How to Create a Storyboard Using AI

How To | Published on July 28, 2025

7 min

The success of a video project depends on many things, but storyboarding is definitely one of them. It helps you plan your shots, set the tone, and keep things tight when you’re creating, whether that’s on set or inside an AI tool.

While hiring a storyboard artist is ideal, it’s not always realistic, especially early in the process or when you’re working solo. Even with an artist on board, drafting something yourself can help shape the direction, pace, and tone before they step in.

And if you are a storyboard artist, you know how much time early drafts can take—roughing out ideas, testing compositions, adjusting for last-minute notes.

That’s where AI storyboarding comes in. Not to replace the craft, but to give you a faster way to explore directions, align with clients, or build off a rough pass before committing to a full board.

In this tutorial, we’ll show you step by step how to create a storyboard using AI. We’ll focus on a quiet, mood-driven ad for a fictional café called Café Oro. You’ll see how to generate each frame, guide the style, and bring it all together.

Why Storyboarding Matters (Even for Short Videos)

It’s easy to think storyboarding is just for big productions like feature films, music videos, or ad campaigns with five-figure budgets. But even a 30-second clip benefits from a clear visual plan.

If anything, the shorter the piece, the more pressure there is for every moment to hit. You’ve got limited time to land a tone, create a mood, and say something that sticks. A storyboard helps you make that time count.

If you map out in advance, you’ll spot pacing issues, awkward cuts, or missing beats early, before they eat up your energy mid-project. A rough storyboard lets you test your idea in a low-stakes space before you commit to a full render or setup.

If you’re working with a team, a storyboard becomes your shared blueprint. Everyone’s aligned on the sequence and mood before the camera rolls or the prompt gets fed into a model. And if you’re working solo, it becomes your anchor. When things go sideways mid-project (and they usually do), it’s the plan you can come back to.

The Rise of AI Storyboard Tools

Storyboarding has always played a key role in visual storytelling. From films and ads to game trailers and product explainers, it’s how creators plan the sequence of shots and make sure ideas land before production begins. Now, AI is starting to shift how that planning gets done.

What Is an AI Storyboard Generator?

An AI storyboard generator turns text into visuals. You write a short description of a shot and the AI produces a frame that reflects it. For example, say we’re building an ad and want to create the following shot as part of the storyboard:

Prompt

Close-up shot of an iced drink with lime and mint, condensation forming on the glass, backlit with bright daylight.

Image created with Leonardo.Ai

Most platforms let you adjust things like style, camera angle, lighting, or character appearance. Some offer features for consistency, like keeping the same character across multiple shots.

The goal of an AI storyboard generator isn’t to replace illustrators. It’s to help creators visualize ideas quickly, without having to draw every panel by hand or settle for stock photos that don’t quite fit.

How AI Storyboarding Differs from Traditional Methods

Traditional storyboarding is hands-on. Artists sketch each frame to match the director’s vision. This gives the team full control over tone, composition, and continuity—but it takes time, skill, and usually a decent budget.

AI tools change that dynamic in a few ways:

Speed: What might take days to draw can now be generated in minutes.
Iteration: Instead of redrawing a scene, you just revise the prompt.
Accessibility: You don’t need to be an illustrator to create a clear visual sequence.

Here’s head-to-head comparison between traditional and AI storyboarding:

Category	Traditional Storyboarding	AI Storyboarding
Creation Method	Hand-drawn or manually created using digital tools	Generated from text prompts or scripts using AI models
Time Required	Hours to days for multiple panels	Minutes to generate entire sequences
Required Skills	Drawing ability, composition knowledge	Only needs text input—drawing is optional with Realtime Canvas if you want more control
Iteration Speed	Slow–revisions require redrawing	Fast–modify text prompt and regenerate instantly
Visual Consistency	High–artist ensures characters and style remain consistent	Variable–best with tools that support character and style templates
Creative Input	High–artist uses judgment and intuition	High–AI suggests visuals; human curates and directs
Flexibility	Moderate–changes take time	High–rapid experimentation with styles, scenes, and layouts
Collaboration	Requires file sharing and feedback loops	Easy to share outputs digitally, facilitates real-time collaboration
Use Cases	Pre-production for film, animation, ads	Expanded to marketing, education, game dev, indie filmmaking, prototyping, etc.
Learning Curve	Steep–mastery takes time	Medium, especially if you want precise control over the output
Limitations	Time-consuming; constrained by artist bandwidth	May lack narrative nuance; consistency and realism vary by tool

Why Creators Are Using AI Storyboarding Tools

Creators are turning to AI tools for a few reasons:

Faster exploration: Teams can test out multiple directions without investing in full design work.
Lower costs: For indie filmmakers, students, or small teams, AI tools offer a fast, affordable way to visualize ideas early in the process.
Creative prep: Some directors use AI to build rough boards before handing things off to an artist. Others generate frames to help brief production designers or align with cinematographers early on.

The use cases vary, but the common thread is this: AI tools help speed up the draft phase. They’re not the final say, and they’re not a one-size-fits-all solution. But for many creators, they’re useful when you need something visual on the table quickly.

How to Create a Storyboard Using AI

We’ll use the Leonardo.Ai app to create a storyboard from scratch. If you want to follow along with us, you can sign up here.

Ad Concept

For this example, we’re building a storyboard for a fictional café brand called Café Oro. The client wants to attract early-morning customers and gives us a simple creative direction to work with: before the world starts.

That gives us enough to anchor the tone—quiet, warm, observational—but leaves room to interpret what that looks like visually. Instead of jumping to people or scenes of coffee being served, we start with stillness. Empty benches. A quiet street. A café that feels like it’s been waiting for someone to arrive.

The Shots

We design the ad as six simple, slow-moving shots. Each one holds a moment—just long enough to let the viewer settle into it. We don’t need dialogue or voiceover. We just need strong framing, natural light, and the right rhythm.

Shot	Description	Type	Location
1	Morning light stretches between rows of benches, casting long shadows across the pavement.	Wide shot, locked-off (tripod)	Exterior (city)
2	A single bicycle rests against a wall. No rider in sight.	Wide shot, locked-off (tripod)	Exterior (city)
3	A woman sits alone at a café window, surrounded by quiet light.	Wide shot with subtle dolly-in	Interior (Café Oro)
4	Steam rises from a fresh cup of coffee, untouched.	Close-up, locked-off (tripod)	Interior (Café Oro)
5	A cat naps on the windowsill, bathed in warm sunlight.	Wide shot, locked-off (tripod)	Interior (Café Oro)
6	The woman holds her coffee near her face, not sipping, just present.	Close-up, locked-off (tripod)	Interior (Café Oro)

Step 1: Choose Your Anchor Shot

You can generate your storyboard images in order, shot by shot, but it often helps to start with a single image that sets the tone for the whole sequence: your anchor shot. This image will guide the mood, color palette, lighting, and camera style for everything that follows.

In this case, we’ll use shot 3 as our anchor and generate it using the following prompt:

Prompt

Wide interior shot of a quiet café bathed in golden morning sunlight, soft shadows falling across wooden floors and empty chairs, large windows glowing with warm light. In the distant corner, a woman sits alone at a table by the window, partially silhouetted, relaxed posture, facing away or in soft profile. The space feels still and calm, with a gentle sense of anticipation.