Storyboard Styles — B&W vs Tonal vs Colour: When to Use Each

Updated: May 2026 · Written by Seb Antoniou

TL;DR

The three styles, defined

A storyboard style is not an aesthetic choice. It is a budget decision and a communication decision, in that order. The three styles below cover roughly 95 percent of commercial storyboard briefs in the UK in 2026.

B&W (black and white)

Pencil or digital line, occasionally with a single grey wash for shadow. Frames focus on composition, action, blocking, and camera. The reader fills in the colour palette mentally. B&W is what the pre-pro room expects, what the DP reads fastest, and what the agency producer pays for when the question is “does the spot work as a sequence of shots.”

[Visual reference: insert 4-frame B&W sample from Premier League or Coca-Cola work.]

Tonal (greyscale with shading)

B&W frames pushed into mid-tones with grey shading, ambient occlusion, or light-direction wash. Tonal frames carry atmosphere — time of day, weather, light source, mood — without committing to a colour palette. They read closer to a finished film than B&W does, without the cost of full colour.

[Visual reference: insert 4-frame tonal sample from a luxury automotive or sport board.]

Colour

Full colour frames with palette intent, lighting suggestion, and material reference. Colour boards approach the visual register of the finished film. They are the version the agency takes into the client pitch room, the version the brand client expects for a hero campaign, and the version a director presents when they want the room to feel the spot before the camera rolls.

[Visual reference: insert 4-frame colour sample from Bentley or Nike work.]

B&W storyboards: fast and expressive

B&W is the right answer most of the time. On a 30-second TVC, a senior artist comfortably produces 20 to 25 B&W frames per working day. Boords cites a similar range in its industry guidance. At a £450 to £900 day rate, that puts a full 30-second TVC storyboard at £900 to £2,700 in raw board cost, before any colour add-ons or animatic work.

B&W earns its place in three situations:

• The board is for the pre-pro room. DP, 1st AD, gaffer, director. They read composition and blocking, not palette. Adding colour here actively slows their read.
• The agency creative is presenting the spot internally. The art director will translate the boards into a colour deck themselves; they do not want to pre-commit to a palette the brand might shift.
• Budget is the constraint. B&W gets you the most boards per pound. On tight briefs with high frame counts, B&W is the only economics that works.

The best B&W storyboards are not stylised. They are expressive in the line itself — confident silhouettes, clear staging, accurate proportion. A senior B&W board reads at thumbnail size as fast as a colour board reads at full size.

Tonal storyboards: atmospheric without colour cost

Tonal sits between B&W and full colour in a way that often surprises producers. A tonal board takes roughly 30 percent longer to draw than a B&W board — so 15 to 18 frames per day rather than 20 to 25 — and the day rate often carries a small premium because the artist is solving a lighting problem on top of a composition problem.

Tonal is the right answer in three situations:

• The spot lives or dies on atmosphere. Time of day, weather, low-light interior, golden-hour exterior. The agency needs the brand client to read the mood before the shoot, and B&W frames will not carry it.
• The director wants to lock lighting language with the DP before the recce. Tonal frames are the cheapest way to signal “this is the light direction we are building toward.”
• The board needs to read at low fidelity in remote client review. Tonal frames survive a PDF compression and a small screen better than B&W line work does.

Tonal frames work especially well on luxury automotive briefs, where the entire genre is built on light reading off surfaces. They also work on sport broadcast title sequences, where the visual identity is often about silhouettes against floodlit grass or arena light.

Colour storyboards: pitch decks, hero films, and final-stage approvals

Colour is the most expensive of the three styles by a comfortable margin. A senior artist produces 6 to 12 colour frames per day, depending on complexity. The day rate often sits at a premium because each colour frame is closer to a finished illustration than to a board.

The maths is straightforward: a 30-second TVC at 20 frames, fully colour, takes 2 to 3 artist days at a colour day rate. The all-in cost lands in the £1,800 to £4,500 range for the boards alone, before any animatic or shooting-board work.

Colour earns its budget in three situations:

• The agency is pitching to win the account. Colour pitch boards are the language the pitch room speaks. A B&W deck against a competitor’s colour deck loses the room.
• The brand client is signing off remotely on a hero campaign. Colour frames give the brand confidence that the production company has thought through palette, wardrobe, location, light.
• The boards are going into a final-stage approval with the brand’s top team — CMO, brand director, global creative lead. The room expects polish at that level.

Colour boards for the entire sequence of a 30-second TVC are rarely the right call. The cost-benefit collapses past the hero frames. What works better is the mixed approach below.

Picking the right style for the audience

A simple decision matrix. Read by audience, pick by row.

The mistake to avoid is choosing the style for the artist’s portfolio rather than for the audience in the room. Colour boards photograph better for an Instagram grid; B&W boards land better in a pre-pro meeting.

Mixing styles in one project

The pattern most producers settle on for a hero TVC works like this:

• The body of the board (15 to 20 of the 22 frames) is drawn in B&W. Composition, blocking, timing, action.
• The hero frames (3 to 5 frames per spot, usually the establishing shot, the product reveal, and the final emotional beat) are drawn in colour.
• A separate front-of-deck cover frame in full colour, used as the thumbnail for the PDF and the lock screen of the client review.

This pattern hits the audience problem on both sides. The pre-pro room gets a B&W document it can read fast. The brand client gets the colour hero frames that carry the visual ambition of the spot. The budget lands in the middle of the range rather than at the top.

A common variant on luxury automotive briefs is tonal for the body and colour for the hero frames. Tonal carries the lighting language across the whole sequence; colour resolves the brand-critical moments.

What changes the cost dramatically

Three variables that move a colour board cost more than producers usually expect.

• Adding colour to a locked B&W board. Roughly one extra artist day per 10 to 12 colour frames added. Cheaper to plan colour from the brief than to retrofit it.
• Pushing tonal into colour mid-project. The tonal work is partial colour work, so the artist usually has to redraw rather than paint over. Budget for a 70 to 80 percent re-board on those frames, not a 20 percent uplift.
• Approving colour, then changing palette. A palette change after the colour pass is a redraw on the frames the change touches. Lock the palette reference at the brief stage, not after the first colour pass.

A useful planning heuristic for 2026 budgets: tonal adds roughly 30 percent to the equivalent B&W day rate. Full colour adds 80 to 120 percent. Producers who quote against the wrong style early get their margin eaten in the third week.

Sources

1. ScreenSkills — Storyboard Artist job profile. https://www.screenskills.com/job-profiles/browse/animation/development/storyboard-artist/ (Accessed 2026-05-23). Definition of the storyboard artist role across styles.
2. Domestika — What’s a storyboard and what’s a shooting board? https://www.domestika.org/en/blog/4820-what-s-a-storyboard-and-what-s-a-shooting-board (Accessed 2026-05-23). Style distinctions between narrative and director-side boards.
3. Boords — How to storyboard a TV commercial. https://boords.com/how-to-storyboard/tv-commercial (Accessed 2026-05-23). Industry rate-of-output benchmarks.
4. Vox Illustration — Storyboard cost per frame. https://voxillustration.com/blog/storyboard-illustration-cost-per-frame/ (Accessed 2026-05-23). Per-frame pricing context for B&W, tonal and colour.
5. Association of Illustrators (AOI) — Pricing guidelines. https://theaoi.com/pricing/ (Accessed 2026-05-23). UK rate guidance covering illustration and storyboard work.

About the author

Seb Antoniou is a London-based storyboard artist with 10+ years across Premier League, Bentley, Coca-Cola, Nike and BBC Sport campaigns. He boards for advertising agencies and production companies in the UK and globally, working from script, shot list, or a 20-minute call with the director. About →

Related

• Guide: How many frames do I need for a 30-second commercial?
• Case study: Bentley Flying Spur Hybrid
• Service: TV Commercial Storyboards

CTA

Got a project? Tell me about it →