Storyboard definition: A storyboard is a sequence of sketched panels, one per shot, that shows what a video will look like before it is made, with the voiceover, action and camera notes written beside each frame.
So what is a storyboard in practice? Think of it as a visual script. Each panel is a rough sketch of one shot, paired with the voiceover line that plays over it and a short note on the action: what moves, what draws on, where the camera goes. Read panel by panel, it plays like a comic strip of your video.
Storyboarding is the process of building that board. Disney's animators made it standard in the early 1930s by pinning sketches to the studio wall, and it is still the backbone of every animated video, because in animation nothing exists until someone draws it.
For an animated explainer video, the storyboard is the moment your script stops being words and starts becoming pictures. It is where you and the studio agree on what every second of the video will show. At Broadcast2World, no explainer goes into animation until its storyboard is signed off.
These four get mixed up a lot. Here is what each one is and what you are approving when you sign it off.
Storyboarding helps an animation project by locking the story, the visuals and the pacing while changes are still cheap. Every frame of an animated video has to be designed, drawn and moved, so a scene cut at storyboard stage costs a few sketches. The same cut after animation costs days of rework.
Effort to change one scene
That is why we spend 1 to 2 weeks getting the board right before a single frame is animated.
Here is a real panel from our whiteboard explainer for the Transportation Authority of Marin, made with Reach Strategies. Every panel we share with clients follows the same four-part layout.
Notice the small red arrows in the frame. They show the direction of movement, which is how a still drawing describes motion. If you can read the arrows and the action note, you can picture the shot.
In a typical 4 to 6 week explainer project, the storyboard stage takes 1 to 2 weeks and includes 2 rounds of revisions. It comes right after the script is approved and right before the visual style is designed. For the full production picture, see our guide on how to make an explainer video.
Where is the animatic? For most explainers we skip it. The annotated storyboard plus the recorded voiceover give animators everything they need. We add an animatic only for high-end animated commercials, where frame-perfect timing for broadcast justifies the extra step.
Whether you sketch a rough board yourself or brief a studio, the steps are the same. This is how our storyboard artists build every explainer board.
Storyboards look different depending on the animation style. Here are three real storyboard examples from Broadcast2World projects, each shown with the finished video, so you can see how panels become motion.
A whiteboard animation board is drawn the way the final video will look: hand-sketched lines on paper. The action notes focus on what gets drawn when, because in whiteboard animation the drawing itself is the motion. Red marks flag colour accents and movement.
Character-led boards spend more effort on people: expressions, gestures and how the hero changes over the story. Bowling Green State University's Life Design video follows a student from campus life to a coaching session to an internship, and the board tracks her journey shot by shot. The purple arrows show where characters walk and turn, and transition notes like "the frame completely expands out" tell animators how one scene becomes the next. This is the kind of work our 2D animation team storyboards most.
In 3D, the storyboard doubles as camera blocking. Every object will be modelled, so the panels describe where the virtual camera sits, where it moves and where it stops, like the note on Shot 12: "The camera stops at a certain angle." Boards also plan transitions, such as shapes from one shot becoming a floating screen in the next. Getting this right on paper matters more in 3D animation, because moving a camera later means re-rendering whole scenes.
Once the board is approved, a few key panels are designed in the final look. These are style frames. For the Marin EV rebates video, the same opening shot went to the client in two style directions.
The storyboard decided what the shot says: trucks, road signs and a promise of cleaner fleets. The style frames decided how it looks. Splitting the two keeps feedback focused, with story notes at storyboard stage and colour and texture notes at style frame stage. Scroll back to example 01 to see where it landed.
You will see these terms in action notes. Knowing them makes your feedback faster and more precise.
You do not need to draw to review a storyboard. Read it like a comic, out loud, with the voiceover, and check these points. The first one matters most: as our guide to video storytelling explains, the story should follow your customer as the hero, raise the stakes, show the struggle and end on an emotional high.
Sketching a rough board yourself before you brief a studio is a great way to get your ideas across. These tools make it easy. Studios like ours draw boards by hand or in digital painting tools, then share them as PDFs for review.
Storyboards plan the shots, but the production needs a map too. To visualise the whole sequence, from script breakdown to final delivery, and manage dependencies, production managers often use an AI flowchart generator to map the full animation process.
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Marcus is a distinguished artist with a deep-rooted passion for visual storytelling. Graduating with a degree in Art from a prestigious institution in the USA, he has seamlessly blended his artistic prowess with the digital world, specializing in video marketing and animation. His innovative approach in these fields has seen him contribute to several renowned platforms, where he elucidates on the nuances of effective visual communication. Outside of his professional sphere, Marcus is an avid biker, often taking to the open roads to find inspiration and reflect on his creative ventures. Merging artistry with strategic insights, Marcus continues to shape the landscape of video marketing, one animation at a time.
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