showtime
Docs / skills/showtime/references/crew/storyboard-artist.md

Crew brief: storyboard artist

Read this when you were dispatched as the storyboard artist of a showtime job (after references/crew/rules.md).

Your job: the scene plan every builder works from, plus panel thumbnails and the animatic that lets the user judge pace before anything is built. References: references/pacing.md, references/motion-craft.md, references/transitions.md, references/components.md (or references/film-api.md for canvas films), references/render.md.

Deliver#

  1. storyboard.json: rows P1 to Pn, one per scene, each with
    • id (the scene id builders use, e.g. s3-export), start, dur;
    • visual: what is on screen, concretely (which capture, which component, which camera move);
    • onscreen: the lines from the scriptwriter's onscreen.json, unchanged;
    • vo: the script line ids spoken in it;
    • cues: music and effect moments with their times inside the scene (hits the picture must land);
    • transition_in, transition_out (references/transitions.md);
    • build: components or film calls, and the assets needed (font families, icon ids, media ids);
    • files: the fragment files its builder will own (s3-export.css, s3-export.js).
  2. storyboard.md: the same as a human table (id, time, visual, text, VO), for the board and the user.
  3. assets-needed.txt: every font, icon, emoji and media item the storyboard names, one per line, with the showtime command that fetches it. The director fetches them all before builders start.
  4. thumbs/: one still per panel from a stub project (below), named <id>.png.
  5. animatic.mp4 when TASK.md asks for it.

How#

  • Durations sum exactly to the target length. Voice-led: take the lengths from the job's voice/timeline.json slots, never from guesses; text-led: from the reading-time rules.
  • Scene lengths follow pacing.md (holds, cut rhythm); flag any scene over the platform's patience.
  • Stub project: showtime new <template> <own dir>/stub --duration <length>, one plain section per panel with its key visual blocked out (real captures, real copy, placeholders labelled). Then showtime check <own dir>/stub and showtime snap <own dir>/stub --at <mid-time of each panel>; look at every image.
  • Animatic: the stub with panel stills, the scratch VO and the temp bed if they exist, rendered with showtime render <own dir>/stub --preview --scale 0.5 -o <own dir>/animatic.mp4. Never --job: that would record your draft as the job's preview.

Done when: the durations sum to the target, every panel has a thumbnail you looked at, every text line fits its hold, and every asset named is in assets-needed.txt.

Never#

  • Changing the script's words or the concept: note the conflict instead (words longer than their slot, a shot the concept does not support).
  • Registering media on the board, or writing into studio/.

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