What is storyboard?

Storyboards are a series of photos or drawings that outline the sequence of scenes and major changes in the production. In simple words, storyboards are   series of images or illustrations, which are displayed in sequence for the purpose of pre-visualizing a motion graphic, animation, interactive media or motion pictures sequence.

Advertising agencies mostly depends on storyboards for the advertisement.

They follow 5W rules i.e. who, what, when, where, why for portraying their major ideas. Moving your artistic perspective to a finished product is just less difficult, whenever you map out every part of the action frame by frame.

What is a Storyboard Artist?

Storyboard artist, also known as visualizer or illustrator, is a profession specialized in creating storyboards for advertising agencies. They create a representation of what the commercial will look like in order to engage and persuade the client to buy the concept being pitched. Their work is used most often in a pitch scenario where the drawing has to be a high standard in order to win the business.

How to create a storyboard?

Storyboard can be created digitally on the computer or by hand drawing. No matter what method is used, your storyboard should be cohesive and organized enough to resonate with your audience and production team. You should remember these points while creating a storyboard –

1. Develop your vision for the project.
2. Use text and pictures to map out your ideas or camera shots.
3. Every important point or fact should be well organized and easy to understand.
4. Use simple backgrounds, figures and shapes.
5. Use visual cues to make a story easier to understand.
6. You can use software that has pre-loaded backgrounds, drawings, characters and special effects to get good results in mere time.

Use of Storyboard

Storyboard is used in –

1. Film – Film directors use storyboards in order to plan out how they want to shoot a film. It provides a visual layout of scenes or events, which helps in finding potential problems before they occur.
2. Photomatics – It is a series of still photographs, which are edited together and presented on a screen in sequence. Generally, sound effects, soundtracks and a voice-over are added to create a presentation to show how a film could be shot and cut together. It is increasingly used by advertising agencies and advertisers to research the effectiveness of their proposed storyboard before committing to a television advertisement.
3. Animatics – An animatic is a series of still images edited together and displayed in sequence. In special effect and animation work, storyboard followed by simplified mock-ups (animatics) gives a better idea of how the scene will look and feel with timing and motion.  Usually, a soundtrack or dialogue is added to the sequence of still images to test whether the images or sound are working effectively together or not. This helps directors and animators to work out any timing issues, shot list, camera positioning and screenplay that exist within the current storyboard.
4. Business – In businesses, storyboards are used for planning a proposal, commercials, ad campaigns or other projects, which are intended to compel or convince to action. It facilitates introduction of a high quality improvement process into an organization.
5. Interactive media – Storyboards are used in the fields of instructional design, software development and web development to describe and present interactive events as well as audio and motion on electronic pages and user interfaces.