Previs, Again!
Major Overhaul time! This weekend has been a lot of work, so I’ve been a little quiet. We took everyone’s feedback into heavy consideration, and even feedback the other teams received, and realized we needed to rework our story. We wanted to make sure the product was enjoyed, that the “space” aspect had reason, it overall that it seemed more put-together.
We spent the first half of the week rewriting the story, and the second half defining the shots as a group. I’ve gone into Unreal (& nuke and after effects) again and done another previs, and defined the camera work and shots.
Storyboard by my teammate, Soi Park
Our new synopsis follows this story;
A lone astronomer in the desert is studying the skies and a phenomenon of meteor showers. All of the sudden, one flies in through the atmosphere and explodes right next to him! He runs over and finds it was a bag of Sahale trial mix. Like any scientist would, he immediately begins his research by taking a bite. Eureka!! The trail mix has opened his mind and let him discover exactly what he was looking for - First he gets close with the cashew planet, then we zoom over to the raisin planet. Quickly, he’s able to find what he’s been searching for! The Sahale trail mix planet! After this conclusion to his joyous research, he sits back and enjoys the night sky with handfuls of Sahale.
I created the following video for our new previs and outline;
It needs timing updates and one more shot towards the end to show the “joyous conclusion to the research”.
For our environment, we’ve decided on a national park in Utah as a specific source of reference and inspiration. It also has low light pollution and generally good weather for astronomy. These two asset packs from Quixel will help me and Duck fill out a world nicely, and I’ve already looked into them and started a test environment, and they provide a great scale of assets, from gigantic mountain ranges in one asset to pebbles and small vegetation. Another thing I like is the ability to choose the level of detail at which each asset is at individually.
My next task will be
- Sourcing HDR for look dev
- Building Virtual Production scenes environment
- Helping teammates when consulted on look dev about fx
