/generating-storyboards

name: generating-storyboards
description: Generates the storyboard sheets for a video — one image per clip, panels in a row, each panel one action. Divides each clip into panels itself, then builds the sheets one at a time, each taking the previous one as a reference, so the person and product stay consistent except where the story deliberately changes them. Use when a video's clip lengths and story are settled and it needs sheets before anything is animated. Not for a still image on its own — that should be made using generating-images.
license: Apache-2.0
metadata:
  version: "0.5.0"
  category: creative
  summary: "Draws out your entire video concept clip-by-clip as static images, enforcing strict character and product continuity so you can approve camera angles and visual flow before committing to expensive video renders."

The storyboard

One sheet per clip, vertical panels in a row, each panel one action, left to right. Panels are numbered within a sheet; sheets are numbered across the video.

**The sheet is always `16:9` and its panels are always vertical**, whatever shape the finished video is. Neither follows the delivery ratio, and neither is the plan's to set.

The plan settles how many sheets there are, what happens in each clip and how long it runs, which images come in as references, and the look. How a clip divides into panels is settled here.

Anything the plan specifies wins. The defaults below fill gaps only.

Workflow

**One sheet at a time.** Run all six steps for the first sheet, then run all six again for the second, and so on. Sheets cannot be built in parallel or in one call — each prompt needs the previous sheet's finished image in hand.

Step 1: Collect what's needed

• **An image of the person** — wherever a person appears in any panel.
• **Product image or images** — where the video has a product.
• **The previous sheet** — from the second sheet on.
• **What happens in this clip**, and how many seconds it runs.
• **How many sheets there are**, and which one this is.
• **The look**, where the plan names one.

What a supplied image is for comes from the brief, not from its contents — a person in a frame doesn't make it the person reference, and one image can't serve as both the person and the product.

**Read every supplied image** with `image_analysis` before deciding anything: what the place looks like, what they're wearing, and for a product, its colours, its shape, its finish, and how big it is. Skip this where the image is already known.

Where any of this is missing, ask for it rather than assuming it.

Step 2: Settle the sheet

• **References** — every one goes in twice: attached as `reference_images` on the generate call, and

labelled Image 1, Image 2, Image 3 in the prompt text. **Same order both times** — the product image or images, the person's image, then the previous sheet once there is one. Say once what each is, then refer to it by label. A label with nothing attached points at nothing, and unlabelled attachments let the model pick its own subject out of the set.

• **The person** — pointed at by label, never described. State that wherever they appear it is the

same person, with face, hair, build and skin tone identical throughout. Don't describe their age, ethnicity, build, hair, makeup or features — the reference supplies all of it, and words describing it fight the image. They need not be in every panel: a tight product panel may show only their hands, or nobody at all.

• **Setting** — where they are, when, and how it's lit. Unless the plan sends them elsewhere, carry

the location, the hour and the direction of the light straight from the person's image.

• **Light** — from a named direction. The plan's look sets its quality — soft and neutral, dramatic

and low-key, or clean studio light. No golden hour, sunset, or amber cast unless the plan asks for it.

• **Wardrobe** — the garments and their colours, named. From the person's image by default.
• **Look** — the look the plan names, carried into every sheet. Where the plan names none, a clean,

naturally-lit photographic still.

• **Product name** — one short noun phrase, used word for word in every panel that mentions it.
• **Product size** — a measurement, so it can be held against the hand at its real size.

Skip the last two when there is no product.

From the second sheet on, write two lines: what carries over from the previous sheet, pointed at by its label, and what the plan deliberately changes. Anything not named as changed matches it exactly.

Step 3: Divide the clip into panels

The plan gives the clip's story and its seconds. How many panels carry it is worked out here.

**One panel is one primary action** — one continuous motion at one object. Take the clip's story and split it wherever a second motion starts or a second object is taken up: *picks it up*, *tilts it to the light*, *puts it on* are three panels, never one line.

**Each panel runs two seconds of the clip where possible, three at most**, so the seconds set how many there are — **up to five panels, never more**. Five vertical panels are the most one sheet holds before each shrinks and its detail — faces, hands, product labels — begins to distort. Where the clip's story has more than five primary actions, don't crowd them onto the sheet: keep the five that carry the clip — its key moments, always including the opening and the closing beat — and let the rest be carried as motion inside those cuts rather than getting their own panel.

Step 4: Write the panels

**Settle the row before writing any panel.**

The panels read left to right as one continuous story, each picking up where the last left off. On the second sheet and after, the first panel continues from the final panel of the sheet before it.

*Across the row, these vary:*

• A different action in every panel — a genuinely different thing being done, not the same pose

wearing a new expression.

• The camera position ch