Animation Storyboard: Functions, Types, and How to Make It

Making a storyboard is one of the most important steps in the animation creation process. The storyboard acts as a guide, providing an overall picture of how the story will be illustrated and animated.

Storyboards allow you to plan in detail every scene, camera movement, and character expression to ensure that marketing messages are communicated clearly and engagingly. This helps you create relevant and engaging animated content.

In this article, you will learn in detail what is an animation storyboard, its functions, types, and how to create them. See the full explanation below.

What Is an Animation Storyboard?

An animation storyboard is a series of drawings and notes created from a script or story idea. It serves as a visual guide for the final animated video, with each frame acting as a keyframe for transitions. 

The storyboard includes details about sound, camera moves, transitions, and special effects, helping artists and directors visualize the production and ensuring a common understanding of each scene. Created after the script, storyboards include sequence numbers, dialogue notes, scenes, cameras, visual effects, and other elements essential to the narrative vision.

The Function of Animation Storyboard 

Storyboards are important in visual content production, particularly for animation projects. They clarify the creative vision and translate the script into a visual format, which helps the production team share a unified vision.

An animation storyboard can function as a detailed planning tool, organizing elements like camera moves, dialogue, sound effects, and transitions. They act as checklists to ensure scene consistency with the predetermined elements. 

By identifying potential issues early, storyboards help find solutions before they affect production, which can save time and budget.

Types of Animation Storyboards

Depending on the animator’s needs, there are different types of storyboards. Here are three animation storyboard types that you should know:

1. Traditional Storyboard

A traditional storyboard usually consists of a series of pencil sketches with detailed descriptions of what happens in each scene. This storyboard type can also include dialogue. An example of this is a comic book or comic strip.

2. Thumbnail Storyboard

Thumbnail storyboard is often used by small teams of animators or individuals who have experience in creating various animation projects.

Unlike traditional storyboards, thumbnail storyboards do not contain text descriptions of each scene, but only images that focus on visualizing the sequence of scenes in a detailed and structured way.

Animators don't need to create written guidelines for the storyboard thumbnails. This is because the images available on the storyboard are created so that each scene can be adjusted to look good on the screen.

3. The Digital Storyboard

As the name implies, this storyboard type uses digital tools in the creation process. Digital storyboards make it very easy for animators who have ready-made stock graphics to save time during the animation production process.

How to Make an Animation Storyboard?

Knowing the types is essential, but understanding how to make an animated storyboard is equally important. Here are the steps:

1. Sequence Each Scene in the Story Script

When creating an animation storyboard, break down your script or character dialogue into smaller scenes to make the production process easier. Number each scene to ensure that each visual and narrative element is neatly and consistently organized.

2. Decide on a Visual Style

You need to know the visual style of animation that fits your project script to bring the story to life. If you're not sure about your visual style, you can create a mood board that shows different reference images that fit the story. Make a list of things to be drawn, like the main scene or the sequence of events.

3. Create a Template

At this stage, you simply create a panel of the same size, leaving some space underneath as a place for descriptions or notes. The template is perfect if you choose a traditional storyboard. Meanwhile, if you choose a thumbnail storyboard, you can use the panel for the image only and don't need more space for notes.

4. Start Drawing Process

Now that you've chosen a template, it's time to start the drawing process. Determine the location of your story scene in the first panel, then you can customize the script scene with the pre-made panel.

5. Add Image Description

When the visuals are complete, you can add additional details or visual descriptions in the sections you provided earlier. In this section, you can describe what your character is doing, write dialogue, or give a brief description of what happens in each scene.

6. Explain Technical Details

When storyboarding an animation, you can include information about camera movements, such as zooming, panning, tilting, or the angle you want to use. You can also note sound effects and background music for a clear audio image.

In addition, you can add a description of the transition between scenes, whether it's a fade-in, fade-out, or cut. Other technical details you can include include lighting, visual effects, and use of color. This detailed technical explanation helps the production team understand how each scene should be executed.

7. Get Feedback from the Team

Once the animated storyboard is complete, you can ask the entire production team to provide feedback. The goal is to get different perspectives and help identify problems or areas to improve. Discussing it in detail will help you harmonize the content of your animation project.

At last, understanding the importance of animation storyboards in visual content production highlights the need for the right tools and resources. To help you with this matter, you can consider a service provider. VISUWISU is a digital asset service provider that offers various solutions for marketing needs.

From the planning process to the production of engaging visual content, VISUWISU offers a range of services and tools to help businesses increase their audience appeal and engagement.

By using VISUWISU's services, you can easily access a variety of digital assets needed to enhance your marketing strategy, from animation to graphic design.

So if you need help improving your marketing results through engaging content production, work with VISUWISU today.