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Does anybody use After Effects for storyboarding?
I know, there’s a forum for AE threads. But Corporate Video seems like the place this time.
I’ve been working all afternoon on trying to get a storyboard going for a spot I’m working on. It’s my first time trying to do something like this (the story board I mean), and I’m finding it very difficult. I have almost no sketching ability, and absolutely no skill at representing dimension. I’ve played with a few storyboarding apps, and they’re just not able to convey my intention.
So I started building a few sets in AE, threw in some people (just a few ellipse shapes stuck together) and I’m finally getting somewhere. Most of the surfaces are 90deg to each other, so those snap right in. I can move people around in space and then swing the camera to any angle I want. I’m not measuring or anything, so nothing is to scale, but this is just step one.
I think I’m going to use this as a reference for a second set of slides that I’ll draw in PS once I have my sets built. It’ll be like those posable wooden people that the fine artist use for scale. “But you’ll do it twice” you say, but I’ve gotten more done in 20 minutes than about 3hrs of just pencil and paper.
Has anybody else done this? I imagine that if there were some tricky camera moves or if elements needed to be added later that this, done properly, would be pretty useful as an animatic or previs. I’m just going to be shooting simple, 1 camera scenes, but I want to get everybody on set on the same page.
Corbin Gross | SANMAR
Photographer/Videographer | Marketing
22833 SE Black Nugget Road | Issaquah, WA 98029
206.727.5501 x5237
http://www.sanmar.com -
7 Replies
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For speed and efficiency, I shoot photo-storyboards with a pocket digital camera, and then use the photos to create a PDF document that I can email to everyone involved with the shoot.
This lets me evaluate my shooting locations, determine possible camera angles, and gives me confirmation that the locations will work on the actual shoot day.
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Corbin, my answer is that whatever software you are most comfortable using, is the one that works for you. You wouldn’t believe some of the non-spreadsheet things some experts do in Excel, just because they can.
If this is just for your own reference, you could steal photos of real people off google image search instead of drawing ellipses. Cut them out in photoshop and give them an alpha channel. Eran Stern I think sells pre-keyed models for this kind of thing too. I used to make my previs sets in Crystal 3D Impact pro, and Poser, people still do. Today, I would tend to use Google Sketch-up, very fast and intuitive, and comes in a free version.
What’s nice about you using AE is that you could also model your lighting setups and get close to the final results, assuming you set the camera controls to imitate your real camera’s lens type and f-stop, etc. And the lights are free and you don’t need to climb ladders all day”:-)
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I was thinking about the potential for planning lighting as well. I’d have to do quite a bit more planning while building the sets though. But e’re still early enough in the planning that I don’t even know where we’re going shoot, so I wouldn’t even be able to measure out properly for falloff and placement.
I think, if this works OK, that in the future I’ll cut out some images as suggested. I was going to do that this time, but I didn’t want the look of any of the “characters” to be distracting for the other people involved. We haven’t really decided on the look of most of the characters, and some people are too literal to have a placeholder be too detailed.
Corbin Gross | SANMAR
Photographer/Videographer | Marketing
22833 SE Black Nugget Road | Issaquah, WA 98029
206.727.5501 x5237
http://www.sanmar.com -
In which case, just fill the alpha channel with black to make a silhouette figure. There are also tons of those already on google image search in various poses, some even animated.
If you have not tried out google sketch-up, you’re rally missing something. Childishly intuitive yet flexible, and offers a number of render style options from pencil line drawings and sketches to full on rendered 3D. And the part you’ll like, Corbin, is it requires no drawing ability at all: many pre-built objects are free to download and use from their library, and things like walls and floors are super-simple and self-aligning, with ruler measurements built-in so if you know the real world dimensions, you can see accurate scale views. It also does easy animated camera paths.
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This took ten seconds in sketchup
their 3-d warehouse has lots of stuff that is free as well as for purchase
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I’m downloading it now. It looks really cool. Thanks for the tip!
Edit: Ah, bummer! I’m using OS 10.6, but I need 10.7! Well, that’s the way the cookie crumbles, I guess…
I’ll have to try to give that software a try later on though. It seems perfect for what I’m doing.Corbin Gross | SANMAR
Photographer/Videographer | Marketing
22833 SE Black Nugget Road | Issaquah, WA 98029
206.727.5501 x5237
http://www.sanmar.com -
I think you’ll find it quite worthwhile. The full-on version is a bit pricy, but I find the free version does what I need. And there is a very nice user community, with sources for custom stuff. As a bonus, you can export and tweak sketch-up models and scenes and replicate them “for real” in a 3-d printer. Not full-scale, of course, but….
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