CRAFT
APR 14, 2026 · 6 MIN READ
THE CASE FOR STORYBOARDS IN 2026
Why hand-drawn boards still beat AI shot suggestions for narrative work.
WORDS BY
Yasmin Khoury
LEAD STORYBOARD ARTIST
Every six months I get the same email from a producer somewhere: ‘Could we just AI-generate the boards?’ My answer hasn’t changed since Midjourney v4: you can, but you won’t like what happens on set.
WHAT BOARDS ARE ACTUALLY FOR
A storyboard is not a visualisation. It is a contract. It is the document that tells the director, the DP, the production designer, and the client that everyone is making the same film. When an artist draws a frame, every pencil stroke is an editorial choice: focal length, screen direction, negative space, emotional weight.
WHAT AI CAN AND CANNOT DO
AI is excellent at generating one perfect frame. AI is terrible at the eight imperfect frames that have to lead to it. Continuity, blocking across cuts, eye-line matches, the subtle shift in an actor’s posture that signals a change in power dynamic — these require intentionality, not probability.
We use AI on every project. We use it for backgrounds, references, lookdev moodboards, and the occasional ugly sketch we need to turn pretty for a 9am client deck. But when the camera rolls, the boards on the wall were drawn by hand. They always will be.
[ ABOUT THE AUTHOR ]
Yasmin Khoury
LEAD STORYBOARD ARTIST
Yasmin has boarded over 200 commercials, films and series at XPANSE since 2017.
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