Storyboarding ASP

[ThatsNotAllFolks]

Now that I am getting more familiar with ASP, I want to make animated shorts. I realize making films and shorts involves storyboarding so I have a question for the more experienced animators/storytellers on here. Does anyone use Anime Studio to make the Storyboard pics? Here is what I mean:

1) Come up with a story idea
2) Create all the characters and assets for that story in Anime Studio first!!!
3) Then start the storyboarding process by using those assets and characters by framing and posing them in Anime Studio and rendering a still shot(command R)
4) Now use those still shots to create the storybord and an animatic
5) If all is well, make the animated short with assets and characters.

If anyone sees a problem with this workflow let me know, I don't know what I am doing yet.
Thankyou.

[hayasidist]

My own approach is to storyboard on paper. That way I know what character views I want before I start drawing in AS. Then, when I do draw / rig in AS, I only do the minimum necessary. So, for example, if I decide I want a 3/4 right upper body (Medium Close Up) with eye / mouth / head / arm actions; and a rear full length (Long Shot) walking away then that's what I draw and rig. I don't spend time doing full rigs for all possibilities. Similarly, if a door is closed and stays closed there's no need at all to think about designing the asset to be movable...

so if your "step 2" is, in effect, to draw the "minimum necessary" then that's fine; but if you're thinking about doing every potential setup, even without rigging, (e.g. Front/Back; profile Left/Right; 3/4 front L/R; 3/4 rear L/R) then, IMO, you're spending too much time.

I, personally, don't import my storyboard sketches into AS (your step 4); I just keep them on the desk and draw from them into AS (same for other critical breakdowns) - but I know some people do like to have them there to, in effect, trace over.

BUT, now we have AS11 with much improved pencil and FBF support, I can see the advantage of doing the (rough) keys and extremes straight into AS (this will be the technique I'll adopt in the next project starting soon). Then I'll decide if it's going to be (in crude terms) bones or FBF to do the tweens - and then draw and rig accordingly.

Take a look at Chucky's webinar viewtopic.php?f=5&t=27570 for some inspiration around this (don't be put off by the "Frame by Frame" title - storyboard sketches are "just" FBF extreme extremes - you don't need to use FBF to get between them...) especially his use of the "blue pencil" layer for roughs.

[Greenlaw]

If you haven't storyboarded before, just draw or print out a blank storyboard page, photocopy it and draw away. The one limitation to doing it this way is that it's not ideal for editing panel order and inserting panels.

The way I used to do it was to draw the panels on index cards, scan them in, and then lay them out in Illustrator so I could edit and insert panels as I developed the board. (If I still took this approach today, I'd probably use a page layout program like InDesign instead of Illustrator, but really any drawing or painting program will do.)

Or you can go 'old school' and pin the index cards to a cork board. (I've done it this way too, both for personal projects and work.) This analog approach is more interactive and well suited for team discussions. Of course these days, it's all gotta go into the computer eventually.

In recent years, I've been using TB Storyboard Pro, which is good if you also want to render out an animatic directly from the storyboard file. The Pro version is a bit expensive though so you might consider Storyboard Standard instead. It is much cheaper and, while it can't output an animatic, it can output your panels as images. Once you have your storyboard panels, just place them on a timeline in an editorial program like Vegas or Premiere. This way you also have better animation and audio capabilities. There are other nice features in Pro besides animatic output but, IMO, the standard version should be more than adequate for most indie artists.

So what's the big deal with Storyboard? The drawing tools are sufficient but the real reason to use it is for the excellent planning, editing and sorting, the various industry standard layouts to choose from, and other time-saving organization tools. Basically, it eliminates a lot of the 'boring' work that can go into creating storyboards so you can focus on the fun parts.

As for creating a storyboard directly in ASP, I guess you could do that but I don't think there much benefit to it. ASP is not the most efficient way to draw quickly, and the key to storyboarding is to do it very quickly--get all the pictures out of your head and sort them out when you're done. Don't fuss over the drawings because all you really need are thumbnails to tell the story--save the 'pretty stuff' for the actual animation.

FYI, I did a short article about storyboarding one of our shorts here:

Storyboarding 'Happy Box'

And then there's this, which isn't very instructional, but it does show that the boards can be pretty crude and still be an accurate 'blue print' for the production.

Making 'Hello Frankenstein'

BTW, this storyboard was just drawn very quickly on typing paper. (Geez! I just realized the cats are 10 years old now.)

When you really get down to it, pencil and paper is all you really need if you want to get started right away.

Hope this helps. Good luck!

G.

P.S., I've also used a few storyboard programs for iPad and Android. Will post info about them later.

[neeters_guy]

hayasidist and Greenslaw summarize it pretty well. I'll only add that your approach might make sense if you were making a series with similar mise-en-scene throughout. This might even work for independent shorts, but you run the risk of each short looking repetitive.

Generally it's inefficient to create assets first without knowing the requirements of the shot/scene. Doing the boards first forces you to focus on the best way to tell the story rather than constraining the scene to existing assets.

[Greenlaw]

After you create your storyboard, the next step is the animatic. This is video version of your storyboards with some limited animation as needed. You can cut this with audio (it can be a temp track), and the resulting edit gives you all your timing information (how many frames each scene takes, how long the actions takes, etc.) To make it more useful, add an overlay for scene number and a frame counter.

Once you have an animatic your happy with, you can enter any useful info from it to an X-Sheet. (Also called an Exposure Sheet or Dope Sheet. Most places I've worked call it an X-Sheet.) The combination of the two references can help you get your animation done much more quickly and precisely. I like to use Google Spreadsheet for my X-Sheets. OpenOffice.org has a good spreadsheet for this purpose too. Best of all, both are free.

An X-Sheet should contain any info that will help you set up your scenes and animate them. Most X-Sheets have the frame numbers along the left side with columns to the right of it containing info about what happens on certain frames. At minimum, the columns should include description of events or actions, timing notes, sound effects and dialog cues.

Another useful trick you can do with the animatic: Export the scenes from the animatic as separate video files. Import one of the clips to your animation program and you have a frame accurate background reference with audio you can use for timing and lipsyncing. (Note: you'll want to use a codec with whole frames like Photo JPEG or Animation for frame-by-frame accuracy.)

If all of this sounds like a lot of work, welcome to preproduction, which is usually the cheapest but most important part of production. If you do all your planning up front, it can save you countless hours and prevent costly mistakes once you get into production. Besides, good preproduction is often the difference between getting a project done well and on time, or giving up in frustration. If you do it right, all you need to do is follow the steps.

G.

[ThatsNotAllFolks]

All great insights, thank you