Storyboarding and the Story Reel - Animating with Blender: How to Create Short Animations from Start to Finish - page 42

If you are working with index cards and a board, you will see your story develop with each sketch that you
add. If you are drawing directly on the computer, you will need an additional tool to see the storyboards as
you would in real life.
On a Windows PC, one such program is IrfanView, a free image viewer and browser available from www.irfan
view.com . Figure 4.37 shows IrfanView's Thumbnails view, found by clicking on Thumbnails in the pro-
gram's File menu. Through the Thumbnails view's Options menu, you can increase or decrease the size of the
thumbnail images. Pressing the F5 key will refresh the thumbnail display each time new storyboards are added.
Figure 4.37 IrfanView's Thumbnails screen provides a fast storyboard overview for Windows users
Macintosh users can use the bundled iPhoto application to achieve a similar effect. If you are an Adobe
Photoshop owner, you can use the Contact Sheet utility that is found under Automate in the File menu.
Telling the Story
One of the things that animation directors do after storyboarding is to use their storyboards to actually show
and tell the story to an audience. Even though your production is short, this is still a good idea. Find yourself
an audience, most likely friends and family, and walk them through your storyboards.