Storyboarding your animation

The storyboard is the perhaps the most crucial element in making a successful animation. Using a storyboard as a formal process, even for short, simple projects will help you flesh out your animation and make it more appealing to others without investing a lot of time and only later realizing that there was something you could have done to make it more exciting.

So what is a storyboard? In essience, it's a comic strip. It tells the story you plan to tell in animation with still pictures and captions which explain what's going on at a particular point in the timeline. Storyboards vary in complexity, depending on the media used and the complexity of the animation itself. For example, if you don't have synched sound, there's no need to keep track of audio synching information. On the other hand, if you have 3 layers of animated sprites interacting, you may need a lot more detail.

Here's a copy of my current computer-animation storyboard sheet.

Click to download PDF
If you like it, feel free to download it and modify it as you need.