How to storyboard and build comic strips in draw.io

Ditch the wall of text

A storyboard is a great tool for quickly translating a multitude of ideas into a simple, visual sequence. Consisting of basic illustrations, the beauty of a storyboard is that it doesn’t need to be refined at this stage; the goal is to simply get your thoughts down and organized in a logical way. Storyboards are typically used in fields like motion picture, animation, and interactive media sequences.

The paragraph above is summarized in a storyboard at the top of this blogpost. Which sticks more in your mind, the info in the storyboard with brief text, or the paragraph of detailed text?

In this blogpost, we’ll be looking at how to build a storyboard in draw.io from start to finish. If you want to find out more about building storyboards specifically for game design, we recommend you check out our blogpost series from our guest writer, Andy Gonzalez, From Chaos to Clarity: Conceptualizing Your Short Game.

Step 1: Create your background

1. On your Confluence page, start typing “draw.io” and select draw.io Board.

2. Add a large rectangle to the canvas and add color to this.

3. Click on the shape and head to Arrange > Group (or use the shortcut Ctrl or Cmd + G) to make it a container shape. Anything you put inside your rectangle will stay in place if the rectangle is ever moved.

Want to hide the minimize icon in the top-left corner? Head to the burger menu in the top left corner, then to Settings, and deselect Collapse/Expand.

4. Add smaller squares inside the rectangle to make the story panels, and add color to these.

5. You can use the Freehand (Brush) tool to further customize your story panel backgrounds.

6. Head to the burger menu in the top left, and select Layers (or use the shortcut Ctrl / Cmd + Shift + L). You can then use the padlock icon to lock the Background layer – once the text turns red, the layer is locked.

Click on the padlock icon to lock your background layer

Now you are ready to add your characters.

Step 2: Add in your characters and speech bubbles

7. Add a new layer called Characters, then import the custom shapes you wish to use by simply dragging and dropping them from your device onto the canvas.

8. In the Arrange tab on the right side, use the rotate options to change which way the characters are facing.

9. Use Ctrl / Cmd + D to duplicate any shapes you wish to use repeatedly. You can also store custom shapes in your personal Scratchpad.

10. Make your characters pop out by clicking on them, heading to the Style tab in the right side menu, and selecting Shadow.

Rotate your characters using the options in the Arrange tab

11. Use the Callout shape to build in the dialogue between characters.

12. You can customize text color, size, font, etc. To do so, double-click on a speech bubble and use the Text tab options in the right side menu.

13. Once you’re finished customizing your storyboard, hit Publish in the top right corner. Here is the final version of our storyboard:

Protip 1: Use the Freehand tool to annotate in real-time

The Freehand tool is ideal for adding annotations and creating freehand images, text, and other shapes by hand.

Once you’ve shared the Confluence page containing your diagram with your teammates, you can also use the Freehand tool to collaborate together in real time.

Protip 2: Light or dark mode? The choice is yours

Storyboards and other storytelling visualizations work well in both light or dark mode. Below is a beat sheet, often used in screenwriting to detail the major events, or “beats” of a story.

To change your visualization to dark mode, click on the burger icon in the top left menu, then head to Settings > Appearance > and choose from Automatic (follows your system’s settings), Dark Mode, or High Contrast for improved readability.

Note: changing your diagram to light, dark, or high contrast mode only changes this on your device and will not affect the view of other users if their settings are different.

You can find this beat sheet image, as well as more visualizations in dark mode in our related blogpost, Refining Story Plots and Mechanics for Your Short Game from our guest writer, Andy Gonzalez.

Want to dive deeper into the world of draw.io? Access our linktr.ee page to follow us on social media and learn how others use draw.io, as well as pick up some helpful tips and tricks.