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From a blank episode to a watchable animatic, without writing a full script first. You’ll pick a story structure and a length, block the episode in with held shots, drop in pictures, and render them for free on your own machine. Every field is covered in the storyboard guide.

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1. Start the episode from a structure

1

Open the New Episode Wizard

Choose New episode, then under Start from press Block from a structure.
2

Fill in the first steps

Name the episode and add its cast and places, as for any new episode.
3

Pick a structure and a length

On the Structure step choose The Change Arc (Three-Act Structure) and enter 7 minutes. If the series has no locations yet, say where it opens, in a few words.
4

Create it

Press Create. The episode opens on the storyboard: three act rows, each beat a bar with a target such as 0 of 24 shots, and no shots yet.
Already have an episode? Open it and press Storyboard… in the Shots tab. If its script has no beats, Lay out beats places the structure over the shots you have.

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2. Block it in

1

Read the beats

The line under each bar says what should happen there. Hover over the bar for its place in the story.
2

Put one shot on every beat

Press One per beat in the toolbar. Each beat now has a held stand-in, and the whole story exists from start to end.
3

Add what you need

Press + at the end of a beat to add a shot, or Fill to bring it up to its target. Fill act and Fill all do the same for more at once.
4

Set the places

Click a sequence’s green bar to choose its place and cast. To change location partway through a beat, right-click a sequence’s bar and choose New sequence after….
5

Make it yours

Double-click a beat’s name to rename it. Right-click a beat or act to add your own. Drag a tile to reorder it.

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3. Make the animatic

1

Drop your pictures

Select your sketches or stills in a file window and drop them on a beat’s bar. They fill its empty stand-ins in filename order.
2

Place single pictures

Drop one on the middle of a tile to replace that shot’s frame, or on a tile’s edge to make a new shot there.
3

Render held

Choose proxy in the editor and press Render held in the storyboard’s toolbar. It runs on this machine and costs nothing. Shots still on the gray card render too.
4

Watch it

Press Play all on the timeline. The animatic plays with every shot at its planned length.
With beats in the script, the spotting sheet’s Draft… can score the blocked episode, so you can judge the shape of the music before anything is written.

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4. Turn stand-ins into real shots

1

Write the shot

Click a tile to open Edit Shot and replace the beat’s guidance with what happens in the shot.
2

Choose its model

Pick the model for one shot in Edit Shot, or right-click a sequence, beat or act and choose Convert held shots.
3

Render

Render as usual. A dropped picture becomes the first frame on a model that reads one, such as FL2VA.
Read your shots before you convert them. A stand-in you haven’t rewritten still has the beat’s guidance as its action, and a paid model charges for that render like any other.
Changed your mind? Click on the board and press Ctrl+Z. Every edit saves to the script at once, and undo steps back through them while the window is open.