What Can a Storyboard Be Used For?

From theater productions to production applications, Storyboarding has proved to be an efficient application in communicating ideas that demand visualization of a scene.

Nonetheless, if you can use storyboarding in a setup that’s professionally guided, you can easily eliminate uncertainty and errors that often come up whenever you are starting with a new project.

On top of that, storyboards can be easily created using boards and markers. With the advancement in technology, applications, and software, such as MakeStoryboard, are also available to help begin your storyboarding journey in almost no time. 

So, what can a storyboard be used for?

Storyboarding can be applied in different fields of work including linear (films, video ads, multimedia presentations, comic strips, stop motion animation, etc.) and non-linear products (information display, smartphone apps, interactive media, digital games, etc.). 

It is often used to illustrate the sequence of the story to the team or explain different ways of the same concept. It can even be used as a map to outline the process involved in creating the end product. 

However, here are the most common uses of storyboarding:

Movie/Filmmaking

Using a storyboard in your movie production will help you plan out your ideas and visualize the settings and look of your movie. The key is to translate your new ideas into images. In brief, if you want to get things right in your movie/film production, think about using storyboarding. 

Moreover, through storyboarding, you can easily draw out your video shots in an organized way and avoid the production of complicated shoots.

Additionally, storyboard images are able to tell you a lot about the script. It gives the details in a way that anyone who hasn't seen the script can understand the story being told just by looking at the storyboards. 

Advert Video Making

Storyboards are essential when creating advert videos. It helps you plan the ad video right from start to finish — the flow, the voiceovers, the dialogue, the lighting, etc. Storyboarding your video ad will also help you collaborate well with your team and work out concepts for the video before scripting. 

Nonetheless, storyboarding an ad video is simply using boxes drawn on boards to show how every shot will be visually represented. Each box is used to represent a video shot in succession, and below each box is a smaller box for stating rough dialogue or action. Additionally, big boxes or smaller ones can also be used to show the graphics. 

Storyboarding generally helps you plan and detail your video actions. 

Comic Books 

The storyboard itself looks like a comic book, but there's a difference. You need a storyboard for your comic book — this storyboarding phase is very important, especially when working on a graphic novel. 

Also, storyboarding will help you in deciding the comic layout, planning out what needs to be in the panels, brainstorming, highlighting missing tasks, and incorporating changes before the main work begins. 

You can create your comics storyboards simply by drawing out small sketches of the main events and putting them in order. You can draw more frames until you have enough of what you need to tell the story.  

Sounds exciting? Why don’t you explore the way to storyboard a comic here and become a pro?

Presentations 

If you're planning a presentation, no matter what kind, there's a greater chance your presentation will include slides. With storyboarding, you can quickly review the structure of what you're working on — you can even add, remove, and rearrange. 

For your presentation, you just need to write down the idea and concept you want, reflecting the kind of presentation you imagine. 

Once you have your audience, context, and purpose identified, you can begin storyboarding. 

Animation

In animation, the primary goal of storyboarding is to convey the story in a way that looks close to what the main animation is all about. 

Also, in animation studios, storyboarding is included as one of the first main steps in the pre-production stage. This involves the translation of scripts into visuals for project development. A quick guide on how to storyboard for animation can be found here.

Graphics 

Storyboarding is an essential tool in both infographics and motion graphics. As a graphic designer, you need to plan and visualize your ideas first before creating them. This is what storyboarding does — it helps you get an insight into what your design will look like. 

If you're creating a design for someone, as a designer, you need to understand how your design will work for the user. By all means, you should avoid making designs that will require you to start all over again after finishing. 

Therefore, you should sketch out your work before rendering it. It should convey enough information for the reader to be able to understand what the details are all about.

UX Design 

In UX design, storyboarding helps designers put together their various research findings,including characters and user stories. It is an effective tool for visual predictions and exploration of how a user sees a product or a process. 

A storyboard in UX helps designers understand how well people interact with a product and gives them the idea to prioritize what's important and necessary for users. 

Summing Up

Storyboarding, no doubt, is an amazing digital tool to generate many helpful tools that can let you visualize any project idea or process without much of a hassle. Moreover, with apps such as MakeStoryboard, it's interesting how storyboards have been helping numerous content creators across the globe to create flawless work and impress their clients.