Once you have your story in mind and at least a vague idea as to what the environments and characters will look like, it is time to move on to the storyboarding phase.
What is it?
Storyboarding is basically drawing a quick sketch of each shot and action in your film. If the thought of such elaborate preplanning is distasteful to you, and chaos is your creative ally, I can definitely sympathize. Without such planning, though, you may be in danger of getting lost in the details and never see your animated story to completion.
What’s the point?
Animation is a labor-intensive process where some seconds of video may take weeks to accomplish. It can become monotonous if you lose sight of your purpose and require a methodical slowness that is unnatural to many personalities. Storyboarding will help you to work out any weak points in your story and see your film from start to finish before committing a great deal of time and energy to it.
It can also help you to have a better idea of exactly what sets, props and characters you’ll need to make. With animation, you are generally starting from nothing. This can be a blessing or a curse, perhaps a bit of both. It is good to gather reference material from the world around you as inspiration, but ultimately, you will be putting thought, time, and effort into every last detail. This is why knowing what will and will not be seen in your film is invaluable. Why bother making a chair or a bug or anything else if it will not ultimately be seen on the screen in the finished product?
How do I storyboard?
As with the process of coming up with your story, how you storyboard is up to you. You could buy a small sketchpad and draw out each shot of your film on a piece of paper and adjust their order as needed as you make changes. If paper and pencil feel unnatural to you, you could use 3d animation software and model simplified versions of your scenes just to get the idea across. Ultimately, the goal is to be able to see your film play out before you make it. However you can best accomplish this goal is up to your own personal style.
Finding your style
Once your have a set of storyboards and every second of your film is playing out in your head, it is time to nail down your design and style. More on that later…
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