Planning in Miro
I’ll start by saying that I love Miro, it’s such a great tool for designing and planning. Here’s what my story planning looks like on Miro so far:
Zoomed out shot of where planning currently is on Miro. Draft = Done. Text-only storyboard = Done.
For this beetle story I started with a draft that was loosely written and unfiltered so I could see what areas needed work early on. It was almost immediately apparent that the initial story was a little… boring.
I went through 2 - 3 revisions before I settled on my complication and what the comedy element was going to be. When I first started I didn’t know whether I wanted this to be funny or serious, and to honest I’m not sure that I’ve settled on only being a being a cute, funny piece. I want to work in a larger environmental message beneath it, but I’m not sure how I’m going to tackle that yet. Stay tuned.
How I Structure Storyboards
Everyone does this differently and there’s a lot of templates online if you’re unsure of where to start. For me, I’ve taken the best of all the boards I’ve worked on over the years and mashed it together into the structure in the screenshot below.
Here’s how I break it down:
Use only 2 colours to indicate when shots change, this helps with visualising timing before drawing anything.
Have a section beneath the shot number that describes the scene action in 1 - 2 sentences.
Split the scene into Camera, Audio & Extra notes.
In Camera, add the shot type and any camera animation/movement.
In Audio, add a description of everything you hear in that scene.
In Extra Notes, add anything that doesn’t fit in the category above (use my screenshot below for examples).
I’ve added a closer screenshot if the first part of the storyboard below.
Closer screenshot of the story beginning.
Once I fleshed out the text element of my storyboard I was eager to get started on the next [best] part before returning to draw the storyboard frames.
The next (and my favourite) part is:
Reference Gathering & Mood Boards
Again in Miro, I started a new section for collecting reference and begin this phase similarly to how I started writing the first draft - loosey-goosey and no rules!
Here’s a zoomed out render of everything, unsorted.
Zoomed out screenshot of the 1st ‘unsorted’ reference gathering session.
I definitely have an image in mind of how I want this short film to look, but it’s a mish-mash of styles that make it hard to describe or find complete references for. So I started searching for elements of the design I had in mind, which I broke down into these key points:
Warm lighting, lots of bloom in highly exposed areas
Painterly effect on high detail environment areas (think similar to Into The Spiderverse)
Pixar-style object detail
I haven’t found ALL the reference I need to construct a decent moodboard yet, so I’ll post a new article when I do.
Until then - stay tuned!