Motion Storyboard

Use this skill when the request is to plan a video, motion poster, product cut, or social cutdown and there is no validated storyboard yet.

Read ../../references/storyboard-shape.md and ../../references/scene-vocabulary.md before drafting.

Use when

• The user wants a new video, motion poster, demo cut, or social cutdown.
• There is a brief, but no scene-level structure yet.
• A previous render needs to be re-planned because scene structure changed.

Do not use when

• The task is to render an existing validated storyboard. Use motion-render-ops instead.
• The task is a static page, brand KV, or document layout. Route to a static visual package.
• The task is design judgement or visual direction shaping. Route to design-director.

Storyboard failures to avoid

• starting from prompt-only output instead of a scene plan
• inventing motion adjectives instead of named motion tokens
• skipping the target list and locking the storyboard to a single aspect ratio
• forgetting captions when the storyboard targets a social channel
• choosing a cover frame that does not communicate the goal in under one second

Workflow

1. Lock the goal

Clarify:

• what this video must accomplish
• who is watching
• how long it should be
• which channels and aspect ratios it must support

2. Plan the targets

For each channel, declare aspect, duration, caption requirement, and cover frame intent.

3. Draft the scene list

Use named scene recipes when possible. For each scene, declare:

• intent
• duration in frames
• composition
• transitions in and out
• motion tokens
• referenced assets

4. Plan audio and captions

Declare voiceover, music, ambient, and caption tracks. Make timing, language, and safe-area expectations explicit.

5. Validate against the storyboard contract

Confirm every required field is present and every reference resolves.

6. Persist the storyboard

Write the storyboard JSON, the script, and any reviewer notes into the workspace storyboards directory.

Output format

Return:

1. Goal and audience

• one short paragraph

2. Target list

• aspect, duration, channel, caption requirement per target

3. Scene list

• ordered scenes with intent, duration, composition summary, motion tokens, transitions

4. Audio and captions plan

• voiceover, music, ambient, caption tracks

5. Cover frame choice

• which scene or timestamp serves as the cover and why

6. Open risks

• missing assets, unresolved timing, language coverage

Use together with

• motion-scene-builder
• motion-render-ops
• motion-qc