Foundation – Year 3
Every good story, whether it be from the directors and creatives at Windmill, to the writers and animators at Disney, starts with a storyboard.
Writing can be tricky, especially when you’re unsure of how to make your ideas connect and your narrative flow – that’s where storyboards come in.
What is a storyboard?
A storyboard is a set of drawings, in a sequence, that tells a story. By breaking a story into small chunks, the writer can focus on the flow of the story.
Storyboards help you to see:
- How ideas connect
- If the story makes sense
- Where the story is set (the scene)
- what characters will be in each scene
- What the character’s say
- What scenes you can change to build suspense and interest.
Fun Fact: The process of storyboarding was developed in the 1930’s at Walt Disney Productions.
To get you started, we’ve provided some templates using our friends from two of our stage shows, Beep and Grug. Once you’ve had a go using our story – have a go at coming up with your own!
The next steps will support you to:
- Create a storyboard using the story provided
- Create a storyboard using the characters provided
- Create a storyboard for your own story
Create a storyboard for Grug
For some inspiration, you can watch our actors read some of of the Grug series aloud. Click here to watch.
Create a storyboard for your own Grug story
Choose an adventure you might like Grug to go on.
Think about what you have watched and:
- Talk about the sequence or order of events
- What came first?
- What happened next?
- Then what happened?
- How did the story end?
- Draw the main events in a storyboard.
Think about:
- Who will Grug meet?
- What will they do?
- What problems might they run into?
- How will Grug solve the problem?
Click here to download the storyboard templates. You may need to print some pages a few times, depending on the length of your story.
Repeat the activities above using the characters from Beep! Click here to download the template for Beep.