Storyboards: guiding how a scene looks

New videos render from their storyboard. On a video you create now, a scene can't be rendered until its storyboard frames are ready. Press Render on a scene without them and the Generate storyboard dialog opens instead, titled Storyboard first. Generate the frames, check them on the Storyboard tab, and press Render again. That way you see each shot's composition before you spend credits on the clip, and the frames guide the render. Nothing is charged for the render until you press Render with the storyboard in place.

A scene's storyboard counts as ready when it has at least one frame and every frame it was given is finished. A simple scene may get just one frame; a frame that failed or is still generating holds the render back until it's done — use Regenerate on a failed frame.

Videos created before this change are not affected: their scenes still render with or without a storyboard, and storyboards stay optional there — useful for the shots where the default result keeps missing what you had in mind.

The Storyboard tab is the middle option in the Video Studio's Script / Storyboard / Video toggle.

What storyboards actually do

A storyboard frame is a still image of a moment in the scene. When you render that scene, the generated frames are handed to the video model as the top-priority reference images — ahead of the location reference, ahead of the cast references, ahead of the asset references.

That ordering is the whole point. Normally the model reads your scene description and invents a composition: it decides where the character stands, how close the camera sits, what fills the frame. With a storyboard in place it has a picture to match instead of a sentence to interpret, so the rendered shot follows your framing rather than its own guess.

Use storyboards when a scene keeps coming back with the right content in the wrong composition — the character too far away, the wrong part of the location on screen, the wrong moment emphasised.

Starting a storyboard

A storyboard is part of a video — there is no separate "new storyboard" button. There are two ways in:

• The storyboard page. On the AI storyboard generator page, paste your script or describe the spot in the text box (up to 2,000 characters), then press Make a storyboard. If you're not signed in yet, you sign up first. Either way the New Video dialog opens with your brief, already set to a 16:9 aspect ratio. Pick whichever art style you like — Storyboard Sketch for greyscale pencil boards, or a cinematic style — and press Create.
• Any video. Press New Video on your dashboard (or + New → New Video on a phone), or open any existing video and switch to its Storyboard tab.

A video started from the storyboard page is an ordinary video, so it opens on the Script tab while Sidekick writes the scenes from your brief. Each scene is one shot; Sidekick gives it a shot type and a camera angle. Writing the scenes is free. When they're ready, open the Storyboard tab, generate the frames (you see the total cost and confirm it first), check them, and then render the shots you like — on a new video the storyboard always comes before any render. If you left the text box empty, the Script tab starts blank; describe your spot to Sidekick or paste your script into the chat.

A video created in the Storyboard Sketch style, from any entry point, opens straight on the Storyboard tab — the board:

• If it has a brief, Sidekick starts drafting at once: it breaks your text into scenes, gives every scene a shot type and a camera angle, and the board says "Sidekick is writing your shots" while it works. You stay on the board the whole time. Drafting the shots is free — Sidekick doesn't generate any frames until you ask.
• Otherwise the board opens empty, with a prompt to describe your spot to Sidekick (or paste your script into the chat) and a few starter ideas.

A video in any other style opens on the Script tab. You can still board it — the Storyboard tab is always there.

When a frame says "Out of date"

If you change a scene after its frames were drawn — its action, dialogue, setting or cast — those frames show Out of date, because they no longer match the scene. On a new video that scene can't render until the frames are redrawn: press Render and the Storyboard first dialog lists just the out-of-date frames. Use Redraw from script on a frame to re-plan it from the scene as it is now, then render. Frames drawn before this change aren't affected and don't get marked.

Two frames per scene: the opening and closing beat

Each scene can hold up to two storyboard frames:

• The opening beat — how the shot looks when the scene starts.
• The closing beat — how it looks when the scene ends.

Together they bracket the motion. Giving the model both a start and an end frame tells it not just how the shot is composed but where it travels over the scene's duration.

Clicking an empty tile boards the whole scene: on a scene with no frames yet, one click makes up to both frames (the scene's analysis can return a single moment, in which case you get one). Once a frame exists, Regenerate redoes just that one frame.

Storyboard tiles are shown in the video's own aspect ratio — 9:16, 1:1 or 16:9 — so what you see is framed the way the finished video will be.

Shot and angle

Each scene card on the Storyboard tab has a shot type and a camera angle dropdown — close-up, wide shot, over-the-shoulder, low angle, and so on. They belong to the scene, so both of its frames share them. Set them before generating a frame and the frame is drawn with that shot type, angle, mood, lighting and setting in mind.

You don't have to set these yourself — just tell Sidekick what you want ("make scene 4 a low-angle close-up") and it sets them the same way the dropdowns do.

Generating a frame: click the empty tile

There is no separate confirmation for a tile click. On the Storyboard tab each scene shows its frame slots, and every empty tile shows the most that click can cost before you click it — up to 100 credits on a scene with no frames (both frames, 50 each), up to 50 when only one frame is missing. Clicking the tile starts generation and charges your account immediately, so click deliberately, especially while scrolling through a long list of scenes.

Once a frame exists, the tile shows the image instead of the empty tile, with a Regenerate button (also 50 credits) to redo it.

What frames cost

Each storyboard frame costs 50 credits, charged the moment its generation starts. A scene that gets both its opening and closing beat is therefore two charges — which is why an empty tile on a scene with no frames reads "up to 100 cr".

If your balance runs out partway through, the frames already started are kept (and charged), and you're told how many were queued before the credits ran out. Add credits and generate again to fill the rest — frames that already exist are not charged twice.

If a frame can't be started at all — for example, the generation service is briefly unreachable — its credits are refunded straight away, the frame is marked failed instead of sitting on "Generating…", and you're told which scenes couldn't be started and that nothing was charged for them. The rest of the run carries on. Just try those scenes again.

To board several scenes — or your whole video — at once, use the Storyboard rail tab's Generate storyboard button instead of clicking tiles one at a time. It shows a confirmation with the most the run could cost before you commit, skips any scene still waiting on its reference images, and only charges you for the frames it actually creates — a scene that already has its frames, or comes back with fewer moments than expected, costs less than the quote (never more).

Make my first scene (on the Reference images card) draws one scene's storyboard for you as part of making your first animated scene. See Getting started.

Storyboard frames are charged like any other image generation. For what else in a video draws from your balance, see Story Video credits; for balances, packs and what happens when a generation fails, see How credits work.

Exporting

The Storyboard rail tab has two export buttons, both free and instant:

• Export PDF — a printable board, either 6 frames per page or 3 per page with notes.
• Shot list (CSV) — a spreadsheet of every scene's shot type, angle, location, action, dialogue and duration.

Both are unbranded — no ComicInk name or logo — so you can hand them to a client or crew under your own name.

Sidekick can run either export for you too — just ask it to export the storyboard as a PDF, or to download the shot list.

Styles

Storyboard Sketch — a greyscale pencil-and-marker look — is the default style for a new storyboard. Changing the art style only affects frames generated after the change; existing frames keep the look they were made with. To update a frame that's already there, regenerate it (50 credits).

Asking Sidekick to make them

You do not have to click tiles yourself. Sidekick — the assistant in the right-hand column of the video editor — can generate storyboards, set a scene's shot type or camera angle, and run either export, all from what you type. When you ask it to generate storyboards — for one scene, several, or the whole video — it shows one card in the chat with a single combined quote for every scene you asked about, the same quote the Storyboard rail tab's Generate storyboard button shows. Nothing is charged until you press Approve on that card.

On a storyboard (a video in the Storyboard Sketch style), Sidekick keeps you on the board even while it writes or edits scenes — in a regular video those edits switch you to the Script tab.

See Sidekick for what else the assistant can do inside a video project.

Known limits

• The PDF uses a Latin font. If ComicInk is set to Japanese, Korean, Hindi or Turkish, the PDF's own labels (shot, angle, page numbers, date, "Not generated") appear in English so they print correctly. Script text written in those languages may not display in the PDF. The CSV shot list is plain text and handles every language — use it if your script isn't in a Latin-alphabet language.
• Storyboard frames are also used as reference images when you render the scene's video clip. If a scene has a Storyboard Sketch frame, that sketch look carries into the rendered clip. The art style is set for the whole video, not per scene: to get a cinematic clip, change the video's style and regenerate that scene's frames before rendering.

Next steps

• Rendering scenes — turning scenes into finished clips.
• The Video Studio — how the Script / Storyboard / Video tabs fit together.

Updated on: 16/10/2026