Creating an impressive comic or a story with pictures and dialogues without having a professional knowledge of the subject is not at all simple. But with the ever-developing technology, this has been made quite easy these days even for kids. They can easily experiment with their imagination and creativity without having a background or even professional knowledge.
I recently came across www.storyboardthat.com — an interactive website where you can create storyboards using the free library of backgrounds illustrations and characters by just using the drag and drop option.
Storyboardthat is a very detailed site; detailed as in options for you to choose from. The interface is not very catchy, however, it adds to its usefulness as you won’t get distracted. So let’s explore how you can create your stories or comics.
The main menu/categories and options are all present on the homepage. For example, scenes, characters, textables, science, etc, all have huge list of subcategories in them. Such as, in ‘Scenes’, you can choose from home, indoor/outdoor, town, schools, athletics, work historical mythical/futurist to name a few, as the list is almost never-ending.
Similarly, the characters are also full of variety such as from modern to classic, from monsters and myths, to animals and props you will just find everything. Textables will give you options to choose the shape of text bubbles etc, and in the same way you can choose from astronomy, anatomy, symbols, emojis, equipment and much more from science and technology.
This just don’t end here, once you select something just drag and drop it to the template below. The characters, animals available are flexible, you can change the pose and expression of characters by selecting from a range of emotions and actions. These can then be customised further, with side and back views, and full control over head, arm and leg positions. It’s really fun to play with all the different poses and characters.
To share and save your storyboards, you must register with an email. With a free account, you can save three times a day, print and embed your storyboard.
Once you start creating, I am sure you’ll get addicted so it is better to save the link to the site to explore when the vacation starts.
Published in Dawn, Young World, April 21st, 2018
