Mark Fry | Animation + Film : The Escape previs

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[ Animation + Film: The Escape previs ]

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"The Escape" previs
22 September 2009

This is a draft-quality Maya mental ray render for an animation timing and camera shot previs sequence.

(Update: 02 June 2010)
Since making this video I've been doing a lot of reading (see this list) and research into cinematic storytelling. Looking back at this video I can now clearly see that the camera work could be much better. In particular, the cg-nature of the camera moves should be replaced with more real-world actions and there needs to be more choice of lens focal lengths rather than just using Maya's default 35mm.

"The Escape" cave test
27 August 2009

Maya mental ray test render of the cave lighting, textures, and geometry.

"The Escape" startle test (no sound)
11 August 2009

My first Maya AndyRig test animation to practice with the rig controls.

"The Escape" running test
02 August 2009

A quick Maya test animation of a camera group on a motion path. The camera itself cycles up and down for the running bounce and the camera's aim is animated to control the view.

"The Escape" storyboards
02 October 2009

Here are my storyboards for animation previs, "The Escape". By the time I went back to do a second pass on the storyboards, I had already built the 3D sets and had a pretty clear vision of the shots I was going to use. Based on early feedback, I added shot 1 as a means to introduce the Girl character to the camera.

I used an initial stream-of-consciousness type of storyboard drawing to produce the previs animation. I understand that while the original one-pager worked very well for me personally, it isn't very readable by anyone else.

The drawings below have been created in an attempt by me to improve my storyboard vocabulary and camera shot communication. I'm reading through "Film Directing Shot by Shot: Visualizing from Concept to Screen" by Steven D. Katz to learn storyboard conventions. (Here is a link to the book on Amazon.co.uk)

[ click for full size ^]

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