Anime storyboard generator: from a scene script to shots you can animate

Every animated film is planned twice: once in words, in the script, and once in pictures, in the storyboard, the method animation studios adopted in the 1930s. In anime production the storyboard is called e-konte, and it fixes the framing, the camera and the timing of every cut. This guide shows how to build one with Animey, an AI anime studio by Softforge Digital, and what changes when the shots are generated rather than drawn. It describes the product as of September 2026.

Why AI anime needs a storyboard

A video model makes clips of a few seconds. An episode is therefore a chain of short shots, and each one is generated, paid for and judged on its own. Without a storyboard you discover the problems after paying for the motion: a scene with three close-ups in a row, a line too long for its shot, a character who changes sides between two cuts. With one, you fix them on paper.

An example scene in four panels

The scene: at dusk, a young lighthouse keeper finds a sealed letter in his door and looks out to sea. Four beats, four shots, moving from the place to the emotion.

Read them in order and the scene already works: we know where we are, what happens, what matters and how it feels. That is the test of a storyboard. The panels are rough on purpose; what they fix is the framing, not the finish.

The steps

1. Step 1

   Write the beats of the scene

   Give the scene a place, a cast, a purpose and three to five beats, one sentence each. In Animey these come from the episode outline; the outline guide explains what makes them generate well.

2. Step 2

   Write the script

   Let Animey write the action and the lines, each with a speaker and an emotion, then edit them. Keep lines short: about ten words fit in a five-second shot.

3. Step 3

   Plan the shots with AI

   In the scene editor, “Plan shots with AI” cuts the script into shots, each with a size, a camera, an action, its lines and a length. Split a shot that does two things, merge two that do one, and reassign a line if it belongs elsewhere.

4. Step 4

   Check the rhythm of the sequence

   Read the shot list top to bottom: open wide, move closer as the emotion rises, use an insert for an object that matters and over-the-shoulder shots for dialogue. Avoid three shots of the same size in a row and more than one camera move per shot.

5. Step 5

   Draw a keyframe for every shot

   On the scene board, draw each keyframe: it is drawn from the location plate, the cast’s approved sheets and the style card, and costs nothing up to five drawings per shot per day. The board is now a storyboard in your series style.

6. Step 6

   Revise before you animate

   Redraw a panel that frames the action badly, change its camera or its prompt, and after editing the script use “Update from script” on a shot, or plan again: only drafts never generated are replaced.

7. Step 7

   Animate the board

   Generate when every panel reads well. At the Standard tier the keyframe is the exact first frame of the clip, so the shot looks like its panel; a 5-second shot costs 1 credit, its voiced lines included.

From panel to animated shot

Here is panel 2 carried through: the rough panel became a finished frame in the series style, and the frame became five seconds of animation with a single slow push-in.

Storyboard mistakes that cost credits

• Two actions in one shot: the model does one well and the other badly. Split the shot.
• A camera move and a big gesture together: keep one of them, and make it slow.
• Dialogue that runs past the shot: four lines do not fit in five seconds, as the pacing guide shows.
• Animating a weak panel: a keyframe redraw is free, a new take costs the shot’s price again.

Ready to try it on a whole episode? The one-afternoon guide takes you from series to render, or create a free account and storyboard your first scene.