Storyboarding 101: A guide to basic storyboards and pre-production

Like many other creative projects, creating multimedia begins with brainstorming. After a brainstorming session for a multimedia project, ideas can then be transferred to a storyboard that helps conceptualize, articulate, or clarify concepts in a visual format. Though there are professionals who make their living as storyboard artists (in the film industry, for example) you do not have to be an artist to put your thoughts into illustrations.

Essentially, storyboarding is the translating of concepts into a series of images that helps to communicate the visual potential of a project. The storyboard can help you think about how your project will look when it is complete, and will you help identify the various components the multimedia project will need to have in place before production begins. The storyboard is then used to drive the production of the final product.

Storyboards generally go through a series of development stages. Just as a research paper may progress from an outline, to a rough draft, to a final draft, a storyboard can also go through a number of evolutions before the idea is completely developed.

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Many times, a storyboard simply begins with rough sketches on a piece of notebook paper.

As a project is continually discussed, the storyboard is re-worked and drawn out again. Ultimately, the storyboard transcends into its final form a clearly laid-out blueprint that will guide the development of the final product.

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Compare this final product of the Professional Counselor Scholar Practitioner Model schematic to the first storyboard on the previous page. While the final product does look similar to what was originally laid out in the storyboard, as you can see, the completed project does not have to perfectly match the storyboard.

. Reflect back on your course in Advanced Instructional Design and the multimedia piece entitled: Instructional Design: ADDIE Model. Prior to this course, you may not have guessed that this multimedia piece began from a series of storyboards, including this hand-drawn sketch.
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Even though the sketch is rough, the storyboard is very similar to the completed multimedia piece you used in the course.

One of the main advantages of storyboarding when developing multimedia is that it saves time. When you are working out ideas and concepts on storyboards rather than developing the content in a software program, you can change ideas easily, transform graphics, and switch around information. When the same content is developed directly using the multimedia software, it can often take more time to make changes than it does on the storyboard.

As you begin to use the storyboard process more and more, you will begin to see how smoothly something can develop and how easily your ideas come together. This is evident in the following series of storyboards. Notice the progression of ideas, detail and content:
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One of the main advantages of storyboarding when developing multimedia is that it saves time. When you are working out ideas and concepts on storyboards rather than developing the content directly in a particular software program, such as Adobe Dreamweaver or Adobe Flash, you can more easily change ideas, transform graphics, and switch around information. When the same content is developed directly in the multimedia software, it can often take more time to make changes than it does on the storyboard.

Additional information on the process of storyboarding, its benefits, and additional examples can be found in the following external web resources:

Knight Digital Media Center, University of California, Berkeley Usability.net: Storyboarding Presentation Storyboarding by Geetash Bajajk, Indezine.com

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