Storyboard Templates

Joe Clay | Dec 1, 2016

Hey everyone! I've developed an improved workflow for storyboarding. I used to just draw them on a page I made and scan them in. I didn't do much editing of them in Photoshop unless something was really a pain and needed to be duplicated a billion times.

Initially, I set up this InDesign document that took those scans and put them in a slightly cleaner template. But that was still tedious. A few months back I bought an iPad Pro and Apple Pencil and I started to use Procreate. I used it to board a project and it was awesome! It's easy to collaborate with someone without having to be near a computer, and I didn't have to redraw things over and over. It made making slightly different frames super easy so making more frames to fit a lengthy script wasn't a big deal. And because of that, I can get a better feel for pacing. Since I can export to PSD from Procreate, I can then export those layers to PNGs. I use a 4K 16:9 preset (3840x2160) in Procreate so I can enlarge if need be.

So then I needed to step up my InDesign game. I made all the text boxes threaded so I can put my script in and it flows the necessary pages. It takes minutes to make my final document now—especially since I now do them completely digitally.

Anyway, you can grab that InDesign document right here. The zip also contains my older templates that I printed to draw on. If you're unfamiliar with InDesign or how I made this document, continue reading to figure out how to use it.

Initial Setup

• Select Text in the text styles dropdown.
• Modify its style options.
• Select a font you want to use.
• Do the same thing for the Comment text style.
• Save.

Using the Template

1. First, I like to set my display mode to high performance because nothing I do in Indesign is tough to display.
2. Open up Type > Text Variables > Define.
3. Set the _Project Name variable to, uh, the name of your project.
4. If you want to use the 16 grid setup it's ready to go (it's 2 lines of text per box).
5. If you want the 9 grid, make a new page and delete the original page.
6. If you made a new page, hold shift+cmd and click drag through each line of text frames to make them editable.
7. Paste your script into the first text frame. New pages will flow as needed.
8. Edit your script. You can add descriptions using the "comment" text style.
9. Shift+cmd drag over every frame that you want to put an image in (it is fine to cross over the text boxes, or even select frames you don't want to fill.
10. Now you can hit cmd+d with nothing selected or go to File > Place.
11. Navigate to your folder of storyboard frames. Select the first frame, and shift+click on the last one. This will load up your cursor with all of the boards.
12. Now just click in each frame to drop each image where they need to go.
13. Once you've placed the frames, if you need to duplicate any, hit B. A box will pop up.
14. Click on the frame you want to duplicate. Then hit B again and your cursor will look like the place cursor again.
15. Click in the frame you need to place the duplicate.
16. If any of the frames fit strangely, click to select the content of the frame, and the right click and select Fitting > Fill Frame Proportionally.
17. Click on frames to select them to resize as needed.
18. Hit cmd+E to export. I usually just use 'High Quality Print.'

It sounds way more complicated than it is. If you haven't used InDesign before, it can seem odd. But once you've done it a few times, you will be glad you downloaded this file.

I'm not an InDesign master, but if you have any questions, use the contact form to shoot me an email and I'll point you in the right direction.