Springboard

Putting together a storyboard for a video or animation project can help you illustrate your ideas before actually spending any money or time to put the plan into action. Springboard is a program designed specifically for this issue.

The storyboards are graphic organizers created for pre-visualizing a movie, commercial, animation, comic or even a theater play. The process, as it is known today, has been around since the early 1930’s, when it was developed at the Walt Disney Studio.

Springboard comes with a clean interface that’s easy to manage and work with. The app has a short tutorial that includes basic steps required to make a new storyboard.

In order to create each panel, the software puts at your disposal several tools. For example, you can create free-hand drawings or insert various shapes, such as rectangles, ellipses and arrows; text layers can also be added.

As an alternative, Springboard lets you load images into the panels. The program supports a wide range of file formats, such as GIF, JPG, PCD, PSP, PCX, PSD, PNG and BMP.

All the details included in a panel appear as different layers and can be moved, edited, copied, duplicated or merged. They can all be accompanied by personal notes that should help you present the idea to your friends and colleagues.

The bottom line is that Springboard is an interesting tool that can come in handy if you need to create storyboards often. Inexperienced users might need some time to get used to all the features of this software.