Story and Acting Keys
Principles of Camera, Composition, Layout, Screen Direction, Focus Points and Shot Flow
Photoshop Digital Drawing Workflow & Layer Comp Keyframes
Industry Conventions used in contemporary Feature Animation storyboarding teams
SAE Sydney / David J Smith
by Brad Bird, director of The Incredibles, The Iron Giant, Ratatouille, and many of The Simpsons episodes.
Please study and check your work regularly against these guides, and revise your boards accordingly.
Yes, you are asked to follow these guidelines, and demonstrate them in your work.
Most useful guidelines: Angles are our friends. You are asked to use 22- to 45-degree left-right camera angles, follow the 180 degree camera line rule, use left-right screen direction, break up symmetry, avoid parallel lines, use focus points, show depth/perspective, and lower the horizon, in at least half of your shots, as much as possible.
Brad_Bird_on_Composition.pdfBrad-Bird-Storyboard_the_Simpsons_Way.pdfHosted by Premium Beat
Story artists draw as many of the important key frames as possible, particularly for acting poses. Show the start, end and/or extremes of acting and action, usually within the same shot. Show entrances and exits. An average industry board for feature animation has around one key per second, for acting and action shots. Tracing reference, re-using poses etc. is very common.
Simple wide shots are typically many seconds long, with less action, and may have only camera motion, so only one key is required. Artwork is typically scaled up larger than the show's normal frame and resolution, to allow for simple motion of the background, and/or the camera, in your edit.
Camera panoramas, pans, tilts, dollys, trucks, rolls, cranes, fly-bys and orbits, with action, and/or with 3D elements: these require more keys than a simple establishing shot. Keys may be layered over the background art.
Storyboards are done in a wide variety of styles and conventions, and these are changing. There are also differences between feature and television boards.
See this example (television).
A traditional page layout with multiple storyboard keys, labels and notes is still used in some parts of the TV Animation industry, but is slowly becoming obsolete. Increasingly, studios and artists simply create full size keyframes in drawing and video editing software, due to improvements in these tools. Storyboard pages are becoming optional extra work, and are unnecessary. Pages of multiple keys may sometimes be useful in roughs/thumbnailing, however these are discarded fairly quickly, often within a day, and are less useful in very tight schedules.
Drawing camera directions or action arrows directly on keyframes is also becoming much less desired. This is especially true in feature animation. The trend is always moving, ever more strongly, to "when anything changes, show it."
Creating, editing and displaying written notes, camera descriptions, dialog and shot numbers is often faster in software. Instead of drawing/writing these layers on the storyboard keys, layers are added in video editing software, while editing the timing of shots, keys, music, sound effects and dialog.
As beautiful as traditional storyboard pages can be, it's best to use modern, flexible workflows. See Storyboarding a Scene: Photoshop & Layer Comps tutorial, for drawing keys and layers in a storyboarding team, and exporting image elements for video editing.
020-Disneys-Frozen--Meet-Kristoff-1-Deleted-Scene.mp4030-Shelldon-Ep603a-Storyboard-Animatic.v133.r720p.mp4Pre-Production Editing
Audio and Animatics
Photoshop and After Effects
Advanced students may wish to explore other tools popular in the animation industry, such as TVPaint (popular in Europe), and ToonBoom Storyboard Pro (popular in North America). These tools provide advanced keyframe drawing, camera tools, shot labeling and sequence editing, all within one software.
Blender Grease Pencil
Check on licensing permissions, and if your facilitator can support you, before using these tools, or using them on a private device.
000 Storyboard FUNDAMENTALS.v103.pdfDo you want to use reference, or add realistic perspective detail, but are short on time? Storyboard artists often trace over photo reference, or trace over 3D snapshots, to quickly achieve complex perspective views.
When tracing, remember to keep your strokes fast and loose, use construction, and show overlapping forms - don't let your storyboards become too tight, flat, or detailed, and don't let too much photorealism slow you down. Go for clarity, expression, and style!
If you want to draw over 3D models, it's easy to run your favorite 3D software (such as industry leader Maya), adjust the camera, and take a screenshot. Then simply import the screenshot as a layer into your drawing software, and reduce the layer opacity, for tracing.
You can also investigate how to import a 3D model into older versions of Photoshop. This only works as temporary legacy functionality in modern versions of Photoshop.
Short videos
