What is Storyboarder?

Storyboarder is a tool that makes it easy to visualize a story as fast as you can think.

Storyboarding lets storytellers easily, and cheaply visualize their stories. It can be used to test the narrative, make changes, and be better prepared for production, reducing costs greatly. - But ultimately this results in a better story.

In Storyboarder, you can draw your storyboards in a traditional way, either using our sketching system or using an external tool like Photoshop.

OR - You can layout scenes using Shot Generator - a feature that allows you to quickly add characters, pose them, add objects, and set up cameras to create shots. - There's no drawing required.

But we didn't stop there. If you own an Oculus Quest or other VR headset, you can create and edit your scene in VR, and set up virtual cameras. This is the fastest way to set up scenes and shots.

In Storyboarder, it's possible to virtually direct an entire movie without leaving your house. You can make an animatic of the whole movie and share it with people for feedback. And because you can go back and easily change anything, you can iterate on the story to make it better.

This is the future of Storytelling.

Storyboarder is used by 250 thousand people, has been downloaded over 1.5 million times, and used by professional storyboard artists on movies and shows like: X-men Dark Phoenix, Cosmos, Bright, New Mutants, Cold Case Files, Shameless, Modern Family, Terminator: Dark Fate, and the upcoming Disney's Cruella.

And it's totally free to use.

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Storyboarder Interface

So here we have Storyboarder open with a script loaded.

I can start by adding a new board, drawing in that board, and reorder the boards.

I can also edit a board in Photoshop by clicking on this button. So if I create my board in Photoshop, save it, and flip back to Storyboarder, it updates automatically.

If you like working on paper, you can print a thumbnail worksheet, sketch out your thumbnails and import them back in.

When you're done with a storyboard, you can export to an animatic video, sequential frames, pdf, or even to an editing program.

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Shot Generator Interface

So if you want to lay out a shot without having to draw, you can use the shot generator tool. It's essentially a 3D scene editor.

If you click on the sidebar in Storyboarder, it will open up Shot Generator.

You can add characters.

You can pose them either using IK, or by selecting the bones and rotating them, or using one of hundreds of pose presets that you can search for.

Then, you can add objects. In most simple cases, you can just add boxes that can represent almost anything. But we also have a set of essential objects you can use. You can also make your own 3D objects in a tool like Blender to export GLB files and import them back into Shot Generator.

Lastly, you can add cameras wherever you want and move them around using the WASD keys.

And once you're happy with the scene and shot you've created you can just insert those shots back into Storyboarder.

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Virtual Reality

In Shot Generator, you can see there's a button that says open in Virtual Reality.

Editing 3d object's positions and rotation in 2d is really cumbersome. But in VR it's completely natural. Additionally, there's a sense of scale that you get in VR you simply don't get in 2d.

So if you have an Oculus Quest, which is a powerful and cheap wireless VR headset, you can put it on, and go to the address in the quest's browser.

Once you're in, you can edit any existing Shot Generator board. But you can also create a scene from scratch.

So the idea is that: you enter in VR. You may want to add two characters. Add a table and two chairs. Pose the characters to sit in the chairs. Set up three cameras. And your scene layout is basically complete. And you can do it just about as fast as you can think.

Once you have your scene laid out, you can take off your headset, and all the changes you've made to your scene are on the computer in Shot Generator. Then, you can just insert shots into Storyboarder.

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In Storyboarder, you can rearrange your shots and draw over the top of them. But more powerfully, you can go back and edit anything, making it extremely easy to make modifications from editing a camera angle, to making huge story changes. This allows you to iterate on story. If you don't like the way something plays, you can just change it.

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With a laptop, a cheap oculus quest, and Storyboarder you have a complete virtual pre-production environment and storyboarding tool that pros use - and it is available to everyone. We hope this tool will help democratize storytelling to all people.

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At Wonder Unit, we're making fantastic story centric movies, but we're also working on new ways of creating stories through iterative processes and new creative tools. Storyboarder is just one in a suite of new tools we are developing.

We continue to build tools like Storyboarder to reduce the friction of creation - which allows us to iterate on telling better stories. And we hope it helps you tell better stories too.

We would love to hear your feedback. Send me an email at [email protected] or send me a text at 917-696-5465. Thanks!