Whether you’re creating a full length movie or a 10 minute short for YouTube, using storyboards can be a critical part of the workflow. Storyboarding is the process of mapping out scenes with visual representations of how the shots should look, and if done effectively, it can make the day of the shoot run a lot smoother.
Storyboards Premium offers storytellers a beautiful way to organize, visualize and share the scenes and shots you’ve imagined.
Getting Started
To begin, movie makers first choose the aspect ratio for the film. This will adjust your scene size to reflect either a standard 4:3 format or 16:9. Designing scenes is simple and allows users to add both layers and predrawn elements such as characters, props and effects like wind and rain.
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The design elements found within the library feature can be easily dragged around the scene or sized using the iOS pinch-to-zoom gesture. Humans, clocks and vehicles, all available within the bank of images, can also be quickly tweaked to move the image to the front or back, causing the image to overlap all other elements or vise versa.
To add some context to a scene, users can add text, annotations or dialog using the text tool. This feature comes with options to customize the font type, size, colour, borders and fill. And, after creating elements such as text, any image can be saved to a favourites folder.
Why it’s cool: Let’s say you burst out of bed at 2am with an idea for a scene. After firing up Storyboards on your iPad, an impressive looking scene could be created and emailed within just a few minutes. It’s a better solution than jotting down some notes that might be incoherent to you in the morning, and the overall product looks quite polished.
Just because you might be the next Tarantino, it doesn’t mean you’re a graphic artist so the thousands of elements, drawings and props within are of great value if you’re collaborating with others– no need to subject them to your chicken scratch sketches. Alternatively, images can be imported from the device’s photo gallery.
If you’re in need a highly professional storyboard containing your own props and characters, for a price, the developers will design elements for you. Keep in mind that the import feature enables you to take a snapshot of the set or environment which can be added as the background of a scene.
Export Features
Storyboards can be shared via email as a PDF or in the Storyboard file format. Within the PDF settings, we liked that the scene notes and drawing titles could be turned on and off. This enables users to keep information private, only seen within the app. There’s also an option to save to the iPad’s photo gallery or print.
The Bottom Line:
Storyboards Premium is a sweet solution for drawing out scenes, and the use of a touch screen is perfect for designing and arranging objects. There’s a decent bank of images although, for the $14.99 price tag, we’d like to see even more.
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