Scenario Storyboards

Scenario Storyboards and Comics

Overview

Asked for a comic page, an agent prompts one model for "a page with six panels" and gets a page it cannot fix: uneven panel geometry, a hero whose face changes between cells, dialogue rendered as garble. The unit of generation is the panel, never the page. Script first, lock the cast, one model_run per panel anchored to the same references, letter in post, assemble the page last. Connection and the core loop: see the scenario skill. Character lock: scenario-consistency. Per-model image contracts: scenario-image. Lettering: scenario-text-overlay. If a sibling skill named here is missing from your available skills, ask the user to install it (npx skills add scenario-labs/skills --skill <name>); unattended, proceed from tool schemas and flag the gap.

Quick reference

Label the panels the way a shot list does, in that order: number, shot size, angle, lens or camera move, then the action with each character's frame side and facing. Arrange them as coverage rather than a row of pictures: open on a master that establishes the geography, hold one side of the axis so screen direction never flips, climb the size ladder as tension rises, and punctuate with an insert or a reaction.

A storyboard headed for animation stops at stage 4. Approved panels become first frames for image-to-video (scenario-video), one clip per shot, when each shot stands on its own. When the movement itself has to carry across the cuts, animating panels independently resets the performance at every one: that sequence belongs in the scenario-seedance-storyboard skill, which chains each shot's exit pose to the next shot's entry.

Worked example: a six-panel comic page

1. Script the page as a table: panel, shot size and angle, lens or camera move, action, dialogue and captions. The action column holds only what a camera sees: a thought, a smell, or backstory renders as nothing, so it becomes visible evidence or a caption. Dialogue and captions are written down here, never prompted into the art.
2. Cast lock: generate or upload the hero and iterate until approved; unattended, the script's own character description stands in for the approval, so take the candidate that matches it and continue. asset_display the hero and write its baseline enumeration (geometry, costume, palette by name or hex) per scenario-consistency.
3. Style: search with target="models", query="comic", public=true; the public catalog carried comic-style LoRA hits at authoring time. Confirm the pick with the user (unattended, take it from the task instructions, else the first result in returned order), then model_schema_get it for the reference field's name, cap, and cardinality. No reference field that fits the cast? Capabilities may advertise adapters the schema never exposes; the schema wins. Keep the pick for hero generation and recommend a reference-capable model for the panels, restating the style line in every prompt.
4. Six model_run calls. Each prompt is the style line, the character baseline, and the setting line (location, time of day), all byte-identical across the panels that share them, plus that panel's clause (shot, action), plus "clean art, no lettering, no speech bubbles". A dropped setting line breaks continuity the same way a dropped baseline breaks identity. Wire the hero reference as the schema says: an array only under array: true. A batch-count field repeats one prompt, so it cannot carry per-panel clauses.
5. jobs_wait on the six jobs, re-calling with pending_job_ids. Review each panel against the hero; fix drift by tightening that panel's enumeration and re-running from the baseline, never by chaining from a neighboring panel.
6. Letter with scenario-text-overlay, composite the cards as layers, assemble the page, then file panels and page in a collection (scenario-asset-analysis).