I bought a tool for writing called Scrivener that isn't very expensive (compared to IClone it is almost free). 

I use it for scene layouts, but it also has text editor with some features more suited for writing than MIcrosoft Word.



And the same company has another great tool called Scrapple that is like $15 that helps you map out relationships between characters and places, etc. I find it really useful when I need to come back to a project and I forgot a lot of the details.




Creator of the free website:
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A Free Online Text Based Image Editor

I have not been storyboarding lately, per se.  
I do try to get my cameras in place for a basic scene, then build out the scene based on what I can see through my camera(s) for each shot. I will snap an image of a particular camera view, blocked several different ways, then use the images to select a shot.

I began in 3D with the aim of producing graphic novels. Theoretically, a storyboard could be parlayed into a graphic novel and into a film, so you would have 2 products to sell.

I cannot afford Photoshop, so I use Gimp, which is open source and free.

Attached is one of my graphic novel pages created with Daz, Gimp and Inkscape, all of which are free products.



Nathan

@animagic, thanks for the ShotDesigner link.  I am working on a scene now that could use this tool

Nathan

A pre-production tool that I have (although I haven't done much with it) is Shot Designer, which you can block out scenes with. It is animated, that is, it allows you to try out moving your cameras around and see the result.

See: https://www.hollywoodcamerawork.com/shot-designer.html.

It is intended for live action but could be used for animation too. There is a tutorial somewhere on its use with iClone. And I found it!

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As a general practice, I do not storyboard my projects.
Why not?  Because I am usually a team of one.

For a real team, I believe storyboarding would be an essential step.  It's a great way to share the vision, get buy-in from others, and do planning.  To that end, I think iClone could potentially play a role.  You could do some very rough scene setups.  But honestly I'd still probably stick to hand sketching.  I've seen behind-the-scene features of how movies are made, and even professional teams like Pixar often use very rudimentary sketches.  They don't need to be pretty, they just need to communicate intent.

Later, after storyboarding, iClone could be a great pre-vis tool.

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Hey thanks everyone for your responses. I know that storyboarding has it's part in the movie making industry and it was something I learned when I went to film school, but like a lot of things I've had to relearn since being ill, storyboarding had slipped way down into my "wonder if I can still do this?" segment of my brain. That said I'm currently reading the book I mentioned in the original post and one thing I had forgotten about, or not really tried because I used to be able to sketch reasonably well.. Sort of chunked out stick men, but that is another story... is simple character figures.
Storyboarding doesn't have to be picture perfect. All it needs to do is depict what your scenes are and what your characters are doing... conveying the story so that when you go to shoot it, or set it up in iClone, you have a working plan. A plan that corresponds with your screenplay or idea. Anyway here's a small article on star figure drawing for those of us who struggle at drawing characters
https://medium.com/designer-recipes/star-people-how-to-storyboard-quick-and-effective-5ea812ab153d
Cheers
Bob

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As a solo creator, I usually just visualize everything in my head. Writing the script, and making notes in Trello helps. I guess you can say instead of creating a visual storyboard, I write it out with notes.

If I were to storyboard, it would be storyboarding the choreography of a fight scene or something like that. Although I tend to just create the choreography based on actions and reactions once I'm in IClone putting it together - after having some idea on where to start.




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Thanks colonel Klink for raising this very interesting discussion. I tend to wing it too often and feel I need to be more disciplined in scripting and working out scenes in advance, so I plan to give storyboarder a go. I think this could be a very interesting approach to demonstrating the value of iclone in Previz. I’ve had a few industry bods acknowledge iclone may be useful in this, but they need to see actual examples to be convinced. 

Im with you Cary.  Story-boarding has a very important role in live action (saving money and time) but is often done using 3d software to sketch out the ideas.  So I'll jot down those basic ideas on paper and then when I get to Iclone and get to work I'm generally sketching those ideas out further until I get what I want.  I kinda feel that real time animation has a lot of the benefits of story-boarding built into the animation process.  I will say however, its super useful/neatg to see storyboards from other filmmakers as it gives you a peek into their process from the mind to the screen.

I love seeing topics like these in the forum -- that is, about general aspects of film-making -- and I don't come across them too often.They make me think, and I learn stuff. 

illusionLAB, I was happy to see your post. I've been pondering and weighing it. As I said, I don't do a lot of actual storyboarding, but I do use it on occasion to work out a complex sequence. Your post made me question whether I should do more of it.

In the interest of sparking more conversation about this and the film-making process in general, let me say that I'm dubious that storyboarding saves time in the long run, (when you are talking about a 1-man operation). That doesn't seem to be my experience. Even when you have a storyboard, there is a tinkering process that has to go on to translate the storyboard vision into an actual camera shot. You still have to consider the rule of thirds, the dof, and matching the perspective of the storyboard. Sometimes you find that elements in the set or the position of the avatar have to be tweaked to make the composition work and give your shot the focus you intend. Of course, you are not starting from scratch when you have a storyboard image, but it's really just a rough guide.

The storyboard as a whole is a series of visual sequences that tell your story. To create this series of visuals you have to conceive of them and commit to a particular way of visual narration. You have to go through a creative discovery and decision-making process to build this sequence. This takes time, whether you are doing it through sketches or whether you are doing it directly in Iclone. While it is true that you can sketch out your concept faster than you can animate Iclone avatars, that seems beside the point. In both cases the real process is taking place inside your imagination, faster than either can be done. And in both cases you still have to position and animate the avatars. 

Most of the time, for me, I conceive not just of a single camera shot, but of a series of shots, each one leading to the next. If I have this series of shots in my head and I note it in the script I am writing, I don't need to sketch out a storyboard for it. It's already there in my head  when I go to shoot the scene in Iclone. But other times I don't have a strong visual sense of a scene when I am writing the script. It can sometimes help me to storyboard those. But also it can be very helpful is to see the full 3d set and props set up in Iclone, so that I can use them effectively as compositional and storytelling tools. Seeing the actual avatars in the set can sometimes spark ideas which might not occur otherwise. 

So I am a bit dubious that storyboarding saves time. However I do tend to think that sitting down and sketching out a sequence may indeed produce some creative results that would otherwise not happen. It does kind of help you think outside the standard solutions. I think. it can help sharpen the focus of the narrative. You have convinced me I should experiment with doing more of it, and so I'm going to do some roughs of one of my current scenes and see what it produces. If nothing else it will be fun to see what happens. 




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