Storyboarding: planning your visual story

Brainstorm-
Before you start story boarding your animation, you need to brain storm,  write down your ideas in point form, doodle,
Write a Script-
Then write it out a script could be in paragraph or point form. It may be short, but it is a starting point to organize your thoughts.

Storyboard-
Then try to visually and roughly draw your idea in a storyboard. The essence of the story board it to organize your ideas, and to use it as a guide when putting your final piece together.

Some Storyboard Suggestions:

• Keep it simple, don't worry if you are not a great artist, you don't have to go into detail.
• Don not draw all of the frames. Only draw out key changes, significant changes in movement, or the story line.
• Draw in pencil, 
• Sometimes drawing a grid will give your frames depth.
• Give the basic essence of your story- beginning, middle/conflict, end resolutions

Storyboard from Wall-e

DOT & a line: Guidelines for Telling a Story

Develop a simple story about a "Dot and line". Your DOT will be animated to show movement from frame to frame and your will be confronted with some sort of conflict and resolution.

Guidelines are not rules, but a formula that can be used to suit your creative imagination. Several avenues exist for storytelling, such as journalistic reporting, sequential images that reveal a moment, photographic poetry, and narrative. The following guidelines are for narrative.

A good story has characters in action with a beginning, middle, and an ending. A lot of information can be given in a single setting. Location, time, and atmosphere aid viewer imagination.

1. Establish characters and location.
2. Create a situation with possibilities of what might happen.
3. Involve the characters in the situation.
4. Build to probable outcomes.
5. Have a logical, but surprising, end.

You will first brainstorm/doodle ideas of what to do with your DOT. You can try this site for starters- Flipbook Animator Site


Another fun animation idea site: drawastickman.com


Then develop your idea in a storyboard: Identify key moments, in the story ie: actions, changes in scene, shifts in movement, and events that help to relay the idea tied into the story.