VFX Storyboards for A Hard Day's Knight

[z00story]

As promised a while back... here are some storyboards I drew for "A Hard Day's Knight" for the in house VFX 2D team. Basically, I draw a board for each shot we do in 2D for every episode. The complexity of the drawing varies based on the complexity of the shot. Some are as simple as words on a white square, some, like these, are more complicated, because I am conveying trickier information.

I have no clue if other shows do this, as it is quite a demanding task, but I really feel like this has been a key step in conveying the writers/producers vision (and my own, of course) to the artists... the artists, who I think, do an amazing job of taking these thumbnails and making stuff a million times better. It's also the key to pumping out the amount of shots we have to per week.

[z00story]

more

[z00story]

even more...

[neps]

This is incredible z00story! Thanks so much for sharing these!

Can you tell us, what the process is for making these? Do you trace over stills from the episode or are these images of justin drawn from memory/reference? How far before airing the final work do you work on story boards if thats something I can ask?

[Knight4life]

Zoo story i would humbly request you to ask the VFX guys in your team to please improve the quality of work as far as chroma shots are concerned.Those shots look very fake.

[Michael Pajaro]

I'm amazed at the level of detail in these images, considering that many storboards start out as stick figure diagrams with arrows on them. But these certainly get the point the across.

I think some of these images (and others you have) would make beautiful prints. Maybe someday some can be auctioned for charity or offered as a prize for a promotional contest.

Thanks for sharing!

[neps]

Please keep this thread on topic of discussion of these story boards. There are plenty of other threads talking about this exact issue. Please take some time to read them, and you will see that they are aware of this issue and are working on it for future episodes.

[z00story]

Sometimes I trace over really low quality stills provided by the post production department, sometimes I draw from memory. You can see examples of both here. For the HUD, I created a series of brushes in photoshop, brushes like reticules, chat windows, digital noise, even KITTs orb is a brush. I reuse these drawing on top of my sketches.

I also use the color yellow to indicate something not on the screen, but an action, or a direction. For example, four arrows growing shows a window coming in.

[z00story]

Zoo story i would humbly request you to ask the VFX guys in your team to please improve the quality of work as far as chroma shots are concerned.Those shots look very fake.

If by chroma you mean keyed Green Screen shots - it's not my department, sorry!

[Rockatteer]

Wow! Awesome images. They are quite good quality for a story board.

Would I be correct in assuming that you guys would need better quality becasue your working with details rather than just general ideas of shots? And I guess you need color for the same reasons?

[z00story]

To be clear, I do these boards AFTER they have shot an episode and edited the cut. This is the bridge process from post production to VFX. Story boarding / previz for the show is a completely different beast. We also do our fare share of that.

So these boards come from me watching the show, which is how I can get the clear details I need to make the board.

[weeezl]

They look like paintings, very cool stuff!

Thanks for sharing!

[cloudkitt]

That's pretty cool, and a neat insight to a job I know very little about. Thanks a lot!

[n1elkyfan]

These would be really cool as a big poster

[PHOENIXZERO]

Thanks z00story for sharing again, always interesting to see how things come together. Nice storyboards!

I'm sure (or hope) everyone appreciates you and the other guys actively participating in the forums when you don't have to and could either lurk around here hidden or just ignore the forums entirely, which to some extent I probably couldn't blame you. Hope you're still not getting PMed to hell and back by those who don't understand what you do and are responsible for.


Maybe it's just me but the green screened driving shots looked better in this and the previous episode. *shrugs*

[Sky_Blue_Civic]

Awesome storyboards! I always love to see how things like this come together in TV and movies.Thanks for putting them up z00story!

[Sue]

Wow they are a work of art! I would totally hang that on my wall.

[Knight4life]

Cool storyboards ...... makes me feel u'll soon come up with a knight rider comic book soon!

[Alex]

I liked a lot and these images are very good! But I think these images are very similar of the film Minority Report.

Thanks, z00story!

Alex.

[BlueChaos]

Amazing storyboards. My favourites are the last two, the VFX on the police car interior is cool.

[GTiGirl]

I loved , congratulations z00story

[Faithful Car KRO]

That explains why Mike was look at the windsheild in the cop-car even though the info was showing up on the "laptop"

[Rockatteer]

That explains why Mike was look at the windsheild in the cop-car even though the info was showing up on the "laptop"

Yeah. I noticed that too. Actually I found it really distracting, cos I kept thinking "What the hell is he looking at??"