How to Make Storyboards in Procreate Dreams

1. How to Make Storyboards in Procreate Dreams: Learning to draw your own stories is a powerful creative skill. And in this class, I'm going to show you how to use Procreate Dreams to turn any idea into a visual story. The art of storyboarding allows you to bring your ideas to life, to create mini movies, without ever having to animate. It shows people immediately what your creative vision. Name's Shavon, and I'm a top teacher here on Skillshare. I've worked for over 15 years in the animation industry in studios in Dublin, and in Vancouver. Today, I focus on teaching the skills and sharing the knowledge that I learned from working in the industry. Storyboards are the foundation of any movie, whether it's animated or live action. It's a secret skill set that allows you to uniquely translate any idea into something very close to a movie. I'm going to show you exactly how to do that, Procreate Dreams. This app is literally an entire production studio in your hands. Not only can you draw individual frames and panels, but you can also time them out and get them to flow exactly how they would in a fully finished animation. So I'll show you the updated features of Procreate Dreams. I'll walk you through how to use the app. So even if you've never opened it up before, you're going to get to know it inside and out. You'll first learn all about the principles of visual storytelling. These are the camera angles and shots that are used in every movie. I'll also teach you how to compose your shots, how to draw each panel, and what shots are best to use for your ideas. And then we're going to use that knowledge to bring a really simple concept to life. I'm going to use one image to create an entire story, and I'm going to show you how to thumbnail your ideas and to storyboard exactly like this. So at the end of this class, you'll have a professional storyboard with camera moves, keyframes, one that reads just like the final animation will. Plus, you'll have a brand new skill set that you can use for your own animation projects, or you can show this storyboard to prospective clients if you want to start working as a storyboard artist. But more than that, by the end of this class, you'll have leveled up your Procreate Dreams skills. You'll know how to use this app like a full production suite because with this app, there's no limit to the stories that you can create. So if you're ready to start storyboarding, let's tie in. 2. Your Class Project: So in this lesson, I want to go over your class project and what you need for this class. For your class project, I want you to come up with one simple idea, and from that idea, I'm going to show you how to thumbnail it, how to clean up the panels, and how to tie them out and even add basic motion. So, for example, you know, my idea started with a photo that a friend of mine shared with me that she took in Japan, and it's a photo of a cat sitting in front of a temple. From there, the whole character and story started to come to life for me. I started to conceptualize the character of the cat. I started to do sketches. I love the name Nico, so I call my character Nico. And I tried to imagine, you know, what was she doing in front of that temple. So, I visualized her being drawn towards some beautiful cherry blossoms that were floating through the sky, and that led her on a journey of discovery where she arrives at a magical tree, and eventually she's joined by a lot more cat friends, and they all watch the sunset together. So it's a very simple idea. But I wanted to show you how one really simple idea can be used to create a very compelling and interesting story. Now, a quick side note. If you'd like to see me actually animating this character against the backdrop that I created for this story, then check out my Scotia originals class where I animated Niko walking along the wall. I used this idea for that class, and I included the background, as well. So it might be an interesting class for you to check out after this one. But for this class, I want you to focus on the art of storyboarding, because even if you don't have any experience in animation at all, but you know that you have a love of storytelling, then storyboarding is the way to go. You don't need to be very skilled at drawing. In fact, the more rough and loose you can draw, the better. You just need to have a vision of your idea and to be able to imagine that idea as a movie. So up next, I'm going to walk you through the features of Procreate Dreams in case you're not really familiar with them, and I'll show you the exact tools and processes that I'm going to be using throughout this class. So when you're ready, meet me in the next lesson. 3. Overview of Procreate Dreams: In this lesson, I'm going to walk you through Procreate Dreams and point out all of the main features, the main tools and the processes that I'll be using throughout the rest of this class. If you've never opened up Procreate Dreams before, then you're going to get to know everything that there is to know about this app. And if you have used Procreate Dreams before, you might want to watch this video just to make sure that you know exactly how I'm using the tools in this particular project. And so it might be a lot to take in if you've never used Procreate Dreams before, but you can bookmark this lesson and come back to it if anything is unclear. But what I will say at the outset is that once you start actually using the tools and the functions of this app, it becomes very, very intuitive very quickly. When you first open up Procreate Dreams, what happens is you land on this screen, which is the theater? This is where all of your files and projects live. And if you select, tap Select, you can choose each of these files. You can put them into a new folder. You can delete them, or you can make duplicates of them. And if you tap this plus button right here, then that allows you to create a brand new file project or movie. On this menu, there are a couple of options. To start any document, you can either choose flipbook or you can choose empty, and I'll show you what that looks like in a minute. But I just wanted to point out that these three dots here is where you can actually change the frames per second of your document or the duration. Also do that later on in your process, but I just wanted you to know that that's where that is at the outset. And then you'll see these dots here on the side indicating other screens. If you scroll through, you can see the different presets that are available. I usually go for widescreen because for me, it fits the movie that I see in my head. So I'm going to stick with widescreen, but I'm going to start my project by clicking on Empty. So now, when an empty document appears on your screen, I want you to take note of a couple of things. Firstly, it's split up into two distinct sections. This section along the top here is the stage. So this is where you're going to do all of your drawing. This is where you can animate things, where you can, you know, create new frame, new flip books. You can even import media into this area. And down below that stage is this area called the timeline, and this is where you set the time for your animation. You can set keyframes. You can do all your editing and compositing down in this area. So if you look at the bottom here, you'll see there are three options or three modes that you can be working in. You can be working in compose. You can be in perform, which I'll show you later is literally just dragging objects on the screen around to animate them. Or you can be in keyframe mode, which is going to allow you to add keyframes to content that exists within your timeline. Over here on the left, I just want to point out theater obviously brings you back out into where we were a minute ago. And this button here for settings, if you tap on that, you can change, again, things like the frames per second, the duration of your document. You can change the resolution. And there are several other parameters that you can change according to the stage, the timeline down here, your share options and your preferences. So we don't really need to worry about too many of these settings for now. As long as your settings are matching up with mine, I'm not even going to come back in and change any of these except for the duration. So I'll show you very quickly how to change the duration because it's an important one. You simply tap on it. At the moment, it's set to 5 seconds. If I put it in for 10 seconds. You'll see that my timeline has now changed from 5 seconds to 10 seconds in length. So that means I've got 10 seconds in my timeline. Now, if you go over to the right here and click on this Plus button, this is where you can add a new flipbook, a drawing, text, new tracks, and you can also import photos, videos, and other files like audio. We're not going to be working with flipbook too much until the very very end. So what I do want you to get familiar with is the drawing. So if you tap on drawing, you'll see that the timeline disappears, and essentially the stage has increased. So we're now inside the stage. This box here represents kind of the bounding box of the stage, but you can actually use all of this area around the stage to draw on. It just won't show up if I double tap on drawing again to go back out to my timeline. You see it doesn't show up on the main stage. That's because it is outside of that area. And why is this important? Well, simply because this outside area is very useful to animate objects on screen or off screen, so you can use that as much as you like. But what I use this outside area for, you'll see in my thumbnailing process is just to be able to draw on a bigger canvas. When you do create a drawing, I've essentially created a piece of content on the timeline, and it has extended it out to the end, you know, all the way to 10 seconds. So let me go back into drawing mode and have a look at the tools that we will be using the most in this class. Obviously, the most important tool we're going to be using is the brush because we'll be drawing our storyboard. So I'm using the basic animation brushes that ship with Procreate Dreams. I haven't imported any other brush set, so you can follow along with me. I think I'm using double man for the most part. Over here on the left, this button here or this slider. This is where you can increase the size of your brush, and this one down here is where you increase or decrease the opacity. That can be useful sometimes. I don't really use the opacity much. I just use the brush and I can change the size. The other tool then obviously is the color tool, but again, because we're storyboarding, we're just thumbnailing and sketching our ideas, I tend to stick with the basic color. But over here on this icon here, this is your layers. And I want to point this out to you right now because it is actually a very useful function. Let's say you've made a drawing like this lovely set of scribbles here. If you add another layer, that allows you to really be creative in how you build up your composition or add some background, it does come in handy. And I know when I'm thumbnailing my ideas, I tend to use layers rather than creating new drawings in the timeline every time. This icon is obviously the eraser, the eraser tool. What I like to do, and I'll just point this out, it's a little trick. You might not know about it. If you're in brush mode and you're drawing away, if you tap hold on the brush icon, it will erase with the same. It'll make sure that the eraser switches to the exact same as the drawing tool that you were just using. So it's handy because you can do kind of you can erase out using the same shape and style of the brush you were drawing with. But obviously, you don't have to do that. If you tap on the eraser, you can choose any other brush style that you like. Now, the only other thing that I want to point out at this stage is, you know, what I do a lot when I'm storyboarding is I will copy and paste elements of my work rather than having to redraw everything each and every time. So that's an important function to know and to get used to. All you have to do is go over to select. And when you tap on that, you know, a couple of options appear at the bottom. Make sure that you're in free hand. And then what you can do is drag around the area you want to say, copy, make sure that you've selected it all. Yeah, when it's all selected, it will look like that, and then you can come down again and just hit copy paste. So just note that when you do copy and paste, that thing that you've just pasted will arrive onto the stage as a new layer. The other important tool to note is the transform tool. So if you tap on that, a similar menu appears at the bottom of the screen, and I like to have uniform selected so that when I grab one of the corners and drag it up, it's going to scale that object uniformly. And that's really all you need to know for your drawing mode. Double tap on drawing and come back to the timeline. You'll see there's my content in the timeline below. Now, when it comes to storyboarding, another key feature that I use a lot is splitting content in the timeline. And to do that, all you need to do is make sure that your playhead is at the exact time that you want to make a new drawing, and then tap hold on it, and then you can choose the option split content. And now you've got one drawing there, and you're ready to make another drawing. If I wanted to drag a piece of content out, you can just tap on the end on the end of that. And you'll see that these arrows appear, and then you can just drag your content all the way out. That's what you want to do. Now, to add keyframes, let's have a quick look at that. So let's say at 2 seconds in, I want this to move off screen altogether. I'll just tap on keyframe mode. And now my cursor is changed to this clapperboard icon. If you tap on that and tap and select move, you can add a move and scale keyframe. That indicates the start of the motion. If I bring my playhead to some other the six second mark and tap it again, now I've created two keyframes. So there's no movement yet, but if I make sure that I'm on the end keyframe and I drag my drawing away, that's where the motion happens. Okay, so I'll explain more about keyframes and how you can work with them in storyboarding later on in the class, but I just wanted to point out those two functions for you there. All right. So the very last thing that I want to point out are some of the gestures. I think that the gestures and Procreate Dreams are very intuitive, actually, and I think that you'll get used to them really quickly if you've never used Procreate Dreams before. It might take a little bit of getting used to if you haven't ever used the gestures, and you might find that you're moving things around and kind of unsure about how to go about it. So essentially, the most basic gesture or yeah, the most basic gesture in Procreate Dreams is to use three fingers in the timeline to scroll your content up so that you can get a good view of it in the timeline or three fingers dragging down to minimize it. And you would do that if you've got a lot of tracks in your timeline, lots of layers of content. Three fingers sliding to the left will help you to zoom out of your timeline. And if you want to zoom in, you can use three fingers scrolling to the right. And then on the stage to pinch and zoom, you can pinch Zoom in and out. Similarly in the timeline, you can pinch Zoom in and out as well. You can also use one finger to slide through the timeline. And if you want to look at your artwork or your animation in a full screen, you just use four fingers to tap on the stage, and that brings you into full screen mode like that. And then you can use four fingers to tap on the screen again, and it brings you back into your timeline. Okay. Well, that is a basic overview. That's really all you need to know for this class. And I promise you, once you start using all of the tools and processes within Procreate Dreams, it very, very quickly becomes a very natural and intuitive way of working. And obviously, of course, we'll be getting to know a lot of these features very well throughout the exercises and the project in this class. So when you're ready, meet me in the next lesson. 4. How Storyboards fit into Animation of Film Production: So in this lesson, I want to explain where storyboarding fits into the whole animation process and why it's such a critical part of any project. Without a storyboard, an animation project is like a building or a house without a foundation. You literally wouldn't be able to build a house if you didn't have a solid foundation, and it's the same with animation. You need a storyboard, and you need one for two important reasons. The first reason is to simply work out the action to see if it's going to work, to see if your choices in camera angles are actually going to work. And the second reason is to time out the action so that later on, when you get to animate each of the scenes, it's already set in place. Now, essentially, the storyboard is your vision of the final animated movie on paper or on the iPad. Your storyboard could even replace a script. For example, the very successful TV show Samurai Jack was created from storyboards, not from scripts at all in the initial phase. The show's director GendeTrtikovski, and his story artists all worked out their ideas in a storyboard before they even wrote the episodes. So every animated show or movie starts with a storyboard. The story artist draws out each scene, and the director then adds the timing, which means that each scene is timed out exactly. Then what happens is, each of those scenes gets handed off to the animators and to the background artists. So they work on everything scene by scene. At the end of production, each of those animated scenes along with the painted backgrounds are fed back to the editor along with that original storyboard. The editor or compositor then matches the scenes and backgrounds to the original storyboard and makes sure that every scene is accounted for and that each one fits the exact timing that was locked in at the beginning. So as you can see, storyboarding is not only a fantastic tool to explain your idea visually, it's actually a really important component of any animation production. 5. The 6 Basic Camera Shots in Filmmaking: In this lesson, I'm going to explain six of the basic shots that are used in any movie or TV show or animation. But first, I want to explain that, you know, the story of any movie or film is actually shown or it's told twice in two different ways. So you can think of it this way. There are basically two layers. The one layer is the actual story. That's the script that was written or, you know, the story that you can describe to somebody else in words. If someone was to ask you, you know, what is this movie about? And the second way that a story is told or the second layer is through the visuals. So these visuals are not just showing the action. They actually provide a narrative in and of themselves that supports the written story. This is called visual language. So the visual language of any movie or show or, you know, animated feature is something that we read, but we do so almost subconsciously. Visual language is basically the camera angles, the shots, and the way that those shots are composed. In order to understand this language, I'm going to take a look at some of the really basic building blocks. You can think of this as the letters of the visual language. At first, this might seem really overly simplistic when you break it down like this. But when you start to use them creatively, splice them together, then they can make extremely emotional or dramatic sequences. Also, I should note that once you start to spot these camera angles, these shots or these ways of composing images, once you start to spot them in movies and films, you won't ever be able to watch a film passively again. The very first basic film shot is called the establishing shot or the extreme wide shot. So it's a view of the entire scene or let's say, the entire location where we show the viewer where the movie or the action is taking place. So you, the viewer or the audience is at a distance, but they're able to see the entire place as a whole. The best way to think about this shot is like, those establishing shots at the beginning of a movie or at the beginning of a sequence, like, you know, sweeping landscape at the start of a film that shows you where you are. You could think of, like, you know, say, I don't know if it's the exact opening shot of Dune, but let's say you're watching Dune, and it shows you the desert, you know, from a very wide angle or a science fiction movie that shows you, like, outer space. So the establishing shot literally establishes where the action takes place. The next type of shot moves a little bit closer in from that wide angle, and it's simply called a wide shot. And this is very common to sort of re establish the audience if you've had a bit of, you know, close ups or a bit of action and you want to re establish the location. You can start to feel like you're sort of entering the space a little bit. There are more details of the particular location, but it's still far enough back and wide enough to show you that sort of general context. Then the third basic shot is called a long shot. Now, I'm doing these in order of sort of stepping in closer each time. You might notice that, and it's quite intentional, as well. Each of these shots that I'm going to list gets progressively closer and closer into a scene, particularly into maybe a character. So in a long shot, if it's a character in the scene, you're going to see the entire character from head to toe. After that, the next shot that's very common is called a medium shot. So with a medium shot, you're really close up to the character. It shows a character from the waist, all the way up to the head. Now, this is an important shot because now we're very close to the character. We can start to see details and emotion on the character's face, but we're still able to see if the characters using their hands or something like that. So it's good for any scene where a character's moving around and doing stuff not just for straight up dialogue. Then after the medium is the close up. And this is maybe the most important storytelling shot. It could be the most important shot really in any movie. The close up is important because it's used to show the emotional content within the scene, particularly on the character's face. So you want to use a shot when you want the audience to understand what's happening with the character or identify with the character. You want to be able to show the emotion on their face and really show what's happening with the person. Finally, the last of the six basic shots is the extreme close up. So this is a shot that's used for really, really dramatic tension, like, huge emotional impact and intensity. So it's not overly used as say, the close up because it carries that emotional weight, it's a really powerful shot to underscore what a character is feeling. And an extreme close up, you know, as the title implies, it's like, really, we just see maybe the eyes of the character or, you know, the eyes and the mouth. So, believe it or not, these are the only shots in film language, and any other shot that you'll likely hear about or see, you know, something like an over the shoulder shot or a point of view shot, any other shot like that is really just a variation on one of these six basic shots. So for example, an over the shoulder shot is actually a close up, or a point of view shot is a close up. Okay? And I'll explain more of that a little bit later. But I want you to really become familiar with these six basic shots first. Once you start to combine these shots together, that's when storytelling becomes really interesting and compelling. 6. The 3 Main Camera Moves: In this lesson, I'm going to explain camera moves because these are important for storyboarding, and also it's something that's really easy to do in Procreate Dreams. And I'm going to be showing you exactly how you can animate some of your panels, your storyboard panels to simply effect or to replicate camera moves within your storyboard. So the first most common camera move is a zoom in or a truck in, and it's basically a slow camera move that moves into the subject, whether that's a character or a scene or, you know, a location or even an object. If you think about it in real life terms, if you had a camera that was filming someone on a tripod or if you had a camera on a tripod filming someone and you moved it in or you zoomed in on that character, that's the exact camera move that we're talking about. Now, it's used in storyboarding to basically draw the viewer into the story to heighten the emotional intensity of a scene or really to, like, direct the viewer's attention. To indicate it on a storyboard, you essentially just use arrows to show that the shot will go from point A to point B like this, you know, the start and the endpoint of the camera move. That's all you need to do. You don't need to do anything more to indicate that camera move. But like I said, when we get later into the class, when we look at animating our storyboard, I'm going to show you how you can create that motion within Procreate Dreams. So the next common camera move is a tilt when the camera moves up or down in a straight line. And in this instance, you draw your panels vertically one above the other, and then you add arrows to indicate the direction that the shot needs to move. So again, this is a very common camera move. It's really used to reveal something to show the viewer in a very intentional way by directing the gaze from moving and giving the information visually. Lastly, the third very common camera move that I want to show you is a pen. So this is when the camera moves laterally or horizontally from, say, left to right or right to left. Now, it's very simple, it's very straightforward, and it's probably one of the most common shots or most common camera moves. Again, the way you indicate that on your storyboard is to use your arrows indicating where the starting point is and the ending point, and we will animate that later in Procreate Dreams. Now, I want to say you can get completely crazy and creative with camera moves. But one thing that I need to point out and just mention is that you should always use camera moves to underscore what's happening. You know, you don't use them just for the sake of it. It has to any camera move has to underscore the action or the story. Like, if you had a crazy crane shot with a swinging camera move and then a crash Zoom, and basically the action was just that two characters are talking to each other, it would make really no sense. It would be an awful scene to watch and nobody would really kind of get what was going on. So just be mindful about the visual story that you're trying to tell. This is where you really have to understand your script or your idea or your story in order to be able to choose camera moves, you know, intentionally and cleverly. So if you're telling a crazy action story that does need those kinds of over the top moves, you know, if you're telling, like, a crazy, let's say, into the Spider verse, sort of, you know, superhero story, it's likely that you will have learned all about how to do that simply from working first with these very basic camera moves. So that's why I'm a great advocate of learning how to apply very simple camera moves first, and then you'll easily know how and where to apply those crazy camera moves. 7. Shots versus Angles: In this lesson, I'm going to explain the difference between camera angles and camera shots because it can get a little bit confusing, and it does actually make a slight difference if you know the correct, you know, what each term is referring to. So I want you to have an understanding of each of these and how to use different I also want to explain how you can use different angles in your storyboard. So think of every scene that you draw as being viewed through the lens of a camera. If there was a camera here, then you're capturing the character or the scene like this. So this is the view that you see through the camera. Now, that's called a shot. If I move the camera up and point it down, so it's the exact same, you know, shot or it's the exact same scene, but we're now looking at it from high above, looking down, we're pointing it down, then that's essentially the same shot with a different angle. In this case, it's called a high angle. And similarly, if I place the camera down here and, you know, we're looking up at the character, again, it's the same shot, but it's a different camera angle. This one is called a low angle shot. If you think of it in those terms, you know, those are again, like the basic camera moves or the six basic camera shots that we talked about. Those two angles, high angle or low angle are really powerful storytelling shots or storytelling devices. And if you get used to using them, you can get very creative in your storyboard. Last angle that I want to show you is if you've got the same character, the exact same shot, but the horizon line is tilted a little bit like this. This is called a Dutch angle. So it's not as common as a high angle or low angle, but you'll start to see it in movies or shows where the director wants to make the character feel a little bit unsteady or unstable or the emotional intensity of that scene to be, you know, very kind of disorienting. A high angle and a low angle have quite powerful impacts in terms of visual storytelling. A high angle is going to imply that the character within that shot is in a very low position psychologically. They're, you know, going to feel intimidated or almost in a weak position. Whereas, if the angle is low down, looking up at the character, that places the character in a powerful position relative to other people in the scene or even to the viewer. So start to notice those two angles when you're looking at a movie or a show and see if that's underscoring the storyline of that particular film. So we've covered the basic camera angles, the basic camera moves, and the basic camera shots, and that's all that you need in visual storytelling to understand the language of film. Before we get into storyboarding, our own idea or our own narrative, I want to cover one more important concept for storyboarding, and that is staging. So when you're ready, let's jump into the next essen. Let's go over how to set up a shot in terms of composition, and then we'll get into storyboarding our idea. 8. Staging and Composition: So the last thing that I want to talk about before we start drawing our own storyboard is staging. This is the last main sort of visual language principle or concept that I want you to know about because it's really important to be aware of this one, and it's going to really help you a lot in your drawing and in your storyboarding. Aging means essentially how you set up a shot with respect to the characters that are in it or the scene that you're trying to show and how you arrange elements within that scene. So essentially, it means that if there are elements within the shot, let's say, like trees or background elements or props or furniture, they are all going to be read in a visual sense by the audience, whether you're sort of conscious of them or not. So, in other words, where you place any of the elements within your shot is going to be really important to how that shot is read or understood. And where you place the character within that is really going to impact how the scene is viewed by the audience. For example, most common staging trick that people use is the rule of Thirds. It's not a trick by any means, but it's simply a very, very common way to compose a shot. If you place your character on any one of these three thirds, that's going to make a pleasing composition. Everybody composes their shots using a rule of Thirds like this. It's just a dynamic, visually interesting way to set up something. If you put your character dead set in the middle of the camera view or the shot, it's going to make that shot or that scene look kind of very standard, very boring, very undynamic. And sometimes that's actually what you do want to achieve. Again, think about the story that you're trying to tell. Maybe you want to really show this character in the middle of the shot because it's, you know, super important to establish stability, stable kind of ethos around the character. But nearly 90% of the time, people will choose to use a rule of thirds to set up their composition. The reason is that breaking down something into three is a bit more dynamic than just simply breaking things down into two equal halves. So placing a character on one of these thirds is going to make that dynamic composition feel very structured, very intentional. Now, the other common consideration for staging for your composition is framing. And framing refers to how you arrange the elements within scene so that they literally frame the focal point. They're going to draw attention to the exact point within the shot that you want the viewer's eye to be looking. Let's say you had a character in the center of the scene, you could make sure that there was, you know, a bit of, like, maybe a tree in the foreground, that the buildings in the background were on either side and didn't overlap that character, or you could add some other element into the foreground that kind of points the viewer's eye towards the middle. So that's framing. The third very important staging principle is depth, and it's especially important in storyboarding where we're drawing out our shots or our scenes because we always want to give the impression of distance or depth within a scene. And the way this is achieved is through implying perspective. So you can create the impression of perspective by making sure that the elements that you draw within a panel or within a storyboard get smaller and smaller going into the distance. That's using that idea of scale, particularly comparative scale as well. If you've got one element that is repeated throughout the scene, like a telegraph pole or trees, make sure that they get smaller and smaller as they move away. Another really clever way to establish depth or to give the impression of depth in a shot is to use overlapping elements because that will naturally lead the viewer's eye to thinking that there's space in between those elements, so that just sort of very, very easily creates a sense of depth. Okay, so now we've covered all of the main important principles of storyboarding and visual language, in fact, the most basic, most common building blocks of visual language in all of filmmaking. In the next lesson, we're going to dive into storyboarding our own idea and our own narrative. So when you're ready, meet me in the next lesson. 9. Drawing Thumbnails for a Storyboard: No matter what you're storyboarding, whether it's just a simple idea, a concept, or a full feature length animated movie where you're working from a script. The very first step is always just to jot down some thumbnails. A thumbnail means a really small drawing of your ultimate goal or your ultimate vision. So you want to make sure that your drawings are rough, they're small, and you can easily, just scratch them out if they don't work and can add to them or move them around. So the whole idea with thumbnailing, especially as a process for storyboarding, is to be rough and loose and just let your ideas flow. And that's how I approach it myself. I'm not even going to be working from a script at all. I'm just simply going to jot down visual ideas. Now, I talked about my idea at the very beginning being based on a cat in front of a temple. So first sort of order of business is just to get that one visual idea down onto the page and very roughly sketch it out like this. I'm basing this off of a photo that a friend of mine shared with me that she took in Japan where she saw a cat sitting in front of a temple exactly like this. And I just thought it was such a compelling, such interesting moment, a beautiful scene that from there, it sparked this idea that I wanted to get to know more about this cat and why was this cat in front of a temple. So that's my very first idea. And that's my first drawing. That's my very first thumbnail. And my idea here is that the camera's going to pan down. So we'll start at the top of this temple pan down, and we'll reveal Nico sitting in front of the temple like this. So if I just quickly sketch out what that final shot would look like after the camera moves down, what we're going to do is end up seeing Nico staring at the temple. So this is where the camera move is eventually going to end up. So I'm just jotting that down here very quickly, very, very roughly. Okay, so that's my opening sequence, basically, my establishing shot and then my next sort of medium or medium close up. I'm going to copy this exact shot using the select tool, I'm going to copy and paste it and drag it over to here for this next shot that I want to happen. So basically, while this cat is sitting here, we're going to see these cherry blossoms float into view. So that'll be my next image, my next storyboard panel. So they'll move through the shot like this, and the cat's going to react the cat will look up. She'll see these cherry blossoms and that'll kind of effectively start our story for us. Okay, next up, I'm going to then go into close up. I want to see the reaction of Nico looking up at these cherry blossoms as they float past her. So the next shot is going to be a different pose of our cat. So I'm going to redraw it in this new pose where she's looking upwards like this. Okay. So that's my initial sequence nicely coming together. It's a very nice simple scene, very nice setup. After that close up, I'm going to pull back to that original wide shot from the establishing from the opening shot that I used. And I'm going to indicate or draw out that Nico is going to get up and do a stretch. So Niko gets up and does a big stretch, and then she's going to walk off to the right like this. So I'll draw Niko like this, walking Alright, so Niko then walks this way to, you know, to the right. And I want the camera to pan with her as she walks. I'm just going to indicate that with an arrow. And she's essentially gonna walk over here to where there's a huge statue stone statue of a cat. What I can do here is just simply copy this exact pose a couple of times because I want to indicate that the camera will move with Nico as she walks by, so I'm going to select that pose, copy it and paste it. And then from there, Nico is going to jump up onto the statue. So I just basically need to draw that as one pose for any action that you're doing when you're storyboarding, especially in the thumbnail phase, you just need to draw one pose that indicates or explains that action. So in this case, one pose to show Nico jumping onto the statue and then another pose to show Nico jumping up to the head of the statue. Okay? So it just needed two poses really, and that describes perfectly that entire action. And then we're going to end up at the top of the statue. I'll just draw Nico in a standing pose here. Like, she's already landed. She's standing on top of the statue and having a look around and trying to figure out where did those flowers that were floating in the air? Where did they come from? So once she's taken, like, a moment, we can have like maybe a beat where we just stay in that spot. I think what I'll do in this scene or in this shot is keep the camera on Nico and have the cherry blossoms come into view again. So maybe at this point, another few flowers float past. And what that'll do is just reiterate or remind the audience of, you know, why we're chasing or why we're going in this direction. So now from here, I think, let me see. So now the next thing that I want to happen in this little story is that she jumps from the stone statue onto a wall, and she's going to walk along the wall to the cherry blossom tree. So I think for that reason, I'm cutting back to a wide angle here so that we can see, you know, re establish the scene again, show the statue within the context of the environment. And that'll make a lot more sense visually when Nico jumps off the statue and then starts to walk along the wall. For that, I'm going to use a pan again. So I'm going to kind of have a long tracking pan going from left to right, following Niko walking on this wall, and, you know, exploring the area, trying to find out where these flowers are coming from. Just to note, when you do copy and paste elements of your storyboard inside Procreate Dreams, it often lands in the middle of the canvas. So you might have to go looking for it and then come back. So if I select Nico copy and paste, you know, it lands back up there in the middle of that canvas. You'll notice I'm drawing way outside of the canvas, and that's fine for now. But that's what you should do. If you want to copy and paste anything is just drag it back down to where you're drawing. Okay. So I've drawn three poses here of Niko walking. I think that's enough to indicate kind of the progression of that pan. And you'll notice I didn't even change the pose. I used the exact same pose and just duplicated it out. And that's perfectly fine for storyboarding. Again, any action that you're trying to describe in a storyboard, make sure you've got, like, one or two poses that exemplify that action. So if I have a camera panning as Nika walks along, she's going to end up at this cherry blossom tree over here. And from here, this is, like, now the end of the sequence. You know, I think I'd like her to maybe sit down under this cherry blossom tree and just enjoy the sunset over the city and have these beautiful cherry blossoms float in the air. Okay. Now, at this point, I did start to think of a couple of other things. As I got to the end of my idea or my story, I thought, Nico's all alone is sitting on this wall, watching a beautiful sunset. Wouldn't it be nice if maybe a couple of other cats jumped in and not only joined her, but I think made the story feel a little bit more resolved. So what I did was I moved that away, and this is part of the thumbnailing process, you know, as soon as ideas come to you, you just try to jot them down as quickly as possible. So even though I drew that final shot, I then changed my mind. I'm going to have Nico in this last couple of shots arriving at the tree because these cherry I want to give the idea that the cherry blossoms were actually guiding her to something better, let's say. So, you know, at the start of the story, she's sitting in front of the temple. Alone, really, essentially. And the cherry blossoms were a sign a sign from the universe that she needed to be somewhere else where she could meet friends, and other cats and hopefully that's not too corny, but I really loved that idea that she would arrive at this magical tree. The sun is setting, the cherry blossoms are floating through the air, and then she meets all these other cats. So in the last shot, I'm going to just have a couple of other cats jump down and join her. And I think that's really sweet. And yeah, it's probably very cheesy, but I guess I'm a little bit cheesy anyway. So, that's fine. But that's how I thumbnail any idea or any concept that I have. And as I said at the beginning, it does not matter if it's a basic idea, like what I have here. I started with basically a photograph that a friend gave me, and it doesn't matter if it's a basic idea or if it's like a full length, you know, written script for a movie. Always start with this very rough thumbnail process where you just you get your ideas out of your head and onto the page or onto your iPad as quickly as possible without second guessing yourself, without sort of, you know, thinking too hard about it because your initial ideas are what is going to be so interesting for the audience. You can always refine them later. So in the next lesson, I just want to talk through and analyze some of the shots that I ended up creating here, without even thinking about it. When you're ready, I'll see you in the next lesson. 10. Analyzing Your Thumbnails: So, as I said in the last esson, you'll notice that in my rough thumbnail process, I didn't plan out the types of camera angles or shots. I didn't make any of those decisions beforehand. I just drew what I was imagining in my mind straightaway and just let it flow. So I was literally sort of jotting down the actual movie that I was seeing or feeling myself. And that's what I want to emphasize here for you. I think it's a really good way just to get your ideas out. Something isn't working, that's when you're going to find out if a certain shot will work or not work, but you won't have put too much time or energy into drawing something very complicated. Now, in this lesson, though, I want to walk through that thumbnail process that I did, and I want to point out the exact camera angles and shots that I ended up choosing, even subconsciously, and I want to talk about why they're working. Okay, so the first shot is, as I said, the establishing shot. It's going to show us exactly where the actions taking place. We start at the top of the temple, and we're going to pan down. So I would probably, you know, draw a frame around the beginning or the starting point like this, and then I would draw another frame around the end point where the pan is going to end up. Love this shot because it does two things. It gives us, like, a wide view or an overview, but that pan down to the character reveals that character, and it also gives us a let's call it a wide shot or a long shot. So we go from that establishing shot into into a long shot you know, kind of very seamlessly. If I move over to this next panel, like, the setup is already kind of established. The cat is in the center here, and the next shot is going to reveal or show these cherry blossoms flowing into view and flowing through the shot like this. They're going to come in from the right and go out to the left here. Then this next shot, it's important to notice that Nico reacts. And this is almost like what is going to kick start the action or it's kind of like that. What do they call it in film terms, the motivating moment, you know, where the whole action to the movie or the whole action to the story begins. It triggers Nico to kind of get interested in her surroundings, to understand that there's something outside of this temple, something happening somewhere else because these cherry blossoms are indicating this very mysterious or interesting thing that could be happening from somewhere else. So the next shot is a close up. I really wanted to underscore that interest or that kind of engagement in the character. So close up is obviously the way to go. Whenever you have a reaction like that, you want to cut close and see the character's emotion. From there, I cut back to a wide shot. I wanted to re establish that initial location or initial scene. So cut back to a wide where we can still see enough of our character to do a stretch, and then she walks over to the right, and that's where we have the camera pan. The cameras now going to move with Nico as she walks along. And I love that idea that her action is triggering or is motivating the camera, in a way. So we are going with Nico. We're not sort of left behind watching her walk away. Uh, we're not sort of ahead of her, looking at her coming towards us, we're walking with her through the story. And we discover this statue of the cat at the same time that she does. So as she walks into frame or as she walks across, rather, the statue comes into frame very naturally, very organically, and we see the statue for the first time with her. Alright. At this point, she's going to jump up onto the statue. And again, I'm going to cut closer. I'm going to go into that scene a little bit closer, so I'd use a close up or a medium shot here to show her jumping up onto the statue like this. And I should mention at this point before we go on, just in terms of analyzing this sequence, there are a few cuts here, so I'm just going to indicate them. A cut means where the camera shot changes from one shot to another. So if it changes from a close up to a wide shot or if it changes from a wide shot to a close up, that's essentially a cut. It's an editing term, meaning that the footage has changed. The footage has been cut, and there's a new shot that is now introduced. So now we're on the top of the statue. And again, this is where we restate our initial triggering sort of narrative thing that we used with the cherry blossoms coming in. I want to reintroduce them here. I want to remind the audience, you know, what is motivating Nico to go on this journey. And it's these magical, amazing ethereal flowers that are flowing through the evening. So once she's on top of the statue, you know, she's probably thinking, What am I doing here again? Let's introduce the cherry blossoms floating by and that kind of, yes, you know, kind of reignites her exploration. So we could cut back to a wide shot here and show Nico jumping off the statue and continuing her search or continuing her journey and starts to walk across walk along this wall. And again, as I explained earlier, I'm using a panning shot here at this stage. So I like to just indicate those pans by drawing in a frame around the beginning of the pan and a frame around the end. You don't have to do that, but that's the way I like to kind of annotate it for myself. When we get into the animation part of the storyboarding, we're actually going to do this inside appropriate dreams using keyframes, so we won't need necessarily to draw these arrows on our final storyboard, but it's a good idea on your thumbnails to indicate them. And here she's like, she's found the tree. We definitely want to see her interacting or reacting to the source of these cherry blossoms. And then I did change up the last sequence or the last couple of frames of my thumbnail process. I'll show you now. What I did was I introduced, you know, a few more other cats joining Nico. Here. I drew Nico turning around and, you know, a few more cats jumping in. This is the exact same shot as previously, but I think in the next one, it's a little bit wider. It cuts a bit wider just to show the view a little bit better and to give space for other characters to enter the shot. Again, just as a side note, that's kind of an important thing to bear in mind. If you want other characters to enter into any scene or shot, make sure that the shot that you've chosen has enough space. So a medium or a close up wouldn't be wide enough for us to see other characters joining into the scene. At this stage, there are a lot of cats joining Nico in the final frame. But I love it. I think it works great. It's really gorgeous, and that's my story. Anyway, that's how I imagined this character's journey unfolding. Okay, so meet me in the next esson. I'll show you how to clean up your thumbnails, how to add shots and panels into procreate dreams, and how to add simple keyframe animation to make your camera pans and camera moves. 11. Cleaning Up Your Storyboard and Building the Timeline: So in this lesson, what I'm going to do is walk you through the clean up process. Now, essentially, what the cleanup process means in animation or storyboarding, it is when you take your rough drawings and you redraw them, but with a very clean line. So this is an opportunity to refine your drawings, to make any changes that you sort of decide that you want to add or take out from your rough drawings. And in particular, inside of Procreate Dreams, the beauty of doing it in this app is that we can now start to build out a timeline. So each panel is going to be essentially a new frame on my timeline, inside Procreate Dreams. And I'll walk you through exactly how to do that. So as you can see, my thumbnails are all on one page, and I want to separate out each of these panels into separate frames on my timeline so that I can add duration of time to each one. So I'm going to double tap and come out of drawing mode, and now I'm on my timeline. And you can see that the drawing is here and it extends to the full length of the timeline down below. So I'm just going to scale down my page of rough thumbnails and drag the first one over to the center of my stage. Okay? Once I've got that drawing more or less centered on my stage, I am then going to tap on the drawing in the timeline. I'm going to drag the opacity of this drawing down to about 50%. Then go over to the plus button and add a new drawing on top. And that brings you back into drawing mode, and this is where you get to trace over your rough drawing and make those lines nice and crisp and clean. So the process is a little bit time consuming. It might take a little bit of time, but, you know, you could throw on some music and just get into the zone because you're not really struggling at this point to try and get your vision onto the page. It's already there. You're just redrawing it with a cleaner, simpler line. So take your time, make sure that, you know, you are getting down everything that you want to. As I said, this is also an opportunity to take out anything that you think isn't working or to make changes. Again, your rough drawings are just your sort of thoughts. So you're allowed to change your mind in this process and make any changes. That's pretty much my first drawing, my first panel done. And remember, at the beginning, I said that this first establishing shot is going to be a pan down. So I want the camera move to start at the top and pan down and reveal Nico sitting in front of the temple. For now, I'm going to actually just leave it on the end of that camera move. I'm going to leave the frame exactly there where it is and then drag the drawing back in my timeline. I don't want this drawing to extend out because I'm going to add a new drawing for every new panel. And then I'm going to tap on the rough drawing underneath and choose split content. And that way, I can now grab the rest of the thumbnails and drag the new drawing into position. If I click on it, you'll see I've got the bounding box. I can just drag the next couple of panels over. So what I'm going to do is copy this first frame, duplicate it, and paste it again into the timeline because this is my second panel. And then I'm going to if I turn off the rough thumbnails, you'll see there it is. I don't have to redraw it. I just copy and paste it. And this is where I want the cherry blossoms to float into frame. So what I'm going to do is actually just add another layer. I'm going to go up here and tap on the plus icon, add another layer, and just over top of this original drawing, just add in a drawing of the cherry blossoms floating through. And then I'll tap on the layers again and go back to the base layer, and I'm going to erase out the pose of Nico here and just draw her looking up. Great. Okay. So that is my first and second panels actually done. The next panel over is a close up. It's where, you know, we see Nico reacting to the flowers. So I'm going to drag that rough thumbnail into the center of my stage, add a new drawing in the timeline, and then go in again and redraw it. So just note that I'm keeping every new drawing that I'm doing, essentially each panel. I'm keeping them fairly short in the timeline, but it could happen that you don't have enough seconds in your timeline, just like me. So go over to movie settings and just click on duration. And here you can change the duration of the timeline. So I'm going to change it to about 20 seconds for now and just come back out, and you'll see that the timeline has extended, so that gives me a lot more room to add new panels as I go. And that is the process. So I'm going to go through my entire thumbnail page, and I'm going to follow the exact same process for every shot or every panel. I'm just going to split them up in the timeline and make sure that each panel is when I redraw it is its own frame. And like I said, just take your time with it and work through it sort of very systematically, and it will all come together very well. For this long pan the camera move where the camera's following Nico as she walks along, I did that as one drawing and it'll be one frame in my timeline because I'm going to keyframe that pan going from left to right. For this section where Nico jumps up onto the statue, I actually made three separate drawings, three separate frames in the timeline. I decided, I'm not going to do a camera move for that one. And then the last section of the storyboard is basically, again, fairly simple and straightforward. Nico is going to jump off the statue, and we've got another camera pan. So again, on this section, I'm drawing the entire panel as one long panel, and it will be one long frame in the timeline that I'm just going to add keyframes to create motion. The very last section is cutting back to a wide shot, and this is where the rest of the cats are going to jump into frame. So that means that is that is a separate shot altogether, so I'm just drawing that separately. Okay, so that's the end of the cleanup phase. What I've got now in my timeline is a whole series of frames for each and every panel in the storyboard. So it's very nice. It's very good to have it organized like that. Instead of the entire storyboard on one page, now each panel has its own frame in the timeline, and that means that I can now add some motion and some key frames. So when you're ready, meet me in the next lesson, and we'll add our camera moves. O. 12. Keyframing the Camera Moves in Procreate Dreams: In this lesson, I'm going to show you how to create camera moves in your storyboard and also how to time out each of the panels so that when you play it back, it feels like the natural rhythm that the finished animation might play at. The first thing that I'm going to do is I don't need the rough drawings underneath anymore, so I'm going to select all of them using the selection tool, drag through, and then just tap hold and delete them. And then I'll come into my first panel here. This panel is the establishing shot. It's the pan down, and it's going to end at this frame. So what I'm going to do is go to the end, make sure that you're in keyframe mode. Tap on the icon and choose moving scale, and now you've created your first keyframe. Then I'll go to the beginning of that clip, and I'm going to create another keyframe and drag the drawing down so that we start with the top of the building. And it pans down. So, yeah, that's great. Now, when you create keyframes on any piece of content like this, there's a couple of things to note. You'll see that underneath the content, there is now another track. This is your keyframe track. If you tap hold anywhere on that, the first thing is that I want to make sure that the easing is even between these two keyframes. What that means really is that there's a steady even pace. So you can select set all easings and then set all easings to linear. Okay, so that'll make sure that there's no slow in or slow out, that the motion is completely evenly paced between each key frame. Once we've pound down, this is where Nico is going to notice these cherry blossoms floating through. At this stage, this is another camera move. So this is where the camera pans left or right, and we end up over at the statue. So again, I'm going to use my cursor, go to the beginning of the panel, select moving scale, and then I'll go to the end of the clip, set another keyframe by tapping on it there. And now I'm dragging the drawing across so that it lands up at this point. So yeah, there we go. There's the camera move going from left to right. And then I'll set all easings to linear. Now, there is another camera move here where Nico jumps up onto the stone statue. I had originally thought it would be three separate shots, but I'm seeing now that it actually works as a camera move, so I'm going to add one in here. But before I do that, I am going to make some adjustments to the drawings because I feel like the poses are too big, especially if I look at the last pose where Niko stands on top of the statue. I want everything to be in proportion. So I'm just scaling things down. And then because I'm someone who likes to tweak things a lot, I decided to add in another pose. So over here, I just added another simple pose of Nico jumping onto the statue. I felt like they needed to be a pose that actually kind of demarcated that action a little bit better. So I'll just do that. And I might move that other drawing back and scale it down a little bit. Okay. So now if I go over to this clip, I can set my camera move exactly the same way. This time it's sort of going upwards in a diagonal motion and just make sure that all the easings are even. And then what happens is we end up at the top of the statue, and that's perfect. Now, let me move across to the last shot or the last camera move, which is on this panel. And again, it's very simple. It's just a matter of setting my starting point, hitting moving scale, going to the end and putting another keyframe there and making sure it's all even, and that's it. And that's pretty much it. There's no other camera moves towards the end. It's nice and simple. And I think that that is working fine. If I play it back, though, I just want to point out, you know, it's quite choppy or the rhythm is not great. It's a little bit choppy, and it's a little bit fast, as well. So what I'm going to do in the next lesson is show you how to time out those camera moves and those panels so that when you play it back, it feels much more even, much more natural, and it's easier to read. You can easily imagine it as an animated clip. So when you're ready, meet me in the next esson. 13. Creating the Timing for each Panel: So in this very last phase of our project, we're going to time out some of the panels here because this is one of the most powerful features of Procreate Dreams in that it allows you to create timing for your storyboard, which will essentially create a foundation layer for any animation that you want to do on top of it. Timing out the panels is crucial if you want your storyboard to actually flow like an animated clip or an animated movie. Alright, so it's very, very simple. If you think about it, we already have everything in a timeline. So it's just really a matter of adjusting the length or duration of each piece of content within the timeline. And that is simply a matter of dragging the end of each piece of content. But just bear in mind, if there's key frames within or keyframes attached to that one clip, you'll have to drag them as well. I think I'll make it a little bit longer, so I'm going to drag it out again, play it back. And I really like that. I think that slow pan down works very nicely. If you get to the stage where you want to stretch a piece of content out, but, you know, you've got all of your content filling the entire timeline, what I would suggest is a couple of things. Firstly, we're going to extend the duration of our timeline out slightly. So I'm going to extend it from 20 seconds to 30 seconds just to give myself extra room in the timeline. And then I'm going to use the selection tool and grab all the pieces of content in front of the clip I want to adjust, pull them to the side, and then zoom in and adjust the length of that one particular shot. So let's see. I want this shot to have, you know, a bit of a pause, a bit of a beat because this is all about, like, that moment where Nico sees these flowers floating in the air. So then I will drag this clip back. But again, it starts for me, it starts too quick. So I'm going to drag the first keyframe forwards, and that means that at the beginning of that clip, there's just that little bit of a beat. Which if we were to animate this would give us enough time to set up the prose or set up the action for Nico to do that big stretch. Let me just give that a bit more timing. I'm drag the clip all the way over and move my keyframes I think I think it needs to be a bit longer. Let's see. I'll pay it back. Yeah. I think that's good. So Nico stretches and then starts to walk. We really need to have that pause there to show the action of Nico stretching out. So we go from that close up, we cut back to the wide, Nico stretches, and then starts to walk. Camera pans with her. And again, I'm going to make that I'm going to make this clip go a little bit differently, I think. I think what I want to do on this clip is make the pan actually stop just slightly so that each of the poses read. Now, in order to do that, it's just a matter of, let me delete these frames together and start over here. I'm going to add another keyframe. At the beginning, and I will add another keyframe, a few frames in, and another one directly after it, and then move my drawing up and do the same. So I'm essentially what I'm doing is I'm placing a hold on the movement. So at each place, it's held for a little bit. So the actual pan just occurs between those two keyframes, and it's quite fast. It's quite a fast movement just to follow Nico as she jumps because I want to give the impression that the jump is fast, and then she lands and takes a beat. That works great. And then we're at the top. So I'm actually going to extend my timeline again go give myself a bit more room, stretch it out to about 40 seconds. I'm going to select all this content, drag it out, and just let this frame or this moment last a little bit longer on screen. Timing is all about playing things back and seeing if it feels right. That's something you do get used to, but you'll know instinctively whether or not something is too fast or it doesn't make sense. For example, this pan is way too fast. It doesn't feel right. And so I'm going to make it drag it out so that it's a lot longer in duration. So the importance of timing, you know, you might think, why are we timing things, you know, especially if we're going to get animation done on top of the storyboard. What's the point of timing out any of these shots? Surely, that's the job of the animator to figure it out. And actually, it's incredibly important to do your timing at this stage of any project. If you've got a storyboard, before you even move into animation, you need to decide and lock down exactly how long each scene or each shot in your storyboard is actually going to be. Because once it goes to animation, it's going to be critical that the animator knows, Okay, I need to animate 2 seconds or I need to animate three or 4 seconds. So everything in animation is always decided and as I said, lockdown in this phase of any animation project. Okay, so everything I think is timed out. Let's play it back, see what that feels like. That's a nice slow pan down. Nice close up, and then pull back to the wide shot, and then Nika walks over towards the statue. And springs up and springs up. And then we see the cherry blossoms again, jumps onto the wall and strolls along as the sun is setting and finds this magical tree where all the cherry blossoms are falling. And then suddenly is joined by loads of cats, and they watch the sunset. I think that's great. The timing feels spot on. I think it feels perfect for me. And, yeah, that's it. So meet me in the next sesson and I'll wrap it up with my final thoughts. 14. Review and Wrap Up: Okay, so by now, you have a clear understanding of how to take a simple idea, how to sketch it out, and even create a moving storyboard with camera pans, cuts, and timing. I don't want you to underestimate the power of this skill, even though we worked with a really simple, quick and easy idea here. The applications of what you've learned are enormous. This is a skill set that very few people have. And with practice, you could build out your own projects, you could streamline existing projects, and you could even take on clients who need a storyboard artist. Now as final advice for you, I want to emphasize just a couple of things that you learned today. Firstly, always just imagine your story. Give yourself time to conceptualize it. Before you do anything else, just, you know, sketch out your concept, allow the idea to formulate in your mind, and literally sort of watch the movie in your mind that you wanted to create. Then, secondly, when it comes to thumbnailing, as I mentioned many, many times, sketch your ideas quickly. Do small rough sketches. There's a reason for this. It's because you don't want to lose any of your ideas that you might have. So don't start making, you know, very intricate and detailed perfect drawings straightaway. Give yourself time to really jot down your ideas in the most rudimentary way. And then, thirdly, after you've redrawn your panels with a clean line and tidied things up and added more detail, when you watch them back in Procreate Dreams, try to feel the timing. Now, this might sound a bit crazy at first, but it's definitely something that you can do. As you watch your panels in the timeline, you will instinctively have a feeling for how long a shot should be or, you know, if the flow of cuts or the flow of shots feels right. Animators always talk about this, you know, how an action feels, rather than how it looks or even, you know, how it sort of breaks down technically. So try to develop that in yourself. Like, how does an action feel? How does the flow of shots feel? To close out the class, I just want to mention that not only are you set up now to bring your own ideas and your own visions to life, but you can also use this skill to help others in their creative projects. I can't wait to see the amazing stories that you come up with. Thank you so much for watching. Don't forget to, you know, work on your own idea, and I will see you in the project section.