We use an inexpensive 3d program called Poser, which specialises in creating people and animals to create all our storyboard art.
The great thing about Poser is that it has a library of pre-built characters, so you dont need to waste time building a figure, and also a virtual camera which acts just like a real one. This means you can spend time experimenting with camera angles with out actually picking up a camera.
You can also animate in Poser so you can use it to visualise moving shots too.
We sometimes use another relatively inexpensive 3d software called Bryce to generate the backdrops.
These elements are all composited in Photoshop.
One final note regarding storyboards, the better the visualisation, the more it motivates our crew and cast, as they can get a good idea of how the final shot/scene will look when edited and it saves time trying to explain a certain shot set-up.
You can see samples of the storyboards we create at our website.
Poser can be purchased from http://www.e-frontier.com/
Bryce can be purchased from http://www.e-frontier.com/
Hope this helps.
