So I tried out Storyboarder on a small project. If I wrote anything inaccurate in the above, please feel free to correct me. Note: as mentioned earlier, I only used Storyboarder for a brief time. The only really bad thing I can say about Storyboarder is this: what's up with the horribly annoying sound effects? When I first heard it I thought this was a kids 'toy' program and nearly quit without even trying it. I would upgrade my license more regularly if it wasn't so expensive. While it's hardly a replacement for SBP, I do think it's the best free alternative to it.Īnd all THAT said, yes, I think SBP is way over-priced. I thnk if you don't need these features, or have never used Storyboard Pro, or never intend to get it, then Storyboarder is a perfectly capable program. Storyboarder is quite minimalist in this area. You can group panels by Scenes and Sequences, move them around, and not worry about the panel numbers getting mixed up. As a matter of fact, Storyboard Pro's biggest strength is its sorting and organizational tools. This is fine for shorter format projects like commericals but could be a pain for longer format productions. Storyboarder doesn't have a layout mode you can view and edit, just a horizontal timeline where you can drag and drop single images. (Although, I usually wind up using AE for this sort of thing.) Storyboard Pro has some basic animation tools making it more appropriate for creating animatics. You can at least duplicate a panel and then modify it though. So no separating BG images from characters so you can resuse them. Unlike Storyboard Pro, Storyboarder doesn't support layers. Storyboarder seems to have only one format, so if you need to match the layout to a different studio standard, you're out of luck. Storyboard Pro is a far more flexible when it comes to layouts. That said, I normally use Storyboard Pro for personal projects and sometimes for work, and I'll continue using SBP because: Oh, and if you need better tools, you can shuttle an image to Photoshop and back with a button click. You can even time the duration of panels, play the boards as an animatic, and then save out a file for Premiere or Final Cut. The drawing tools are decent, you can re-arrange panels, and the PDF export is in a standard format. I only used if to short while but found it surprisingly usable considering the price. I played around with Storyboarder last weekend.

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