Storyboards

The Flea Film was storyboarded in the early days to help develop the script and give me ideas on how the animation was going to work.

Once I recorded the voices, I used animatics (a video storyboard) to give me an idea of how long the film was going to be and if it was going to work as a whole. A good storyboard is essential if you need to explain your film to others (for example if you are raising funding or if others are doing the acting or animating) . You may also find that is helpful to you, to help you visualise and plan your work, if you can't sketch the idea in a box then it's unlikely that you will be able to animate it. Once I had some rough ideas of a shot designed on the computer, I used those images on the later versions of the storyboard. Some of the voice artists found this helpful.

I've collected together some handy links from around the internet and there's also some books that might be of help.

http://www.exposure.co.uk/eejit/storybd/
http://www.matter.org.uk/storyboard/storyboard_guide.htm
http://www.mercedes.wa.edu.au/Media/howto.html

Books on Storyboarding from the Aceanim Shop