"Gosh darn it. I have no idea where to start." This could be the thought running through your head (maybe with more expletives) when you're interested in storyboarding, but feel overwhelmed at where to begin. Hopefully, this little section can help steer you in the right direction.
A lot of the learning curve associated with storyboarding can come from your background and prior knowledge with programming. While you can create amazing storyboards without programming, such as using the Design Editor, programming helps accelerate development by generating art at more efficiency. Instead of you manually building the blocks of a pyramid, you can tell a computer to do it for you.
With that in mind, if you have no programming background, you should take begin at Getting Started, then refer to the Goals section as a mini-objectives list to improve yourself on.
If you already have a programming background, then we highly recommend using storybrew, which uses C#. You can also develop your own libraries in your favorite language as well, but storybrew offers advantages such as having a modular framework for storyboard effects, dynamic file updates, quick configurable parameters, and text sprite rendering. While developing your own library is often a good exercise, there are times where you don't need to reinvent the wheel.
Trying to improve your storyboard game, but not sure what to do? Here are goals to strive for, in a delicious three-course meal! Go through these, and you'll be ready to storyboard the world!
Just starting out? Let's begin with a delicious sampler appetizer.
Scrumptious! But who stops after an appetizer? (Actually, I do sometimes when I feel frugal...) Bon appetit, for this entree feast!
The best part about a dessert is that you can let your whimsical side take control and indulge yourself in sweet decadence. Why not take that approach in storyboarding too?
So, welcome to the world of storyboarding! Enjoy your stay.
You may have come here out of interest in creating your own weather effects like rain or snow, or you may have come here out of interest in creating your own bang-up particle effects… or you may have come here wondering how these wizards even do these things.
You’d be happy to know that you too can actually create these effects, with the freedom to conjure up your own magic as well! It’s best to first learn what commands are possible in storyboarding before diving into everything else.
In storyboarding, we put graphical objects known as sprites onto the beatmap’s background, and then we tell these sprites what to do from a variety of commands. No matter what medium we use to create our storyboards, all sprites revolve around these commands.
To begin, take a read about storyboard scripting commands here!
For a nice video tutorial, watch this video here!
While scripting and coding are technically different things, they do share a lot of similar aspects in mindset, critical thinking, and logic. This is often why the whole nature of storyboarding is often blurred with programming – with the power of programming, you can really unleash visual magic.
So there’s a few things you want to do in improving your programming: do you want to better learn the syntax and quirks of your current language, or do you want to improve your general programming principles and fundamentals?
Or maybe you don't even have any ideas. In that case, why not check out our showcase? Feel free to take a look at our existing best of the best storyboards on osu!, and approach with a thought of, "How does that work? Maybe I can put my own spin on it!". Why not?
Coming soon to a storyboard near you!