Shinichiro Matsuda - Motion Design resources + inspirations

There are often times when I need to make storyboards or moving storyboards (rough movies).
Usually, I use pen and paper to make storyboards and After Effects for moving storyboards.

I am pretty satisfied with those tools. However, you never know when great ideas come to you, right?
So, I use iPhone as a powerful pre-production tool.

iPhone apps to make storyboards and moving storyboards:

Brushes
Photogene
Slideshow Builder Lite
Dropbox
ZumoDrive
Google Docs
SimpleMind
LogMeIn Ignition

For storyboards:

Photogene and Brushes are the apps of choice for make storyboards.
You can take a picture of your drawings on paper, and enhance the picture with Photogene. Photogene is like a iPhone version of Photoshop. It can enhance photos with multiple color adjustment options, sharpen filter crop and straighten functions, and some cool effects.
If you want to paint directly on your iPhone, Brushes is the best app for you. It costs $6, but it is worth it.
Brushes is a natural media painting application, featuring an advanced color picker, several realistic brushes, and extreme zooming.
It is now on sale, and you can get it for $3.99.

For moving storyboards:

Slideshow Builder Lite creates slideshows as its name implies.
First of all, you need to sync photos that you want to use in your moving storyboard with iTunes.
And, you just make slideshows. It allows you to set duration of each photos so that you can set your timing.

Extra:

Finally, there are a lot of other useful iPhone apps for pre-production.
Dropbox and ZumoDrive are very popular online storage services.
Those services are the best ways to store, sync, and, share files online.
Lets say, you want to check audio files that you may use in your next project while you are drinking a cup of coffee at Starbucks, just use Dropbox or ZumoDrive to do such a task. You just convert the audio files to iPhone compatible ones and put the audio files to Dropbox or ZumoDrive folders. That’s all. ZumoDrive is a Mac-only service.

Google Docs allow you to create or edit your documents on iPhone.
You can edit your production notes or shot lists.

Like its name suggests, SimpleMind provides basic mind mapping functionality.
SimpleMind Express is free and very easy to use.

If you want to control your computers at your office or home, you should check LogMeIn Ignition.
It gives you direct, one-click access to all of your computers from your iPhone. For instance, you are able to use After Effects on your office PC whenever you are by using this app. Cool, huh?