How To Draw Backgrounds For Characters

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Creating storyboards is a great way to map out your film and create a clear vision for each scene, and it'southward really easy to get started! We've put together a guide to walk you through everything you demand to know nigh drawing your own storyboards like a professional. Bank check out the steps beneath to learn how to create a storyboard template, come up with interesting shots, and fill your storyboards in with drawings, dialogue, and any important notes you have.

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Consummate your script before getting started on the storyboards. If the script is a template for how a movie volition sound, a storyboard is the template for how they look. Storyboards are how y'all visualize how actors, props, backgrounds & camera angles will fit together in any detail scene or sequence of shots. Information technology is your chance to visually map out the movie before expensive cameras, actors, and crews are waiting around on prepare.^[1]
- That said, one of the jobs of a storyboarder is to take the script and improve on it by adding visuals. Y'all must know the full arc of the story earlier you get started.
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Describe squares for each scene, leaving room for dialogue underneath. Once yous've written your script and accept an idea of what will happen in your film, get yourself some paper or poster board to gather your storyboard on. Similar a comic strip, each square represents a shot or scene and the space underneath is where you make full in the dialogue, notes, or action.
- While yous can draw your ain boards, there are many free templates online that you can print out to start sketching immediately.
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Institute the location, and any important objects, in your get-go box of the scene. The well-nigh important function of the storyboard is to testify how the shot is going to look. For your outset board, yous'll want all the essential details so that people reading information technology know where they are. When wondering what to include, always enquire the question: "is this essential to understanding the scene?"
- Anytime y'all alter locations you need to describe in a new the groundwork. Remember, you lot're telling the story visually. Try to imagine what you would need to see if this were a movie.
- If the background doesn't change between shots, you can get out it bare and focus on the action.
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Use arrows and notes to show any motility or changes. For example, if you want one grapheme to punch another , you don't need to describe five frames of his fist moving slowly towards a face. Instead, describe 1 frame of the fist with an arrow indicating the motion.
- You tin can also employ arrows to indicate camera movements, such equally pans or tilts.
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Fill up in the scene'southward dialogue and sounds underneath the drawing. Recall, you're basically making a comic book version of the movie, so you lot should add essential sound effects as well. Don't worry if it doesn't all fit -- y'all're just giving markers to the director and crew about where the sound is matched up, then ellipses ("...") can help.
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Make a new frame for each significant activeness or camera move. Whenever something happens, it needs it's ain box. If yous're cartoon out a conversation, you lot'll desire to switch from one graphic symbol to another as they talk, equally well every bit some shots of both of them at the same time. You demand to draw each ane of these shifts individually.
- You cannot merely draw 1-two boxes and say "alternate shots" for a conversation. Imagine a scene where a mother is mad at her son for breaking a lamp. Showing the whole thing from the sad or scared son is a very different scene from showing the furious mom the whole time, cutting dorsum and along, or showing the broken lamp.
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Fill in essential notes about move, sounds, or special effects. If a scene requires a little fake blood, so make a notation of it either using a cherry-red pen or jotting it downwards. If the shot requires a long, continuous take, apply arrows to indicate how information technology all flows together. While there are proper terms for all of this, the most important affair is visually telling the story however you tin can. If it makes sense as a guide to filming, put it in.
- If the photographic camera isn't cutting, but lots of things are happening, you lot can use multiple boxes for one "cut." Whenever something happens, you need a new box, even if the camera doesn't move.
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1
Find ways to limited the script'southward themes visually. Don't let the script "speak for itself;" The best movies are thematically related on all levels: writing, storyboarding, audio furnishings, acting, etc. It is your job to take a good script and turn information technology into neat visuals. Each scene, enquire yourself what the goal of the scene is, what's the mood or tone, and what the most important props, characters, or moments are. How can yous draw attention to these things?
- Find the nigh crucial element of the scene, and discover a mode to draw the audience'south attention to it in each shot, making information technology bigger, centering it, zooming into it, etc.^[2]
- Gene Wilder wasn't a storyboarder, but he idea similar a visual comedian. In Willy Wonka, the famous intro where he "accidentally" trips, falls, and rolls to raucous adulation was drawn up by him every bit a way to portray Wonka as fun, strange, and hiding backside a comic facade.^[3]
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Avert flat, two-dimensional compositions past always fishing the photographic camera. What y'all don't want is a completely apartment floor, where the camera is at a right bending to the ground. Tilting the shot slightly gives your storyboard three dimensions, even if information technology's just a slight shift. Direct on shots are near never as exciting every bit dynamic, 3D compositions.
- Use the foreground and background to your advantage equally well -- don't put every character or affair on the same depth line.
- Don't forget well-nigh the far, far groundwork either -- information technology is a good place to create depth.
- Of class, in that location are plenty of reasons to interruption this rule, such as creating a perfectly symmetrical shot. Only know why you're breaking the rule before you exercise information technology.^[4]
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Provide motivation to cut the camera instead of just changing the shot. Usually this is obvious -- if another character is speaking, you demand to cut to evidence them. If someone hears a noise behind them, you cut to the location the noise came from. All good cuts must have have a reason to occur-- whether it is the plot, characters, shifting attention, or a purely artistic choice.
- Ane of the nigh famous cuts always is in 2001: A Space Odyssey, where manager Stanley Kubrick cuts from a flight weapon to a satellite in space. In one cutting, he bridges the gap between primitive human and futurity man while implying that little has changed but the setting.
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Utilise the bending of a camera to betoken character relationships and feelings. The angle of your shot tells the audition how to feel about the characters or scenes. You can utilise this fact in endless ways and should always enquire yourself how your photographic camera angle helps or hinders the bespeak of the shot. For example:
- Looking down on a graphic symbol makes them seem weak, fearful, or powerless. Looking up makes someone seem powerful, confident, and dominant.
- Extreme angles like very high, very low, or titled shots testify defoliation, fear, or and off-the-wall experience like a drug trip.
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Try writing the scene out equally prose if you lot're struggling to become started. Sitting down and starting the scene, making hard choices like photographic camera angle and composition, is difficult if you're not certain what direction you lot desire to take things however. A expert intermediate stride is to write out the scene similar a short story. What parts pop out as important, what details stick out as you're writing, and what are the primal deportment in each shot? Yous can so edit this mini-script every bit a practice run before drawing.^[v]
- Stick to just 1-two descriptions for each shot or scene. You're non writing a novel, yous're writing a guide.
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Report cinematography. Storyboards are, in essence, practice shots of a movie. As such, they goal is to use the boards to ready upwards actual lights, cameras, and sets to mimic the shot your drew upward. Diving deeply into shot types, colour composition, camera angles, and more will greatly increment your toolkit equally a story board creator.
- Drawing a storyboard is cheap, but shooting is non. If working on a larger film, you demand to know the rough difficulty of shots to know if they're feasible. Way loftier-up shots may look astonishing and fit the motion picture, but helicopter filming is very expensive!
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Learn the terminology of mutual camera angles. Don't simply rely on drawing to get your point across -- the pic world is total of vocabulary that makes your chore easier and your storyboards more than precise. Writing downwards camera angles helps camera crews apace meet what shots they must set for, and lets you run into if you're getting accidentally repetitive with your shot choice.
- Establishing Shots: Quick shots that illustrate the set, location, or showtime position of the characters.
- Total, Medium, Shut, Extreme Close: If you're showing a grapheme, how much are you showing? Full (FS) shows the whole torso, Medium (MS) shows waist upward, Close (CU) shows shoulders and caput, and Extreme Close Up (ECU) shoes only confront.
- Up Shot / Down Shot: Up Shots look up at a grapheme, while Down Shots expect downward from above. "Worm's Eye" and "Bird's Eye" are the farthermost versions of each.
- Over the Shoulder (OTS): I of your about important terms, these shots have one person or thing on the side of the frame, back turned, while looking at another. Very common in conversations between two people.
- 2-shot: When both characters, ordinarily speaking to each other, are both in the frame at once. When cartoon dialogue, 2-shots ofttimes alternate with OTS shots.
- POV Shots Are only when the camera mimics the point of view of a grapheme.^[6]
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Familiarize yourself with camera motions to illustrate moving or irresolute shots. The following listing is by no ways exhaustive, only it is a expert primer on writing coherent storyboards. Whenever you lot want to add one, write the actual camera motion on the storyboard.
- Tracking is when the camera follows the action without cutting, like post-obit someone as they walk downward the street. Use arrows to betoken motility, and multiple frames if needed.
- Pans are when the camera merely rotates in 1 direction, ofttimes post-obit a character as they motility or exposing something about them. Draw an arrow illustrating the camera's management.
- Trucks are when the camera physically moves in or out. Imagine a shot of a TV, then the camera slowly "trucking" back to reveal a family watching the TV in the living room. Apply 4 lines, pointing from the centre of the screen out to the corners, to show trucking.
- Rack Focus is when you lot have a blurry object in the background and a clear one in the foreground, so the focus shifts from 1 to the other (it tin can become in reverse, too). Depict a line indicating where the focus starts and where it moves to.^[7]
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Make appropriate notes of transitions between shots. The following cuts are some of the most common in film, and must be noted in your storyboard. Each one requires a small drawing aslope the words, visually representing the transition. Start with a small rectangle, representing the screen, right earlier the dialogue, then fill this rectangle in with your transition:
- Fade In/Fade Out: This is simply when the epitome appears or disappears slowly from a blank screen. For a fade in, describe a triangle pointing left. For a fade out, draw a triangle pointing right.
- Cross Dissolve: When one prototype is slowly faded into the next one. To draw information technology, brand two intersecting triangles in the box, starting from all four corners. It is the fade out and fade in drawings superimposed on ane some other.
- Wipe: When one image physically moves beyond the screen, revealing the adjacent shot underneath it. Simply draw a vertical line in the center of the rectangle, and an arrow running through it to signal which way the first image is moving.^[8]
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Recollect basic blocking instructions to help set the scene and actors. The following terms refer to an object'south place in the shot. It can besides help directing motion, such as if a character walks from the back of the shot to the front, which could be expressed every bit "BG → FG."
- Foreground (FG): The area shut up to the camera.
- Midground (MG): The center of the frame
- Groundwork (BG): The are furthest from the camera.
- Off-screen (O/Due south): Helpful if there is a noise, dialogue, etc. that the viewers tin can't see, or if a graphic symbol enters or exits the frame completely.
- Overlay (OL): When one object or paradigm is superimposed on some other just both are visible.
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Label your shots correctly and then the residuum of the crew tin read them. In general, a "scene" on a storyboard really refers to an unbroken camera movement, not a full consequence. These scenes are added together to class a "sequence," which is the whole action, conversation, that you're portraying (what y'all normally call a "scene").
- Whenever the camera cuts, yous must change the scene number to betoken a new shot.
- If a single scene requires multiple deportment, all without changing the camera, they are labeled every bit panels. If ane shot requires three storyboards, y'all would label each console as 1/3, 2/iii, and 3/3.^[9]
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Aim for clarity, not perfect symbols or vocab, if you are dislocated. The ultimate goal of a storyboard is to visually tell the movie, not to pass a vocabulary test. While you should always strive to acquire the terminology, you want the storyboards to exist easily read past directors, cinematographers, and the rest of the coiffure. If you have an idea only don't know how to express it, use your drawing skills to convey the betoken as but as possible. Arrows, notes, and multiple panels should all be used to share your creative ideas when words don't suffice.
- Imagine a long, singular shot, like the beginning of Raging Bull. While in that location is no cutting, you could never incorporate that shot in merely ane panel. Y'all'd need to string many panels together with arrows, notes, and dialogue to plan the shot out.
- The vocab lists above are far from consummate -- there are hundreds of words, shots, and cues a pro storyboarder uses. To be a professional, you should proceed researching professional terms.
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Question

When should I put the storyboard together if I'm making a movie?

Travis Page is the Head of Production at Cinebody. Cinebody is a user-directed video content software visitor headquartered in Denver, Colorado that empowers brands to create instant, authentic, and engaging video content with anyone on globe. He holds a BS in Finance from the University of Colorado, Denver.

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It's important to start with your idea get-go. You tin can't craft a peachy storyboard if you don't know where the story is going. Outset with the idea and really lock that in before y'all do anything else. You should have a sense for what the script will be, so you can consummate that entirely if you'd like. Then, go to work on your storyboard. It's really not going to exist helpful if you lot don't sympathise the thought and story beginning, though.
Question

How exercise I communicate "or" in a storyboard?

Create two sub-storyboards branching off of the about recent frame. That way, you lot can play out each event then make up one's mind which ane you like improve WITHOUT having to starting time all over.
Question

Do storyboards have to go into detail?

No, they demand non. The goal of a storyboard is mainly to divide the large story line into little scenes in order to become a clear vision of the whole structure, and aspects such as transitions between scenes, the placement of actors, etc. Y'all can of course include details if y'all desire to, but during the further evolution many details will usually be inverse anyway.
Question

Could I use a storyboard for a music video?

Yes. Every bit a music video is either animation or live activity, it can and should employ a storyboard.
Question

Can I use themes or sounds in my video, over different visuals than the original source?

More often than not, you lot can as long as you have obtained permission from the artists and put the artists' names in the credits. If you don't obtain this permission, you may want to create an original soundtrack or find public domain sounds to use.

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If it helps, you tin fold a piece of paper into vi squares, to frame your scenes easily or download a free storyboard template from the internet.
Storyboarding software frequently has a database to help keep track of script info, props, locations, photographic camera directions, etc.
Keep your audition in mind while yous're storyboarding. Think virtually they want to run into, not what you desire to depict.^[10]
Yous don't need to draw every frame perfectly—a rough sketch is totally fine.

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Article Summary X

If y'all want to depict a storyboard to help lay out a scene, describe squares for each scene, leaving room for dialogue underneath. Think of information technology like a comic strip, where each square represents a shot or scene. In the showtime box of the scene, found the location and whatever important objects. Try to imagine telling the story visually. Every bit y'all draw out the action in the scene, brand a new frame for each significant activity or camera movement, and use arrows and notes to show whatsoever graphic symbol move or other changes. Read on for tips on how to use camera angles to help tell the story!

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