Several 2d animators and story(board) artists have been reporting exciting results with the upgraded “Grease Pencil” annotation tool in Blender. What started as a quick way to add notes in the viewport has now grown into a powerful animation tool for sketching storyboards — and even final animations.

Matias Mendiola, who worked here on Cosmos Laundromat storyboarding in September, posted the video below. He could do this minute of film in just half a day. No tedious .jpg file naming and saving, loading, texture mapping, and video editing needed!

According to Matias, the main benefits are:

It uses a single .blend file as starting point for the scene, avoiding the use of paper, scans, and other software.

It combines the storyboard and animatic in the same work session, making the process much faster.

Backgrounds and character drawings can be reused for different shots and scenes.

Allows the director to work on scene timing from the very beginning.

Allows the director to use the same (or multiple) camera angles and movements that will be used later in production.

Download the .blend file here (3 MB). Needs Blender 2.73 to work!