TimaLens

Storyboards for lessons

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4 scenes, drawn by hand while the machine is built

How to turn a PDF into a lesson video

The PDF is not the hard part, and neither is the rendering. The step nobody hands you is the storyboard.

A renderer needs numbered scenes, one narration line per scene, a duration and a drawing. A PDF has none of those. Below is the order to work in, and the tool that does it for you.

Written by TimaLens Storyboard · updated 2 September 2026

The 5 steps, in order

  1. 1

    Find the teaching order

    Read the PDF and list what a learner must understand before the next thing makes sense. Page order is rarely teaching order.

  2. 2

    Cut it into scenes

    One idea per scene. A single lesson is 4 to 12 scenes; more than that is two lessons wearing one title.

  3. 3

    Write one narration line per scene

    Say it out loud and time it. Between 0:12 and 0:20 per scene is normal, so an 8-scene lesson runs about 2:00.

  4. 4

    Decide what is drawn

    Each scene gets a panel and the labels lettered onto it. If a scene cannot be drawn, it is an argument, not a scene.

  5. 5

    Hand it to a renderer

    Scenes, narration and labels are everything a whiteboard renderer needs. TimaLens draws it as a narrated video.

What the file gives you, and what a renderer needs

In the PDF

In the storyboard

  • A page of the PDFOne scene, sometimes two
  • A paragraphOne narration line, timed in m:ss
  • A figure or diagramOne panel, drawn by hand
  • A bold termOne label lettered on the panel
  • Nothing in the fileThe teaching order, decided first

Storyboard, Scene 2 and Scene 3 of 4

Drawn from a biology lesson

Full storyboard: 4 scenes · 1:02

  1. 2

    Hand-drawn panel: a cut-away leaf with one cell magnified beside it

    Where the work happens

    Zoom into one cell and you find chloroplasts. Water arrives from the roots, and carbon dioxide comes in through pores.

    Narration 0:18

    ChloroplastWaterCarbon dioxide

  2. 3

    Hand-drawn panel: a boxed reaction with a sun above the arrow

    The trade

    Using that light, the leaf rearranges 6 water and 6 carbon dioxide molecules into 1 sugar and 6 oxygen.

    Narration 0:16

    6 CO26 H2OGlucose6 O2

A renderer can work from this. Two lines of text and one drawing per scene is the whole handover.

Storyboard your own lesson

Name the lesson in the PDF you teach from. We send back 4 scenes: narration, labels and a drawn panel each.

Free · 4 scenes · no account, no card

Answers

Can I upload the PDF today?
Not yet. Today you name the lesson, we draw the scenes by hand, and the file upload opens when the machine does.
Which files will be read?
PDF, PPTX, DOCX or plain text up to 20 MB. Pasting the text works just as well and is faster.
How many scenes should a lesson have?
4 scenes for a single idea, 8 for a full lesson, 12 at most. The free storyboard is 4 scenes.
What does it cost?
1 storyboard of up to 4 scenes is free, with no account and no card. A Storyboard Pack is $19 once for 10 storyboards of up to 12 scenes.
Do you make the video?
No. We make the storyboard. Send to TimaLens hands it over, and TimaLens renders the narrated whiteboard video.
How is this different from Doodly or Camtasia?
Those are editors: you drag every scene onto a canvas yourself. Here the teaching order arrives already decided and the panels arrive drawn.