The Whiteboard Animation Storyboard – creative flow vs structure


Whiteboard Animation Storyboard

When working with 2D, 3D animation and Whiteboard Animation one of the first things I came across was creating a storyboard.

If you enter ‘definition of storyboard’ into Google search you get:

a sequence of drawings, typically with some directions and dialogue, representing the shots planned for a film or television production

The simplest form of storyboard that I know of is the following:


When I was working on some of my first 3D animations I did adopt this process and found that it fitted quite well as can be seen in this example:

 

As you can see the graphics were very simple, in fact I chose to work very fast so that I could get the basic scene. This helped me see more of the continuity of the scene and didn’t allow me to get too lost in the details.

I found it interesting when I started working on Whiteboard Animation, as I didn’t want to create it in such a structured manner. I felt that as the leading element involved in Whiteboard Animation is the voiceover, I chose to write out the voiceover in pencil with simple sketches at appropriate parts of the script.

It gave for more freedom and almost allowed for the creativity to be open and developmental, a bit like the growing of a tree – naturally. Instead of presetting the ground that it would grow in, I would allow the sketches to follow the script. In retrospect it is not dissimilar to the way that Whiteboard Animation grows. It is following the voiceover, and the camera zooms in or out and shows a particular sketch (or interaction of several sketches). It grows on the blank whiteboard.

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