Toon Boom Storyboard is a new piece of software from the people who bring you Toon Boom Studio, Opus, Harmony, among other great tools for animators (and artists of all kinds).

Many of you are probably used to creating storyboards, be it for your animations made in Flash, video productions, traditional animations, shows, and so on. In the past, I've used a pen and paper or a series of keyframes in Flash to storyboard an animation. I've heard of many who use Illustrator to create storyboards (which is where I was headed next). But now there is software specifically for Storyboards - and I can definitely say it's much easier than what I've done in the past! You can create a new board in seconds, and use familiar tools to draw your outlines - even using your tablet (Storyboard recognizes pressure sensitivity).

Storyboard is fairly intuitive to use. I was able to create a few storyboards, and maniuplate the camera to pan and zoom around the stage with only one short visit to their Help system. The interface lacks the polish of established software, but quickly forgiven in a "version 1.0". I didn't experience any crashes in a couple hours of use, and everything seemed snappy and responsive the whole time.

Storyboard also has all the features you'd expect- drawing tools, layers, a timeline, a library (with built-in assets you can use), templates, support for sound, a camera (!), transitions, and so on. You can create captions for each storyboard, too. The camera feature was the most exciting for me - I sorely miss that in Flash, so being able to plan my Flash animations using a camera tool (and then export to SWF) is extremely valuable.

Storyboard also has features that let you integrate with Flash, QuickTime, and of course Toon Boom's other tools (like Opus and Harmony). The one drawback of the Flash integration is each storyboard exports as a series of keyframes (so you're left with a strenuous frame-by-frame animation).

If you are a storyboard artist, Flash animator, or a production artist, definitely check out this software. It's a bit spendy at $899.99, but you'll quickly recoup that in the time you save, and the hassle you avoid by incorporating this into your workflow. You'll also save trees if you're used to storyboarding on paper, like me :)

For more information, and to try it for yourself, go to: Toon Boom's site.