Decide the look
before anyone builds it.

A moodboard establishes a feeling and may be loose and even contradictory; its job is to get a director or client agreeing about tone. An art direction board comes after and must be specific enough to build from, because its audience is the set builder, buyer, dresser and stylist. It names the colours, the materials and their wear, a date rather than an era, and what is excluded.

Storyflow for the deciding stage: grouping references by the decision they make, writing the rule beside them, grabbing frames from reference films, and keeping it all next to the props list, shot list and schedule. Pinterest is unmatched for finding references, so most art directors start there. Figma is stronger for precise layout, typography and vector work.

Not during early access. Storyflow is paid-only during early access, with plans from $7.99 a month billed annually ($9.99 monthly). A free plan launches before the end of 2026, and anyone a paid member invites to a board joins free. If you need something free today, Pinterest boards plus a written note of the palette, materials and exclusions will do, with the words and images living apart.

Specific enough that nobody has to ask you a follow-up question to act on it. The palette is actual colours with a rule about where the accent may appear, the materials are named with how worn they look, the period is a date rather than an era, and there is a list of what the look excludes. Vagueness only moves the argument to the point where changing it costs money.

No. The AI builds the board structure from your project description, with labelled sections for palette, materials, period and locations, which saves setup time. AI image generation is on the Pro and Max plans if you need to visualise something you cannot find. Deciding what a specific story should look like in a specific place is the actual work of art direction, and a model lacks that context.

Write down what is excluded and put it where people will see it. Most drift is an accumulation of small choices made by different people without a stated boundary. A board that names the colours that never appear, the wrong materials and the tempting reference everyone slides toward gives each of them something to check. Keep it next to the props list and schedule, not in a deck.

Yes. Share a view-only link and the client opens the whole board in a browser with no account and nothing to install. Do it before any build or buying starts, because approval given against a specific board is hard to walk back. The client signs in to comment. There is no approval button, so sign-off happens in the comments.

Yes. You can grab a frame from a YouTube or Vimeo reference straight onto the canvas, and for period, palette and texture work a specific frame settles an argument that a description will not. You can also drag in images, screenshots, PDFs and links, and upload video files to play, scrub and grab frames from. Grabbing from YouTube or Vimeo works in a desktop browser, after a one-time permission to share the tab.

Yes, and it is the main structural advantage over a standalone moodboard tool. The art direction board can sit beside the props list, the wardrobe plan, the shot list and the schedule on the same canvas. That keeps the look connected to the objects and clothes that realise it, so the buyer sourcing a prop sees the palette it has to sit within.

Yes. The structure is the same whenever a look has to be handed to someone else and come back right: resolve palette, materials, period, and exclusions, then plan the dressing per space or per setup. For commercial work the approval step matters more, so the ability to send a client a view-only link and get the look signed off before the build is usually the feature that earns its place.