Week 5 - Pre-visualisation

Today, we spoke about Pre-Visualisation (also known as Concept Art). Essentially, Pre-visualisation is the visualising process of scenes or sequences in a animation or film during the Pre-Production phase. It is a concept used in all creative arts, including, advertising, video game design, architecture and still photography.

Pre-visualisation’s advantage is that it allows a client, director, animator, cinematographer, production supervisor, or VFX supervisor to experiment with different staging and art direction options without incurring actual production costs. On larger budget projects, directors may pre-visualise with actors in the visual effects department.

Few examples of pre-visualisation from Dune

Keyframes

Keyframes are essential points in animation that define the start and end positions of an object or character. These frames mark significant changes in motion, and then the software (in this instance After Effects) generates the in between frames to create smooth transitions. The video below breaks down how keyframes work in After Effects:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TSBWdAtziU

Here's a quick recap of After Effects in 10 minutes!

I found this video extremely useful, I still remember the horrors I have experienced last year trying to self teach myself how to use this program... Needless to say it didn't go so well...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hb2bbfiNBXA

Audio

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSz3pgqHzwQ

In this part of the lecture, we looked at title sequence redubbing. The video I have linked above took the title sequence to Monsters Inc. and remade it with their own original audio. According to the video's description, they only used their voice and a guitar to provide the audio - which is incredibly impressive. While I had initially planned to use a piano cover of the original Evangelion opening song (The Cruel Angel's Thesis) for my project, I still believe this Monsters Inc. video is worth mentioning.

Pre-visualisation

These images were taken out of my mood board as a concept idea for my visualisation, I will be later drawing these images myself in Procreate as I start my production process of the title sequence.

Animatic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCv8J2ZyR8w

Here's a quick animation test I put together using some of my own assets. I'll be walking through the asset creation process in a separate blog post. For the audio, I went with the Cruel Angel's Thesis piano cover by PianoDeuss, which I selected from my Miro board research. I also played around with a few different transitions to get a feel for the animation.