Free Storyboad App (Mac & PC)

[Nolan Scott]

You might like and check this one out as well:
http://www.celtx.com/overview.html

Cheers
Nolan

[JoelOtron]

Some nice features there Joe--thanks for posting

[anobrin]

Thanks
Looks Useful:thumbsup:

[Joseppi]

You might like and check this one out as well:
http://www.celtx.com/overview.html...

Nolan,

Thanks, I just DLd Celtx recently, that's a pretty good open source app, available for a variety of platforms. Good addition...

There is also a program "Jashaka", a compositing app, that seemed to have stalled for quite a while, that has gotten "reacquired" by one of the original developers, which might be interesting to watch, especially for people with limited funds...

http://jahshaka.org/About

Joe

[Joseppi]

Also found a "pencil test" animation app (mac, windows, linux) that either lets you draw in the program, or import drawings to do animation. Either bitmap, or vector. Pretty simple app, but it has onion skinning options for previous and following frames...

http://www.les-stooges.org/pascal/pencil/

>>Pencil is an animation/drawing software for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux. It lets you create traditional hand-drawn animation (cartoon) using both bitmap and vector graphics. Pencil is free and open source.>>

Joe

[vibrunnica]

Thanks... very useful..

[Nolan Scott]

Hi Joe,

Thanks for a all these very interesting links.
I Haven’t tried “Directors Boards” and “Celtx” yet, but it looks very promising.
Can you give already some personal experience of those programs ?

Toon Boom Animation is providing two Storyboarding solutions:
“Storyboard” ($ 250,--) and “Storyboard Pro” ($ 900,--):
http://www.toonboom.com/products/storyboard/?WT.mc_id=e_homepage_pdt_SBDPR
Have you ever tried those ? - and how would those compare to the free ones ?
(if there is any comparison at all)

“Jashaka” I tried some time ago, but couldn’t get around it - in the end I decided to go for
“Final Cut Express” and never looked back.
(can jashaka even do more than FCE ?)

The “Pencil” sofware looks indeed marvelous, beautiful designed, simple, with a very intuitive interface. Unfortunately, for Mac-users, only PPC, no Universal Binary yet,
but I think this will only be a matter of time.

Cheers
Nolan

[anobrin]

Hmm the OSx version has a DMG that wont mount properly:shrug:

[Joseppi]

[QUOTE=Nolan Scott]Hi Joe,

...Toon Boom Animation is providing two Storyboarding solutions:
“Storyboard” ($ 250,--) and “Storyboard Pro” ($ 900,--):
http://www.toonboom.com/products/storyboard/?WT.mc_id=e_homepage_pdt_SBDPR
Have you ever tried those ? - and how would those compare to the free ones ?
(if there is any comparison at all)>>>

I knew Toon Boon had an animation/cartoon program, but didn't know they came out with storyboarding too. There are a couple other commercial storyboard programs, and a big difference that most of them have are built-in art and image libraries (pre-drawn art.) You can draw you own in the programs, or import art, but these other apps have art so you can choose from a variety of characters, objects and settings to make your scenes.

Celtx and Directors Boards don't come with art. For me, it's quicker to sketch what I have in mind, to get it down, with direction notes (arrows) for camera movement, etc.

Storyboards can range from doodles/sketches to fully rendered art, but some big directors also doodle their own little sketches... not good "art" but it communicates what they have in mind. So I wouldn't think that "not being able to draw" means you would have to buy pre-drawn art. Stick figures could work to help you plan your shots...

Celtx seems to have more script writing, formatting features. With Boards, you type all your scene descriptions, but Celtx has more the text library of descriptions and locations you can pick from menus, like traditional script writting apps.

For longer form scripts, Celtx (or Final Draft, etc) has the script industry writing formatting and controls. Dir. Boards is more limited to the "AV" style script, which has "video" on one side, and "dialog" on the other. For short projects, Boards could be enough, but if you were working with actors and a crew, with a lot of dialog, the traditional script formatting is helpful for cast and crew to scan, as the formatting conveys various elements of information.

If the storyboards are mainly for ME, I'm more a visual person, and want to record my plan, along with more specific notes if needed, so I used to use the old "index card" method, and actually still do, to sketch and sort, then later scan them into Boards.

Having a binder with the boards is practically a necessity for live action shooting. With all the details flying around, it might seem basic, but having a sheet you can mark on that you GOT THE SHOT, helps immensely. It's amazing, but you can leave the location and realize, maybe even in editing, you MISSED getting a needed shot.

For 3D, it still helps to keep things organized in an app. The flash cards get knocked over! And I printed out another copy to give to the sound/music person early so he could see the direction of the story, and start thinking of options...

>>>“Jashaka” I tried some time ago, but couldn’t get around it - in the end I decided to go for “Final Cut Express” and never looked back.
(can jashaka even do more than FCE ?)>>>

Jashaka I've played with a bit, and it seems to be a bit of a combination program, editing, compositing... I still use FCE and AE. But for the compositing, Jashaka seems to take the "node based" effects route like Shake... you add and connect processing nodes. This sort of approach is diiferent than the AE/FCE mode, which I am more familiar with (and faster with now). I probably would give up or switch from my commercial apps (AE/FCE), but posted partly for people that have ideas but not the commerial tools or money. These programs might let them work with the concepts, which would trnslate. (even the old 3D apps I used, had a lot of the basic features and concepts in use today, so that time was training for the future).

I also try to check out the apps to see if maybe they do something I can't do now, or is easier, etc. That usually means digigng into the app, which I don't seem to have the time to do, but I try to experiment every now and then and see what I might find...

>>>The “Pencil” sofware looks indeed marvelous, beautiful designed, simple, with a very intuitive interface. Unfortunately, for Mac-users, only PPC, no Universal Binary yet,
but I think this will only be a matter of time.>>>

I DLd the PPC version (made in 8/07, so fairly recent, for 10.3, so not like really old PPC) and it seems to run on my Mac Intel Duo Core MacBook... launches and runs, hasn't crashed (yet, knock on wood), so its been rather fun to play with. I would like to move to all Universal apps, but it runs pretty well so far, being more recent code maybe...

It does layers, which is cool (head on one layer, moving mouth on another). I read some notes on the site, and it seems to have been developed in part, with Animation Mentor (banners here at CG Talk) so it has some real animators behind it.

HTH,
Joe

[Joseppi]

Hmm the OSx version has a DMG that wont mount properly:shrug:

Anobrin,

Hmm... Which app? I DL'd all three of the apps (Mac OSX) and installed them (Pencil, Celtx, and Jashaka)...

Joe

[anobrin]

Anobrin,

Hmm... Which app? I DL'd all three of the apps (Mac OSX) and installed them (Pencil, Celtx, and Jashaka)...

Joe

The Director's Boards 2
On mac OS 10.4.11 Intel Duo Core 2 Gigs of RAM
Disk utility says it mounted but it seems (invisible)
cant find it to install it'

Oh Well:shrug:

[Joseppi]

The Director's Boards 2
On mac OS 10.4.11 Intel Duo Core 2 Gigs of RAM
Disk utility says it mounted but it seems (invisible)
cant find it to install it'

Oh Well:shrug:

I have 10.4.10... hmm... Sometimes things don't seem to be on my desktop too. Did you try making a new finder window, and view by name... "dboards.dmg" when I click on it, has an "terms/agree" option to click first, then the folder appears with the app folder to copy?

Sorry, don't mean to recount the obvious, just checking...

Joe

[anobrin]

I have 10.4.10... hmm... Sometimes things don't seem to be on my desktop too. Did you try making a new finder window, and view by name... "dboards.dmg" when I click on it, has an "terms/agree" option to click first, then the folder appears with the app folder to copy?

Sorry, don't mean to recount the obvious, just checking...

Joe

Ya Did All that No Go
Not a big deal I just grabbed CeltX which works fine
No I need an animated film project:D

[nycL45]

Pencil looks great and it is free! My son, 11y.o., does little flip books and plays with C4D but really wants to do animation so, we will get him started with Pencil. We thank you for that link, Joseppi.

Good thread.

Cheers.

Leonard

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