Most people have, at one time or another, heard of a storyboard. A storyboard usually couples simple sketches with written descriptions of what the voice over is saying in a scene. A storyboard is typically a static series of images displayed sequentially for the purpose of pre-visualizing a motion picture, animation or interactive media. The storyboarding process was originally developed by Disney during the early 1930s.
By contrast, many people haven’t ever heard of an animatic. One way to think of it is that an animatic is kind of like a storyboard on steroids. An animatic is still a series of still images for each scene but they are timed and sequenced with the voice over track and/or sound track added to check whether the sound and visuals we are developing are working together seamlessly to tell a brand’s story.
An animatic is designed to help define the imagery and get the core message conveyed as effectively as possible. Usually in the animatic process we are able to identify scenes we could trim to shorten the video’s overall length. In the script writing process, we use a text description of the visuals to help give direction for the storyboard and animatic. The visuals for the animatic are very quick sketches or gesture drawings just to give us, and our client, a good feel for how the video will visually flow. Here’s an example of an initial animatic we created for a recent animation project for LegacyX:
As you can see it’s very basic, quickly sketched out visuals with arrows to denote movement. And here is the final finished product below:
Now if you watch this video with both the animatic and finished video side by side, you can see there were some elements that stayed relatively consistent to the original animatic and others things were tweaked or changed completely to tell LegacyX’s story more effectively.
As you can see the animatic goes one step further than a static series of images in a storyboard to help critically see whether everything is working together seamlessly to tell your story. With most explainer videos, you are culling your message down to its bare bones to try and stay as engaging to the viewer as possible.
Up until about 10 years ago, animatics were produced by filming storyboards pages. Now animatics can be produced using computer animation programs simply and efficiently to make sure everything within your animation is working in sync to best tell your story.
So… for a typical animated show, would the storyboard be more finished than the gestural animatic drawing?
Hi Linda – Thanks for commenting! As you can see in the above example, our animatic drawing style is pretty rough and simplified. It’s just meant to give the client the gist of what the pace and feel of the video is when set to the voice over with music. We provide separate style guide drawings along with the animatic that are finished quality to give the client a taste of what the characters, graphics or backgrounds are going to look like in their video.
What if the client gets whole different thought by seeing the animatic….what happened if he didn’t get what the animatic is saying…Because everyone has there own idea when it comes to there point of view….?
Hey @Ravi – We usually include a couple rounds of revisions to the animatic. We also usually reviewed the script with the client and had them approve it with in depth descriptions of the visuals. That said, sometimes they come up with a completely different idea after seeing it and making changes at this stage is WAY easier than after we go to final animation.