When Mr C and I started discussing book trailers, we did a bit of research and talked concepts and all that good stuff. I decided to make a storyboard of my thoughts on what our trailer should perhaps have in it. I am not good at art, though, as we have previously discovered. Instead, I turned to my trusty iPad, and what do you know, there were a couple of storyboarding apps available.

I opted for the free version of Storyboards - an app that is about £10 if you want the premium version. You can’t export without paying the fee, but I got to play around for free anyway. I don’t really know much about the process of storyboarding, so I have nothing to compare it to, but I was quite impressed with what you could do in the app.

You start by creating your project, picking your screen size (16x9, etc) and then you can start making scenes. For each scene, you are presented with a blank page, and you start filling in the details. You can add text, photos from the camera, or pre-installed clip-art (is it still called clip-art? That feels so 90s).

There’s a lot of customisation. For example, if you select the stock drawing of a man, you can adjust his clothes, his hair, his orientation, whether he is sitting/standing/running and more.

I’ll admit, I don’t have the patience to sit and tweak for hours on end, I’m more happy going with a concept. I really enjoy using the app though - the navigation is intuitive, particularly considering it feels like the kind of process that would need a mouse. The touch screen navigation is only really a bit imprecise when it comes to resizing an object. Those blue dots are sometimes quite hard to grab hold of.

Anyway, to give you an overview of what you can do, I created a storyboard of a trailer for this past weekend’s Doctor Who episode.

If you have any storyboarding needs, I recommend checking out the app. £10 is a bit pricey if you’re just playing about like I was, but if you’re going to be using it a lot, then it could be a bargain.