Essential part of planning and organisation of a motion picture sequence.
Early pioneers of animation, such as Winsor McCay
People can give ideas for your story when presenting a rough storyboard
Types
Live action
Over head diagram or map of the action.
The main purpose is to illustrate the story and action as well as camera movement/placement to the director.
Lines of action (arrows) show movement
Animation
Due to tight deadlines and even tighter budgets it must be tightly composed.
Editing before you even start creating
Emotional roadmap
Elements need to be in the storyboard as it tells everyone what to make.
Visual effects
The storyboard is the bridge that allows the tight sync invloved in creating live action actions interacting with virtual monsters, supernatural, or moving through complex spaces.
Tells them how it plays out before they go out and film.
Beat board
Key snapshots illustrated
Thumbnails
Quick visualisation of the story or narrative. These are small sketches of frames at important story points
Rules
Use scenery to communicate size/scale
Consider range of images to best convey story
Ask questions - leave them wanting more
Demonstrate the theme, don't tell it!
Give characters personalities
Show information, do not rely on words
jack and the beanstalk storyboard
6 steps to creation
Idea/purpose (why create it?)
Form (with what medium)
Strutcture (How to compose it)
Idiom (With what style)
Craft (How to create it)
Surface (Polishing and appearance)
Composition
Refers to the way a frame is built up and how all visual elements help to establish a theme, emotion or convey a message.
Storyboarding is the first visual representation of a story, composition is a tool to help better visualise the story and narrative.
Rule of thirds
centre framing
frame within frame
scale
direction
horizon
aspect ratio.
Playboard
I was tasked with creating a playboard that could be used for my group's synoptic project, so i've decided to make one based on the town area that will be in the game. This town area will have buildings that you can enter to shop and also npcs that you can interact with.
For now, however, i'm going to keep the playboard to showing npcs that are interactable and the houses that are behind them. This is simply because there isn't enough time on this project for me as the background designer to design multiple building's interiors and also for Danny, the pixel artist doing foreground elements, to also design assets for inside building's
I've started off thinking about other games i've played that are 2D to give me an idea of how a town area should be laid out.
Hollow knight Dirthmouth Image
Pictured above is an image of dirthmouth, a town within hollow knight. This town is mostly flat other than a step down to the east of this image. The buildings that you can enter to shop or take the stag ways are pictured in the image (though are shut in this image i found). My playboard will probably be flat like this as it makes it easier to navigate the zone, and also makes sense as a town typically would be flat for ease of access and travel.
Now that i've thought of the layout i'm going to think of what exactly is needed on the playboard. I'm not able to find an exact answer to what a playboard should look like or need when i look online so i'm just going to do something that i feel is helpful to me and indicates what is going on in this scene of the game.
What is needed in this town:
NPCs
Vendors
Zone Transitions
Save Point
Where the player must stand to interact with these things
Level assets (Backgrounds)
Next i'm going to start some sketches for a playboard on paper. These may end up the final thing or close to but not certain yet.
So far this is what i have done. There are NPCs, a vendor, a zone transition into the town and a building you could possibly enter if we had the time to make that for the game.
Next i will do this digitally where it will be cleaner and i can add more to it.
This is what i came up with for a playboard.
The key below the payboard shows what everything means.