How to Storyboard a Film With AI - Step by Step

Four areas: on the left your characters, places and objects with their reference sheets; in the centre the shot composer; on the right your live screenplay; along the bottom the sequencer, where shots live.

Check the aspect ratio before anything else. It applies to newly created shots only: generate ten panels in 16:9, change your mind, and those ten stay 16:9. How to choose:

• 16:9: the safe default for television, YouTube and most modern animation, with the widest model support.
• 9:16: if it is going to a phone.
• 4:3: a boxed-in, vintage or 90s anime feel.
• 2:1: the streaming look.
• 2.39:1: the wide cinema frame. SIGNAL uses it because a wide frame makes one character alone in a big room smaller. A story decision made in a settings panel.

1. 1Missing entity reference sheets: characters, places and objects without a sheet yet.
2. 2Shot breakdown for empty scenes: the AI reads the scene and proposes a shot list. No images, just shots in order, each with a shot value, a camera movement and an action.
3. 3Missing storyboard images: this is where the pictures happen, and where the credits go.

There is a Run all button, and it works. But the first time, run the sheets alone. Every panel is drawn against them, so a wrong sheet is inherited by every panel, and ten wrong panels cost ten times more to fix than one wrong sheet.

Ten shots and not one image yet: the cheapest and most valuable moment in the workflow, and the one almost everybody skips. You can read your whole film as a shot list and change anything for free. Each shot has four fields:

• Continues from: which earlier shot this one shares a setup with.
• Shot value: extreme close-up, close-up, medium close-up, medium, medium long, long or wide, extreme long or establishing, over the shoulder, POV, insert.
• Camera movement: 17 options, from static through pans, tilts and dollies to handheld, Steadicam and whip pan.
• Action: what happens in this frame, not in the scene.

Shot four came back as two actions in one frame:

A storyboard panel is one moment. Generated as is, you get a blurred compromise between reacting and crossing that looks like neither. The fix took eleven seconds:

"Mara grips the handset tightly" reads fine, but as an instruction it is missing something: which handset? Reference the object with @ and the frame is generated against its sheet, with the Bakelite, the worn earpiece and the chip in the mouthpiece. Without it, it draws a telephone. With it, it draws your telephone. Same for characters. Use Inspect reference image to check each sheet full size before a big run.

Then three checks before you generate:

1. 1Does every shot describe exactly one moment?
2. 2Does the shot size change from panel to panel, or are you about to generate six identical mediums?
3. 3Are the characters and objects in each action the ones you defined in Story Elements?

Out of ten shots, expect six or seven usable straight away, two needing an adjustment and one simply wrong. That is what a first pass is on any production. Budget for the two that need work.

Review it as a sequence before you judge any frame. It is a rhythm, not a gallery. Look for drift, not flaws: same woman, same coat, same scar on the same hand, window on the same side every time. One beautiful shot with the wrong coat colour does more damage than three ordinary shots that agree. And look for repetition: SIGNAL's shots two and four were both mediums of Mara at the console eight seconds apart. Fine alone, a stutter together.

Shot eight was supposed to be Mara's point of view of the sealed door. It came back with Mara standing in it, which is not a POV: you cannot see yourself. Regenerating unchanged costs 14 credits a spin and rolls the same dice. Change the brief:

"No people in frame" was the missing sentence. Same credits as a blind regeneration, completely different odds.

• Edit with AI: for a nearly perfect panel, draw on the area to change and describe it ("Add white salt bloom and damp staining to the wall in the marked area. Change nothing else."). Without "change nothing else" it improves things you were happy with.
• Crop: reframe a panel that is almost right.
• Angle: regenerate the same moment from another camera position. A directing tool, used in Lesson 6.
• Images per generation (1, 4 or 8): if a shot has fought you twice, ask for four and choose side by side.

• Add a shot where a beat is missing (here, Mara putting the handset down).
• Remove a shot that stutters, even one you paid for. Sunk cost is not a story reason.
• Reorder: shot nine plays better before shot eight, so the hesitation comes before she looks at the door.

When a shot finally comes out right, stop touching it, and back up or duplicate the project before new experiments: regenerate replaces what is there, with no undo. Then press play. Each card's width is its duration, so the sequencer plays your storyboard as an animatic while the script scrolls beside it. You feel pacing before any video exists.

What you have now is coverage, not direction. Lesson 6 goes back through the ten shots and decides where the camera goes and why.