How I rebuilt storyboarding for filmmakers

If you've ever sat in a pre-production meeting waiting on storyboards, you know the bottleneck. A traditional storyboard artist takes 3-7 days and charges $300-800 per board. By the time the boards land in your inbox, the script has already moved.

I built STORYLINER to remove that bottleneck. This post is the honest version: what it does, what it doesn't, who it's for, and how it compares to the other AI tools in the space.

The problem with current options

Traditional storyboard artists — fantastic at their job, fundamentally slow. Indie filmmakers can rarely afford them. Even ad agencies skip storyboards entirely on tight timelines, then pay for it in production.

Generic AI image generators (Midjourney, DALL-E, Stable Diffusion) — they cannot keep a character looking the same across multiple frames. Try generating "Sarah walking into a coffee shop" then "Sarah ordering at the counter" — you get two different Sarahs. For a storyboard this is a fatal flaw. You need character consistency or you don't have a storyboard, you have a mood board.

Existing AI storyboard tools (Boords, Katalist, LTX Studio) — solving pieces of it. Boords was built before modern AI and bolted it on later (per-seat pricing gets expensive). Katalist is the closest, but $79/month and a credit card to start a trial. LTX Studio is impressive but is an entire video production platform with weeks of learning curve — overkill if you just need storyboards.

What STORYLINER actually does

You give STORYLINER a script — Final Draft (.fdx), Celtx, Fountain, or plain text. Within two minutes you get a production-quality storyboard, frame by frame, with consistent characters across every frame.

The technical bit that matters: STORYLINER has a feature called Character Memory. When the AI generates Sarah in frame 1, it locks her appearance — face, hair, clothing, distinctive features — and re-uses that anchor in every subsequent frame. Characters get saved to a personal Library, so the same Sarah is available in your next project too.

This isn't a wrapper around Midjourney. It's a custom pipeline. Character consistency is the single hardest problem in AI image generation and we built it specifically.

Six art styles

• Sketch — pencil concept work for early pre-production
• Lineart — clean ink, client-presentation ready
• Classic — traditional storyboard illustration
• Pen Art — detailed pen-and-ink, graphic-novel feel
• Realism — photorealistic, for advertising and high-fidelity pitches
• Simple — minimalist B&W for fast iteration

All six styles are available on every plan, including the free tier.

How it compares to alternatives (the real version)

I'm building STORYLINER specifically to be the fastest path from script to client-ready storyboard. Not the most powerful video tool. Not a clip-art assembly. The fastest way from "we just got the brief" to "here's the storyboard for the client meeting tomorrow."

Pricing — flat-rate, no per-seat games

• Free — $0, 30 frames lifetime, all six art styles, watermarked exports, no credit card
• Starter — $39/month, 500 frames/month, clean exports, full Character Memory
• Pro — $99/month, 1,500 frames, priority GPU queue, 2K exports, all formats (PDF/PPT/PNG)
• Agency — $299/month, 5,000 frames, up to 5 team seats, white-label exports
• PAYG — $5 one-time packs of additional frames on top of any plan
• Enterprise — custom pricing for unlimited frames, SSO, custom model training

Cancel anytime from the dashboard. No refunds for partial months but also no automatic re-charges.

How it works (4 steps, under 2 minutes)

1. Upload your script — Final Draft, Celtx, Fountain, or paste raw text. Rough drafts work too.
2. AI analyses scenes — characters, locations, camera moves are extracted and mapped to frames automatically.
3. Storyboard generates — consistent characters, consistent style, every frame in under two minutes. Don't like a frame? One click to regenerate, no extra cost.
4. Export and share — PDF, PowerPoint, or PNG. Send to crew, client, or investor. Script changes? Re-run in seconds.

Who it's NOT for

I want to be honest about this part because most product writing skips it.

• You need photorealism for a finished commercial. STORYLINER's realism style is great for pitch boards, not as the final delivered asset.
• You need 3D camera pre-visualization. Use FrameForge — it's a different tool for a different job.
• You're doing a long-form animated feature. Storyboards for animation production need shot-by-shot timing and dialogue layout that's outside our scope.
• You don't have a script yet. STORYLINER generates from scripts. If you're still in pure ideation, you don't need storyboards yet.

Try it

Free tier — 30 frames, all six art styles, no credit card required: https://www.storyliner.online

Paid plans start at $39/month for 500 frames: https://www.storyliner.online/pricing

If you're a filmmaker who's been burned by traditional storyboard timelines or by inconsistent-character AI tools, this is the build I wish I'd had three years ago. Feedback welcome at hello@storyliner.online.

Frequently asked

Does it really work with Final Draft .fdx files? Yes, direct import. Same for Celtx, Fountain, and plain text.

How consistent are characters really? Consistent across every frame within a storyboard, AND reusable across future projects via the Library. This is the whole pitch — generic AI image tools cannot do this reliably.

Is there really no credit card on the free tier? Correct. 30 frames, no card, no commitment. The watermark and 720p resolution are the only differences from paid.

Can I cancel anytime? Yes, from the dashboard, no questions asked.

Where do you store my scripts and storyboards? On our servers (US-based Heroku infrastructure). Your storyboards are private to your account. You can delete projects and characters anytime.

Built by an indie team. Honest feedback welcome. Try it free at storyliner.online.