Ley Lines Cinematic Development: Storyboards & References

[ June 8 Update ]

So! Yet another round of storyboard iterations have gone by this week. With our last iteration, the feedback we received is that we had a lot of linear camera layouts going on. So, we just made some small-scale changes to the boards to break this up. That way, the linear camera angles we do use won't become too redundant.

For this go around with storyboards, there was some inspiration from some anime fight sequences. Naruto uses a lot of linear camera angles. At the same time, the artists manage to break up these linear layouts often enough so that this doesn't bore the eye. This tends to be a common practice in many shonen anime series.

And here's our revised storyboard ... we have the same number of panels as our last iteration and will be keeping the same timing. This revision was solely for the sake of shifting angles & layouts.

We have acknowledged the very real possibility that camera angles & layouts are subject to change the moment we begin working in a 3D space. Once we have our proxy 3D environment laid out, we will start the process of doing very rough block-ins for animation. Having a visual 3D representation of our sequence will help us solidify our camera angles and what is needed from the environment. Knowing these details will help us make the most out of both our animators and our environment artists.

SPEAKING OF ANIMATION. With the completion of our four characters' engine-ready meshes, it's time for us to move on to rigging and preparing for upcoming animation. A

A rough 3D layout pass has also been created in Maya, in accordance to our storyboards.

MIRIA

RIGGING

Taking these videos into consideration, this is the current state of Miria's body rig:

The bones for Miria's rig are currently laid out! She will also be having a face rig implemented, and we can now begin the process on that. Her model clocks in at 52, 795 tris. We'll be moving on to researching crystal textures for her skin.

ANIMATION