StoryPlanner Pro – Storyboard and Animatics Software

Reviewed by Robert Pritchett

Digital Video S.p.A. Via Sante Bargellini, 4 00157 Roma (Italy) Tel: (+39) 06.43.59.93.69 - (+39) 06.43.93.578 Fax: (+39) 06.43.25.15.88 toonz.company@toonz.com View Demos Datasheet StoryPlanner Brochure Released: January 2009. $495 USD, €395, £277. Try before you buy Requirements: Mac OS X 10.4 or later, 1 GB RAM (2 recommended), 60 MB Hard drive space. Windows XP or Vista, 20 MB hard drive space.   Strengths: Quickly takes cartoon-like storyboards and convert them into animatics. Sister product to Storyboard Pro.   Weaknesses: Doesn't have built-in onionskin or lightbox features.   Other Reviews

 

Introduction

 

Digital Video, creator of the cel animation software Toonz, has released Story Planner and Story Planner PRO are brand new tools for creating storyboards with graphical and textual information, and generating animatics with soundtrack and animations.

 

The software was developed based on the suggestions of expert storyboard artists’, according to Digital Video. Story Planner is a fundamental management tool to facilitate the creative thinking process simplifying the workflow in cinema, advertising, animation and video games industries, and is designed to increase the production speed, saving time and costing.

 

Story Planner costs €49 (around £34), and allows a streamlined creation of a storyboard with sketches and notes laid out in an unlimited number of panels describing the flow of the story.

 

Sketches can be created with a full set of raster-based drawing tools, or any image can be imported; captions and notes can be added and formatted.

 

The story flow can be quickly organized in panels and scenes; camera movements and other graphical elements can be used to define actions in the scenes.

 

Storyboards can be printed out, or exported as PDF files, according to a custom page layout.

 

Story Planner Pro costs €395 (£277), and adds to the standard features the possibility to compose complex animatics in a timeline editor. Moreover, the timeline controls the animation of the camera and of graphical elements placed in sketch layers.

 

Audio tracks can be added and edited to create a sound track in sync with the animatic, and fade and dissolve transitions can be used. After a real-time preview, the animatic can be generated with a single-click command.

 

Both versions are available for Mac OS X running on both PowerPC and Intel processors and Windows XP, Windows Vista. (MacVideo.tv)

 

What I Learned

 

StoryPlanner Pro allows us to work in layers, and import audio tracks and build animatics. The use of a timeline and the ability to include editable text that travels wherever the drawing goes, along with camera movement indications and the ability to quickly draw directional arrows are also in the application.

 

Drawings will need to be brought in from other programs, like ToonBoom's Storyboard Pro

 

This is a cross-platform app, so you can interoperate from one hardware box to another with ease.

 

 

Conclusion

 

If you are or have been using ToonBoom products or are familiar with other Digital Video applications, you already know this is a quality product. I would call it a sister product to Storyboard Pro and rounds out the cartoon genre approach to entertainment and education.

 

Feedback March 31, 2009

 

"Dear Robert;

Thanks for your kind words. I've read your review and enjoyed it !

One small point ... you say

 

" Drawings will need to be brought in from other programs, like
ToonBoom's Storyboard Pro."

 

Actually we believe the opposite is true ...when we designed SB we
had in mind the major remark made to TB StoryBoard by users:
"graphics slow down as soon you start to draw" and "we (users) need
raster paint, not a vector-based one".

 

so ... instead of deploying the nice and neat graphics tool of TAB
(which would have been readily available for "transplant") we
decided to invest into a raster paint.

 

... so it is odd now to read the remark you have made.

 

Said that, I want in any case to thank you for your kind interest in
our product and this note was only meant to give you our point of
view on a specific technical point which had drawn your attention at
review time."

 

Best
Claudio Mattei