Stensyl Boards: How Film & Motion Designers Plan Productions.

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What Boards Actually Does (and How It Differs from a Storyboard App)

Stensyl Boards lives at /boards under Studios, and it replaces the platform's previous separate Storyboards and Moodboards surfaces. Both are now one fluid canvas. That consolidation is not just tidying: it changes how visual production planning actually works.

Traditional storyboard apps do one thing. They document scenes. A frame, a direction note, maybe an arrow indicating camera movement. They are useful records, but they sit outside the generation pipeline entirely. Your references live in a moodboard somewhere else. Your shot sequence lives in the storyboard. Your prompts live in a generation tool. The workflow is three tabs, constant switching, and a real risk that your visual intent gets diluted somewhere between planning and execution.

Boards removes that gap. On a single canvas, you can pin location reference images, drop in AI-generated style frames from the Image surface at /generate/image, and group those frames into discrete scene segments. Film and set designers can place a location still next to a staged composition reference. Motion designers can set a style frame beside a timing sketch. Exhibition designers can sequence the narrative arc of a walk-through before a single asset is rendered.

The capability that makes Boards materially different from a documentation tool is this: grouped frames define first-frame and last-frame parameters for video generation. Your storyboard does not just describe what you want. It becomes a direct input to production. The planning artefact and the production asset are the same object.

To be clear about what Boards is not: it is not a wireframing tool, not a slide deck builder, and not a substitute for a full non-linear editor. It is purpose-built for visual sequencing, specifically for answering the question "what comes before and after this frame, and what does the motion between them look like?"

Building a Scene Sequence: From Reference to Video Input

The practical workflow starts with collection. Pull visual references onto the canvas: location stills, colour grabs, lighting references, or images generated directly from Stensyl's Image surface. There is no import friction. If you have generated an image at /generate/image, it is already inside the platform and can land on the Boards canvas without exporting or re-uploading.

Once your references are on the canvas, you begin grouping. Each group defines a discrete shot or sequence segment. The reference image you place as the opening of that group becomes the first-frame input. The image you place at the close of that group becomes the last-frame input. When you route that group into Stensyl's Video generation at /generate/video, the model receives explicit motion boundaries rather than a single text prompt describing vague intent.

That distinction matters enormously in practice. A single prompt asks the model to invent both endpoints and the motion between them. A first/last-frame pair asks it only to solve the motion, with the visual anchors already locked. The result is more controlled, more consistent with your reference direction, and less likely to require iterative reshoots that drain credits.

Consider what this looks like across different disciplines:

• Film and set design: an establishing exterior shot as the first frame, a medium interior as the last. The motion implied is a move from outside to inside, and the model has both endpoints defined.
• Motion design: each card transition in a title sequence planned as a first/last pair. The beat structure is mapped on Boards before a single clip is rendered.
• Marketing and advertising: an ad storyboard where the product hero shot opens the sequence and the branded end-card closes it, with client reference imagery grouped alongside each segment for context.

The sequence logic Boards enables, from establishing shot to close-up, exterior to interior, or day to night, maps directly onto how film pre-production already organises scene coverage. The difference is that this sequence is not sitting in a PDF that someone emails around. It is live, connected, and generatable.

Combining Boards with Film and Canvas for Full Production Workflows

Boards is the planning layer. The surfaces it feeds into are where production executes.

The Film surface at /film handles multi-scene cinematic video assembly. The intended relationship between the two is sequential: sequence your shots and lock your first/last-frame pairs in Boards, then render them out through Film. Film is not a replacement for Boards, and Boards is not a replacement for Film. They occupy different stages of the same production pipeline.

Canvas at /canvas introduces a different kind of power. Canvas is Stensyl's node-based workflow editor. Its LLM Chat node lets you pipe a written shot list or scene description through a writing model and route the output into generation nodes elsewhere in the graph. A practical cross-surface workflow for a film or motion production might look like this:

1. Draft scene descriptions in Write at /write using the multi-model picker, choosing the writing model that fits your pace and level of detail.
2. Organise the visual sequence in Boards, grouping references into first/last-frame pairs for each scene segment.
3. Execute generation through Film for multi-scene cinematic output, or through Canvas nodes if you need to route outputs programmatically through a more complex workflow.

Motion designers working toward a timed export should also note the Motion surface at /motion, which handles Remotion-based motion graphics output. Boards is the right place to align the visual rhythm of a sequence, to establish what each beat looks like and what follows it, before committing those decisions to a rendered timeline in Motion. Changing the sequence on a Remotion timeline is expensive in time. Changing it on a Boards canvas is not.

Before starting any of this, Ray at /ray is worth a visit. Ray is Stensyl's creative-decision assistant. It helps you choose the right generation model for a given scene type, which matters when your monthly credit allocation is finite and regenerating a scene costs real credits. A short conversation with Ray before locking a sequence in Boards can save meaningful time and budget downstream.

The strongest production workflow on Stensyl is not any single surface. It is the sequence: plan in Boards, refine descriptions in Write, execute in Film or Canvas, and time exports in Motion. Each surface has a defined role. The whole is more efficient than any part used alone.

Using AI Writing Models to Sharpen Scene Briefs Before Generating

Weak prompts produce weak frames. That is not a criticism of any particular model. It is a function of what the model has to work with. If the scene description feeding your generation is vague, the output will resolve that vagueness in ways you did not intend, and you will spend credits correcting it.

The Write surface at /write and the Canvas LLM Chat node both give you access to the same six writing models: GPT-5.4 mini, GPT-5.5, Gemini Flash, Gemini Pro, Claude Sonnet 4.6, and Claude Opus 4.7. All six are available on every plan. Choosing between them is about task fit, not tier.

Model	Best use case for production planning
GPT-5.4 mini	Fast, low-cost iteration across many short scene descriptions
GPT-5.5	Richer structural output when scene descriptions need to hold detail
Gemini Flash	Rapid cycling through scene variations without heavy credit spend
Gemini Pro	More considered outputs when visual tone needs to be precise
Claude Sonnet 4.6	Balanced depth and speed for full shot lists or ad creative briefs
Claude Opus 4.7	Most detailed, tonally specific scene descriptions; ideal for complex film or exhibition narratives

For a film or set designer building a pre-visualisation sequence, Claude Opus 4.7 tends to produce descriptions with genuine tonal specificity: the quality of light, the implied depth of field, the mood of the staging. For a motion designer cycling through many graphic beat descriptions quickly, Gemini Flash moves faster and costs fewer credits per output.

Once a scene description is drafted in Write, copy it directly into the frame caption on the corresponding Boards group. Your written intent and your visual reference are now co-located on the same surface. There is no version drift between what you wrote and what you planned to generate.

Marketing and advertising teams building ad storyboards follow the same pattern: a written creative brief drafted in Write, visual references and shot groupings organised in Boards, then generation routed through the Graphics surface at /graphics or Video generation depending on whether the output is static or moving. The brief, the board, and the output stay connected throughout.

Credits, Plans, and What to Expect from a Full Production Run

Video generation costs more credits than image generation. Image generation costs more than text. Before mapping out a multi-scene production in Boards, it is worth matching your expected output against your plan's monthly credit allocation.

Plan	Monthly credits	Concurrent generations	Price
Lite	1,000	1	£10/mo
Starter	2,500	2	£22/mo
Pro	6,000	3	£42/mo
Studio	12,500	4	£84/mo

If you are new to Stensyl, the Free tier gives you 150 one-time credits plus one free video render on sign-up, no card required. That is enough to test a first/last-frame scene pair through to a rendered clip before committing to a paid plan. The free credits do not reset, so use them on a real scene rather than an exploratory experiment with no stakes.

Concurrency limits affect production pace in a practical way. On Lite, one generation runs at a time. On Studio, four can run simultaneously. For a production with a client deadline, the difference between one and four concurrent renders is not marginal. It is the difference between waiting half a day and finishing a sequence before lunch.

The most important credit discipline Boards enables is sequencing before generating. If you lock your full shot sequence in Boards before triggering a single render, you generate purposefully. If you generate speculatively, refine based on what comes back, and regenerate several times per scene, a modest sequence can consume a month's credit allocation before you have a final cut. The board is your discipline mechanism as much as it is your planning tool.

A practical prioritisation approach: use Boards to plan and lock the complete sequence, then generate hero scenes first. These are the shots where the visual direction matters most and where a misaligned result is most costly. Getting hero scenes right early means you are refining secondary shots against an established visual register, not discovering problems late.

All surfaces, all models, and all studios are available on every plan. The variable is credits and concurrency, not access. Plan your generation order accordingly.

When Boards Works Best and Where to Route Around It

Boards is strongest when the relationship between frames is the planning problem. Film pre-visualisation, motion graphics storyboards, exhibition narrative flows, ad storyboards where client references and shot flow need to live together: these are all cases where Boards earns its place in the workflow.

It is less useful, and arguably the wrong tool, in several situations:

• Text-heavy production planning: script breakdowns, shot lists as written documents, production schedules, and scene-level call sheets are better handled in Write, where the writing models can structure that content properly. Boards becomes relevant once you have moved from words into visuals.
• Timed animation exports: Boards handles spatial sequence planning. The Motion surface at /motion handles the Remotion-based timed export. These are complementary, not competitive. Do not try to solve timing problems on the Boards canvas.
• Purely iterative image generation: if you are exploring what a single image looks like across multiple styles without any sequence logic, the Image surface at /generate/image is more direct. Boards adds value when sequence and continuity are the questions, not single-frame exploration.

For teams working across a production, Projects at /projects provides shared workspaces and brand identity storage. References collected in Boards, outputs generated in Film, and copy drafted in Write can all sit within the same Project, accessible to every team member working on that production. On a longer production with multiple contributors, Projects is what keeps Boards from becoming a private canvas that only the person who built it can navigate.

The practical signal that Boards is the right surface for your current task: you are answering the question "what does this shot look like and where does it sit in the sequence?" If the question is instead "what words describe this shot?", open Write first, then return to Boards once you have the language to anchor the visual.

Production planning in film and motion has always involved the same fundamental challenge: holding a large number of visual decisions in sequence before any of them are executed. Shot lists, location boards, staging references, and coverage notes exist because the cost of discovering a gap during production is far higher than the cost of closing it beforehand. Boards applies that same logic to a generative workflow, where the cost of a wrong frame is counted in credits and time rather than travel and crew. Plan the sequence. Lock the frames. Then generate with intention.

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