Storyboard Animatic

Using Photoshop and Adobe After Effects, I created an animatic of my animation.

First, import a jpeg scan of your storyboard into photoshop.

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Here is my storyboard.

Select the rectangular marquee tool (shortcut M) and select the frame. Now press CMD + J to duplicate the selected frame onto its own layer. Repeat this for each of the frames whilst naming the layers appropriately. After all of the panels have been separated, you can fill in greyscale colours to add some dimension and give an idea of where you might see shadows and more within your final animation.

For anything that I wanted to show moving, I created a blank layer and drew in the figure so that when imported into After Effects, I would be able to move my character.

Now open Adobe After Effects and select New Composition from Footage. Locate the psd file of the edited storyboard with ‘all acceptable files composition’ and  ‘retain layer sizes’ selected in the options.

It will import and become a composition. Within this composition, all of the layers will be in the same format as they were in photoshop.

Right-click the animatic composition and select Composition Settings or alternately go to Composition > Composition Settings in the options bar. Set the preset to HDTV 1080 25 for the correct 1920 x 1080px proportions and press ok. Now you are ready to start creating your animatic.

Here is mine:

In the feedback from our client, I was informed that instead of using the State Capital Building photo, I should use a photograph from the 1893 Chicago Exposition due to historical accuracy. Here is the photo:

‘Columbian Exposition Chicago. Exhibition Buildings. Electrical Building from Machinery Building. Copyright Kingston. ‘