Storyboarder

✅ Read This First — The Best Way to Use the Storyboarder

Since there's no cost to worry about, you're free to generate as much as you like and simply redo anything that doesn't look right. That said, following this order will save you time and give you the best-looking result:

1. Get your scenes into the Storyboarder

   Either run Breakdown earlier in the app (the normal way), or use 📂 Load from Screenplay to open a script file directly, right here in the Storyboarder — see the Loading a Screenplay Directly section below.

2. Set up your Character Bible first

   Before you generate a single picture, add your main characters to the 🎭 Character Bible, give each one a short description, and pick (or type) an art style. Do this first and every character will look the same in every panel. Do it after and you'll be stuck regenerating pictures to fix mismatched faces.

3. Choose how you want to build your shots

   Click ✨ AI Generate Shots to have Thenema Editor read your scenes and suggest camera coverage automatically, or click 📋 Quick Generate for one simple panel per scene, fast. Both of these will also draw a picture for every panel automatically — you don't need a separate step for that.

4. Fix up individual panels, not the whole board

   If one picture doesn't look right, you don't need to regenerate everything. Right-click that panel's thumbnail (or select it and click 🔄 Regenerate Image) to redo just that one.

5. Export when you're happy with it

   Use the 📤 Export menu to save your storyboard as a PDF, a set of PNG images, or your shot list as a PDF or Excel file.

Overview

What the Storyboarder gives you, and how the pieces fit together.

The Storyboarder combines four things: a structured Shot List (the planning table every camera department relies on), a drawing canvas for sketching panels by hand, an AI helper that suggests camera coverage from your scene text, and an AI picture-generator that renders a reference image for every panel.

You don't have to use every feature — pick whichever combination fits how you like to work.

Panel Layout

The two tabs:

• Storyboard tab — the drawing canvas, the panel's details, and the filmstrip of panel thumbnails along the bottom.
• Shot List tab — the 19-column planning table, listing every shot in one place.

Panel actions — Add Panel, Duplicate Panel, Delete Panel, Move Up, Move Down — live in one place: the ☰ Panel ▾ dropdown at the top left of the toolbar.

Step 1: The Shot List

The master record of every shot in your production.

The Shot List is the single most useful document you'll build here — everything else (drawing, pictures) builds on top of it. You can fill it in by hand, or let AI Generate Shots or Quick Generate build the first draft for you and then edit from there.

Adding a shot

Click ➕ Add Shot in the Shot List toolbar. A new row appears with sensible defaults already filled in (MS for Shot Size, Eye Level for Angle, 50mm for Lens, Static for Move, 24fps for FPS, Boom Mic for Audio, None for VFX, Must Have for Priority).

The 19 columns explained

Filtering by shoot day

The Filter: All Days dropdown shows only the shots for one shoot day at a time — handy for reviewing day by day, or exporting a day-specific list for the camera department.

Deleting a shot

Select the row and click ✕ Delete Shot, or select it and press Delete.

Exporting the Shot List

Click 📄 PDF for a landscape A4 PDF, or 📊 Excel for a .xlsx file. Both only include the rows currently visible — so apply your day filter first if you want a day-specific export.

Step 2: Panel Editor

Sketch storyboard frames by hand, in the Storyboard tab.

The Storyboard tab shows the drawing canvas for whichever panel is currently selected in the filmstrip, with the drawing toolbar above it and the shot's details below it.

Canvas size

480×270 pixels — a 16:9 shape, same as HD video. A faint rule-of-thirds grid is always shown to help with composition; it's just a guide and isn't included when you export.

Adding a new panel

Open ☰ Panel ▾ in the toolbar and choose ➕ Add Panel. A new blank panel appears in the filmstrip — click it to start drawing or filling in its details.

Importing a reference image to draw over

Click 📷 Import Ref in the drawing toolbar. Pick a PNG, JPG, JPEG, BMP, or WEBP file. It fills the canvas as a background layer, and you can sketch on top of it — useful for tracing over a location photo.

Drawing Tools

Colour and brush size

Click the colour swatch to pick a stroke colour (default is near-black). Drag the size slider (1–20) to change stroke width — this applies to every tool. The eraser is always drawn four times wider than the slider value, so it's easier to fully clear an area.

Undo and Redo

Up to 50 steps of undo history per panel. ↩ Undo steps back, ↪ Redo steps forward. Only your drawing strokes are affected — an imported background image is untouched.

Clearing the canvas

Click 🗑 to wipe your drawing strokes on the current panel (you'll be asked to confirm first). Again, this doesn't remove an imported background image.

Shot Metadata

Below the canvas is the shot's detail form — the same information as the Shot List columns, laid out for one panel at a time. Anything you change here updates the Shot List instantly, and vice versa.

• Row 1 — Scene Ref, Setup #, Shoot Day (text); Duration in seconds (number)
• Row 2 — Shot Size, Camera Angle, Camera Move, Lens (dropdowns)
• Row 3 — FPS, Audio, VFX, Priority (dropdowns)
• Row 4 — Lighting, Equipment (text)
• Row 5 — Characters, Action (text)
• Row 6 — Dialogue, Notes (text)

Thumbnail Strip

Every panel appears as a small thumbnail along the bottom of the Storyboard tab, with its number and shot size shown underneath. The panel you're currently editing has a highlighted border.

Selecting a panel

Click any thumbnail to load it into the canvas and the detail form above.

Right-click menu

Right-click a thumbnail for two options: 🔄 Regenerate Image (redraw just this one panel's picture) and 🗑 Delete Panel.

Character Bible

Set this up before generating any pictures — it's the single biggest thing that improves your results.

Without a Character Bible, an AI picture generator draws a different-looking person every single time, even for the same named character. The Character Bible fixes that: pick one look per character, and every panel that lists that character reuses it.

Opening it

Click 🎭 Character Bible in the toolbar.

Setting the Art Style

At the top of the dialog is the Art Style. Click one of the 5 ready-made presets to use it instantly:

• Pencil Sketch — rough monochrome storyboard sketch (the default)
• Noir / High Contrast — black-and-white, deep shadows, dramatic lighting
• Soft Watercolor — muted, painterly, gentle lighting
• Flat Color Comic — bold linework, graphic-novel look
• Photoreal Cinematic — realistic, colour-graded like a film still

Or type your own style description into the text box instead — it's used exactly as written. Set this once, near the start of your project. Changing it partway through means panels made before and after will look visually different from each other.

Adding a character

1. Click New

   A blank character entry is added to the list on the left.

2. Type the name exactly as it appears in your Shot List's Characters field

   Matching is done by name, so "MAYA" and "Maya Chen" will not be treated as the same person — use the same spelling and capitalisation in both places. The name only saves once you click away from the field.

3. Write a short physical description

   Be concrete: age, build, hair, distinctive features, costume. For example: "Woman, late 30s, athletic build, natural short hair, wearing a grey trench coat and reading glasses."

4. Add a portrait

   Click 📷 Import Portrait to upload your own reference photo, or click ✨ Generate Character to have Thenema Editor draw a head-and-shoulders portrait from your description and chosen art style. Both are free.

Loading a Screenplay Directly

Skip Breakdown entirely and open a script file straight into the Storyboarder.

Click 📂 Load from Screenplay in the toolbar and choose a script file — .fountain, .fdx (Final Draft), .txt, or .rtf. This is useful when you just want to storyboard a scene or two without running a full Breakdown first.

If no scene headings (lines starting with INT. or EXT.) are found in the file, you'll see a message telling you so — double check the file is a standard screenplay format before trying again.

Step 3: AI Generate Shots

Let Thenema Editor read your scenes and suggest camera coverage.

✨ AI Generate Shots reads each of your loaded scenes and suggests how to break it into individual shots — shot type, camera angle, lens, camera move, action description, VFX flag, and priority — up to 6 shots per scene. It fills in both the Shot List and the Storyboard panels at the same time.

What each suggested shot includes

• Shot type (e.g. MS, CU, ELS)
• Camera angle (e.g. Eye Level, Low Angle)
• Camera move (e.g. Static, Dolly In)
• Lens (e.g. 35mm, 85mm)
• Action description
• Dialogue, if any
• VFX flag
• Priority
• An estimated duration in seconds

If the AI is unavailable

If Thenema Editor can't be reached for a scene, that scene automatically falls back to a simple one-shot suggestion picked using basic keyword matching on the scene text, so nothing is left empty. You can always edit any suggestion afterward.

Step 4: The Pictures

How each panel's picture actually gets drawn — and it's free.

You usually won't need to trigger this by itself — AI Generate Shots and Quick Generate both draw pictures for every panel automatically as their last step. This section explains what's happening, and how to redo just one panel.

How a picture is built

For each panel, Thenema Editor combines:

• Your project's Art Style, from the Character Bible
• The panel's shot type, camera angle, lens, and camera move
• The panel's action description
• The panel's characters, matched against the Character Bible for their portraits and descriptions
• The panel's VFX flag and lighting notes

The result is loaded straight into the panel's canvas, and its thumbnail updates right away.

Redoing every panel at once

This happens automatically after AI Generate Shots or Quick Generate. A progress window shows each panel being drawn in order, filling in the filmstrip as it goes — you don't have to wait for all of them before you can see results. Click Cancel any time; panels already drawn keep their pictures.

Redoing a single panel

Select the panel and click 🔄 Regenerate Image in the toolbar, or right-click its thumbnail and choose Regenerate Image. Use this whenever one picture just didn't come out the way you wanted.

Placeholder panels

If a picture can't be generated for any reason — you're signed out, there's a network problem, anything — the panel gets a clear placeholder card instead of being left blank. It shows the panel number, shot size, camera angle, characters, and action text, so it's still genuinely useful as a reference even without an image. Look for the small 🖍 badge on its thumbnail — that's how you can tell at a glance which panels to try regenerating later.

Quick Generate

📋 Quick Generate is the fastest path from scenes to a full storyboard: one panel per scene, with a sensible shot type picked automatically, and a picture drawn for every one of them — all in a single click.

It's the right choice when you want something to look at quickly — a first pass to show a director or producer — rather than a fully planned shot-by-shot breakdown. For proper camera coverage planning, use AI Generate Shots instead, which can suggest several shots per scene rather than just one.

Exporting

Everything is available from the 📤 Export ▾ menu in the toolbar, plus the two Shot List export buttons on the Shot List tab.

Export Storyboard PDF

Panels laid out 4 per page, each showing its picture, panel number, scene reference, shoot day, shot size, action description, and any notes.

Export Blank Storyboard PDF

The same 4-per-page layout, but with empty picture boxes instead of your generated images — useful for printing and sketching on paper, or for handing to someone to fill in by hand.

Export PNG Sequence

Saves every panel that has a picture as its own numbered PNG file (e.g. panel_0001_MS.png). Good for importing panels into video editing or presentation software.

Export Shot List PDF / Excel

Also reachable from the Export menu, or directly from the buttons in the Shot List tab. PDF is landscape A4; Excel is a standard .xlsx file.

Tips & Best Practices

Set up your Character Bible before you generate anything

This is the single most important habit. Add your characters, write short descriptions, and pick your art style before clicking AI Generate Shots or Quick Generate for the first time. It saves you from redoing pictures later just to fix a face that doesn't match.

Write the Action field like you're describing a photo

The Action text is the main thing the AI reads to draw the picture. Be specific and visual: "Maya crouches behind an overturned table, reaching for the gun on the floor, lit by a single bare bulb swinging overhead" will produce a far better picture than just "Maya hides."

Storyboard the scenes that actually need it

Focus your time on visually complex sequences — action, VFX-heavy scenes, unusual camera work, or anything the director and DP need to agree on ahead of time. A simple two-person dialogue scene rarely needs a storyboard.

Fix one panel at a time

If most of your board looks good but one or two pictures don't, use Regenerate Image on just those panels instead of redoing the whole batch.

Placeholders are still useful in a pitch or a meeting

If a panel ends up as a placeholder because of a signed-out session or a network hiccup, don't worry — it still shows every important detail. Export it in the Storyboard PDF and it reads perfectly well in a production meeting; the framing information matters more than the picture itself.

Keep your art style locked once you've started

Changing the Art Style partway through a project means panels made before and after the change will look different from each other. Pick it early and stick with it.