This course is an introduction to the methods and tools of storytelling. It includes creating visual story images from written or spoken ideas, development of story structure, honing verbal storytelling skills, and exploring story sense: what comes first, next, last? We'll learn about story and character progressions; creating and maintaining dramatic tension; making strong compositions that convey meaning, camera position, sequencing shots. Through assignments and lectures beginning with the foundation of story and working through more complex ideas and forms, students will learn to utilize storytelling skills in practical application by telling and re-telling, creating images of shots, storyboarding sequences and by making short animatics.