Storyboarding and the Story Reel - Animating with Blender: How to Create Short Animations from Start to Finish - page 56

Summary
Storyboarding involves the creation of a comic-like series of images that describe the action in your story.
Storyboards help to organize your thoughts in the way that action and staging will take place in 3D and can
also point out problems in the way the story was constructed.
While storyboards can be drawn with either traditional or digital tools, at some point, they must be brought
into the computer and organized. When there, the storyboards are synced with a temporary soundtrack to
create a story reel. The story reel becomes the core of your animation production and provides your fi rst
chance to get a feel for timing and action.
Outbox
● A series of storyboards that effectively tell your story
● A rough soundtrack to assist with timing
● A master story reel BLEND fi le that will serve as the basis for all future animation work
The Peach Perspective
On storyboarding: How closely were the storyboards for BBB followed once production began?
When you deviated from them, did you reboard or just plow through without them?
Sacha: The storyboards were followed as closely as possible during the entire process. We're
talking about composition, action, body language, facial expressions, and so on. When changes
in a later phase were necessary, we went back to the storyboard and placed them directly into
the animatic. The importance of a storyboard (and later the animatic) also showed the danger of
it: Minor fl aws that found a way into the storyboard could always be unintentionally copied in
the fi nal work. Sometimes storyboards were less detailed, which gave the artists more freedom
for interpretation, just as long as it fi t in the whole.