How to Create a Storyboard

1. Start with the story, not the drawing

Before placing a single panel, break your scene down into beats: what needs to happen, in what order, for the audience to understand and feel the scene. Each beat usually becomes one or several shots. You don't need to draw well — stick figures and rough shapes are enough. A storyboard's job is to communicate a plan, not to be art.

2. Decide how many panels you need

There's no fixed number. A simple dialogue scene between two people might need 6–10 panels covering wide, medium, and close-up framings for each character plus reaction shots. An action sequence can need dozens. A useful rule: add a new panel whenever the framing, the camera angle, or the significant action changes.

3. Choose your framing and camera movement for each shot

For every panel, decide: what's the framing (wide, medium, close-up), where is the camera, and does it move (pan, tilt, dolly, static)? Draw an arrow on the panel if the camera or a subject moves during the shot — this is standard storyboard notation and instantly readable by any crew member.

4. Annotate — don't rely on the drawing alone

Add a short line of action description and, if relevant, a line of dialogue under each panel. A storyboard panel with no text is often ambiguous once you're two weeks past drawing it. Notes on lens choice, duration, or a sound cue are also common additions.

5. Order and review the full sequence

Lay out all your panels in order and read through the whole sequence as if you were watching the film. This is where you catch missing coverage, shots that don't logically follow each other, or a scene that's front-loaded with static wide shots and no close-ups to land the emotion.

6. Turn it into an animatic

Once the panel order feels right, the next step is often to time it: turn the sequence into an animatic — a rough video cut of the panels at their intended screen duration, sometimes with scratch dialogue or music. This is the fastest way to actually feel the pacing of a scene before a single frame is shot.

Building your storyboard in StoryBoard Express

In StoryBoard Express, drop images, drawings, or captured video frames directly onto the canvas, arrange them into a grid, and annotate each panel with text. If you're storyboarding from an existing edit or reference footage, the cut detector can generate your first pass of panels automatically from the video itself. When your board is ready, export it as a PDF layout, individual stills, or a timed animatic — all directly in the browser, nothing to install.