboards
In certain circumstances, no drawings are present in the storyboarding. This kind of storyboarding is based entirely on the written word, and no graphics are involved. These take less time to create, and you can focus on aspects of the narrative: what actions characters take and what characters say.
However, with no visual panels, such storyboards are less effective than the other types in terms of images portraying the concept more convincingly than simple words. Written storyboards can be conveniently used with a shot list to ensure the team is on the same page.
6. Sketched Storyboards
Sketched storyboards, on the other hand, are just about one thing-minimalism. The scenes are typically very basic rough sketches and use a lot of stick figures to show the shots that will be taken. They are used primarily in the brainstorming stage of the project. They help you outline the structure and flow of the story before you get into detailed illustrations.
What is fun about sketched storyboards is that they are quite loose and allow for changes and new ideas once the project is underway.
7. Explainer Video Storyboards
In the case of short or animated motion graphics videos, explainer video storyboards should be your top priority. Such storyboards do not attempt to tell long stories and instead emphasize the arrangement of short messages. They will use a combination of illustrations and text blocks to emphasize the key areas of each scene.
This particular structure is effective for commercial animation, where clear communication is needed. Storyboards for commercials often follow this structure with cut-and-dry content.
8. The Framed Storyboard
The framed storyboard offers the user a simple advantage; whenever a flow of shots is arranged in a bordered photograph, the user can shoot visually. The connecting border is supposed to show how each shot will be viewed on the screen rather than in a cinematography way.
Framed storyboards are best for those who want inclusivity in how a scene looks and feels because standing in this position allows you to view how the shot will be composed in the camera. The technical description of the shots is usually included on the lower side of each of the panels, which makes this presentation quite useful in filmmaking.
Read more: What are animation frames? A closer look
9. Shot Descriptions
Besides images, many sketches verbally describe every shot related to the story presented within the illustrations. Most especially, these describe the scene within the picture, its action and everything else, including speech that may have occurred in the scene being described.
The shot descriptions are necessary so that everyone can agree on what each composed shot seeks to achieve. This is extremely important in production preparation. They also provide practical implications in terms of notes to the camera crew and other team members.
10. 2D vs. 3D Storyboards
A storyboard can be either two-dimensional or three-dimensional, depending on the nature of the project. Flat graphics are used for 2D storyboards, so the view is very simple. Straightforward 3D storyboards are designed in 3D virtual spaces involving the movement of both the camera and various angles.
3D storyboards are particularly helpful when the scenes are complicated and require extensive camera manipulation or visual effects. However, for simpler scenes, 2D storyboarding might be all you need. The decision to use 2D or 3D depends on the project’s purpose.
What are the Main Components of a Storyboard?
Storyboards are an integral aspect of animation as they outline the story in pictorial representation so that it can be realized and animated. However, what is this storyboarding all about? To put it simply, a storyboard is a sequence of pictures or panels which showcases the development of a tale.
Each image contains drawings and pictures of characters, venues, and certain actions accompanied by headings for melodies, speech, and camera direction. The storyboards also include factors such as timing, pacing, and mood, which are quite important in animation.
Now, let’s more closely consider the key elements of each storyboard:
#1 Artwork, Pictures or Images:
In storyboard development, storyboards are broken so that each picture or image in the storyboards is taken from the completed animation and cut from the completed animation film.
These visuals are needed as they assist animators and directors in planning the storyline even before actual animation is done. Whether you make a vertical game storyboard or a motion picture story, these images are the core of your storyboard design. For instance, in Pixar’s animated sequence, basic outlines can speak volumes about the scene’s contents.
#2 Scene Descriptions
Under each image presented, notes describe what is happening in the scene. This is where the action, dialogue, and significant components are covered. Scene descriptions are important because they help maintain context for every participant of the animation team from the very beginning.
If you are using an outline or a digital template of a storyboard or painting the story, sketching out a clear scene description assists in turning that sketch into a complete storyboard flow.
#3 Shot Sequences
The shot order on the storyboard is referred to as a shot sequence. This sequence shows in what direction the query progresses more than one query as in more than one scene. This is particularly important in animation production, where the sequential order of images dictates the continuity of the entire movie or animation.
Most of the time, advertising storyboards are tagged as well, explaining that the storyboard has to be done with such direction as to the shot sequence on the screen and why it is important.
#4 Timing Information
Animation is concerned with timing more than anything else, so storyboards often have information related to the shot duration. This is useful when blocking out the time for the final cut. For example, in animation storyboard samples, you have notes on how long a particular shot should last so that all the parts connect well.
It does not matter whether storyboarding apps are used or one chooses to use hands only; timing information should be able to punch in a well-paced animation.
#5 Notes and Annotations
Lastly, storyboards also have notes from the storyteller, director or other team members. These notes add any new information or further explain any scenes or shots. Of course, it is also possible in animation storyboarding, when video lets you add relevant shuffling but instructive titles to the screen.
Commercial storyboards often contain annotations describing particular advertising elements, such as products or branding.
Outstanding Examples of Successful Storyboarding
The Iron Giant
To excite older animated movie fans, here is an example of storyboards that Brad Bird made for The Iron Giant. To call his storyboards exciting would be an understatement. Regardless, they are incredibly clear and straightforward.
These hand-drawn storyboards may seem plain at first sight, however, they do a very good work showing the continuity of each shot in relation to its subsequent one. These storyboards use colors and motion lines to depict movement and camera angles with minimal motion lines.
Such a definition of the storyboard clearly demonstrates how even simple animations can present great ideas, thus capturing the attention of people who want to understand the art of storyboarding.
Wall-E
If you think Pixar storyboards for Wall-E are filled with incredible-looking pages, you’ll quickly change your mind. For the most part, the storyboards remain stick figures but do an incredible job specifying where the importance of the characters is positioned, where the camera goes, and the relationships of the various elements within the scene.
Such an example has shown how storyboarding for any animated film can be productive, especially with the bare minimum needed materials. It also demonstrates how cinematographic scenes can be conceptualized in two seconds through quick sketching, which ranks as one of the most important concept drawings of animation beasts.
Mad Max: Fury Road
The action-packed scenes in Mad Max: Fury Road were planned out very well using detailed digital storyboards. These in-house black-and-white storyboards were also very useful in pre-visualizing the action sequences before any video recording was made.
Utilizing the storyboarding features, the producers were able to pre-visualize the complex stunts and special effects that characterized the movie. This is a very good storyboard design that most people go for whenever there is a movement or a great deal of special effects required in the project, showing how much high-tech storyboard templates are needed to visually organize and photograph every scene.
Moana
For Moana, the process of creating the storyboards included developing animation storyboards using Toon Boom software. These storyboards were rough sketch storyboards, but they assisted in pre-visualizing the scenes and camera movements that should be executed to tell the story.
For anyone seeking information about how to create storyboards for film and animation, the animation storyboarding images in Moana make a great case study. They show how even the most basic rough sketches can be developed into perfectly curved moving pictures, giving a great idea of how to storyboard for animation.
Final Words
Storyboarding is a powerful tool for linking creative thoughts to visual possibilities in any medium. The most traditional hand-drawn storyboards, film storyboards, and enhanced VR storyboards all have unique features worth utilizing in different situations.
Knowing these storyboards, whether the fast concept/thumbnail version or animated (video) version of multi-layered detailed scenes, improves a project’s intelligibility, performance, and general impression.
Want to elevate your business with animated storyboards? Prolific Studio’s professional 2D animation services and 3D animation services will help you turn ideas into effective images that work and bring results. We will help you start and end the creation of storyboards in ways that will draw the audience to the interesting bits of the story.
