KIE • Storyboard Contact Sheet

A shot list in a text box is a shot list. A grid of numbered cards with a prompt, a duration, and the camera language on each one is a storyboard you can actually review - or hand to somebody else.

KIE • Storyboard Contact Sheet takes the shot sequence JSON and renders it as a single image, with optional hero frames pasted into the cards. It's local Pillow rendering: no KIE call, no credits, no key. It's an output node, so the sheet appears when you queue and gets saved under output/KIE-Storyboards/.

What the sheet looks like

Cards are laid out in a grid, three columns at most, filling top-left to bottom-right in shot order. Each card holds:

• a hero frame if you connected one, letterboxed to fit, otherwise a "NO HERO FRAME" placeholder;
• SHOT 03 | 6s in the header line;
• the first two lines of the prompt, wrapped;
• the camera direction - shot size, angle, movement - in blue;
• the editorial_intent from the draft node in amber, if the plan carries one.

That amber line is the underrated bit. It's the draft node's stated reason for the shot ("land on a telling detail", "increase momentum"), printed next to the prompt, so you can see at a glance where the plan drifts from what you meant.

The output is also written into the graph as a normal preview, and the same persistent machinery the pack uses elsewhere means the image reference is stored in the workflow rather than lost on reload.

Inputs and outputs

• shot_sequence_json - forced input. Wire it from KIE • Script to Shot Draft or, better, KIE • Shot Plan Review so you're storyboarding the version you edited.
• hero_frame_1 … hero_frame_6 - optional IMAGE sockets, one per shot. Connect real frames from a Load Image node, a previous generation, or a character reference. Not every slot needs filling, and you can't connect one beyond the number of planned shots - the node errors if you try.

Outputs:

• contact_sheet - the rendered IMAGE. Display it, feed it to an upscaler, or wire it to a vision model if you want a caption.
• storyboard_json - metadata per shot: prompt, duration, camera, editorial intent, direction_mode, and hero_frame_connected so you know which cards are placeholders.
• saved_files_json - the saved file record for the sheet under output/KIE-Storyboards/.

The hero-frame rule nobody expects

Each hero_frame_N socket accepts exactly one image. Not a batch. If you feed it an IMAGE batch of four, you get:

hero_frame_2 must be one ComfyUI IMAGE, not an image batch.

This is the single most common error people hit with this node, because everything upstream usually produces batches. Select a single frame first (an image-select or batch-index node), then connect it. Same story for RGBA/RGB channel expectations - a 4-channel RGBA image is fine, anything else isn't.

Installing it

cd ComfyUI/custom_nodes
git clone https://github.com/felipederosilva/ComfyUI-KIE-Nodes-Next
cd ComfyUI-KIE-Nodes-Next
pip install -r requirements.txt

Restart. It lives under KIE Next / Studio / Direction. Pillow is in the pack's requirements, so rendering works out of the box. One cosmetic thing on Linux: card text uses Arial if the system has it and falls back to PIL's tiny bitmap font if not, so the labels will be small but readable on a bare container.

Gotchas

"A storyboard needs 1 to 6 shots from Shot Sequence." The connected JSON isn't an array within range. If you hand-rolled the string, check it parses.

"A hero frame is connected beyond the 3 planned shots." You filled slot 5 on a three-shot plan. Disconnect it, or extend the plan.

The sheet doesn't update. It's an output node - nothing renders until you queue. Editing the JSON in a text widget upstream needs a Queue to take effect.

Read it as a plan, not a promise. The sheets that say "NO HERO FRAME" across the board are the normal case for a first pass: you're reviewing the intent of each shot before spending anything on frames.