I took the time this last week to put together a reel of my work on Mass Effect 2, done between late 2008 and early 2010. Look below for a full shot breakdown, and, because you’re gonna ask, the music is Invaders Must Die by The Prodigy.
Shot Breakdown
Below is a breakdown of what I was responsible for in each scene. The terms used are as follows:
Animatic
Initial layout of the scene, covering loose camerawork and editing as well as rough posing on the characters to be used as reference for the mocap shoot.
Mocap
Once mocap is received, laying it down and re-editing the timing and cinematography to match, including an initial pass on facial. Often a lot of artistic changes are made at this stage so this forms the bulk of the work.
Polish
The final stage where the VO, facial and all the details such as fingers and contact points are finalised.
| Time | Scene Name | Animatic | Mocap | Polish |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 00:01 | Arrival Tower | Yes | Yes | |
| 00:08 | N7 Geth | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 00:16 | Arrival Mall | Yes | Yes | |
| 00:18 | Jack Fling | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 00:25 | Legion Reveal | Yes | Yes | |
| 00:28 | Legion Board | Yes | Yes | |
| 00:32 | Arrival Mall | Yes | Yes | |
| 00:36 | Thane Romance | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 00:39 | Arrival Mall | Yes | Yes | |
| 00:41 | Miranda Pre-Romance | Yes | Yes | |
| 00:46 | Reaper Arrival | Yes | Yes | |
| 00:49 | Legion Board | Yes | Yes | |
| 00:56 | Legion Reveal | Yes | Yes | |
| 01:00 | Samara Reveal | Yes | ||
| 01:03 | Garrus Reveal | Yes | ||
| 01:06 | Ending Arrival | Yes | ||
| 01:10 | Legion Reveal | Yes | Yes | |
| 01:14 | Ship Transfer 1 | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 01:17 | Samara Reveal | Yes | ||
| 01:20 | Ship Transfer 2 | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 01:23 | N7 Ruins | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 01:30 | Miranda Pre-Romance | Yes | Yes | |
| 01:37 | Samara Reveal | Yes | ||
| 01:41 | Hub Depart | Yes | Yes | |
| 01:44 | Garrus Reveal | Yes | Yes | |
| 01:51 | Thane Romance | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 02:00 | Legion Activation | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 02:10 | Jack Romance | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Nice work! :)
There are really nice camera shots, very cinematic.
I also like your shot breakdown table. I should make this for my new reel as well. It’s very informative regarding the workflow.
What kind of approach did you use when you were not relying on the animatic for building up a scene?
Were you directing live at the mocap stage by improvising each scene?
I think you had the whole scene on storyboard, right?
The approach we use for cutscene is usually:
Script -> Storyboard -> Animatic(if it’s needed) -> Mocap -> scene assembling in engine with camera layout(pacing and timing) -> final animations(body/face/interactions) -> polishing
Is your’s a different one or do you other steps?
Cheers,
Chris
Hi Chris,
Thanks for the kind words. Every scene required an animatic – the ones unmarked above were simply done by one of my talented colleagues. None of the scenes used storyboards.
I’d like to state that I believe unless you are so early in development as to have nothing in-engine, relying on storyboards is one of the most common mistakes game developers can make in creating cutscenes – based on external observations of the CG animation and film industry.
Unlike CG movies, our environments and scenes are not created for the shots, but instead for gameplay – as such, our approach should be a lot closer to non-studio filming where we should be scouting out locations in the game and building the shots from those rather than the other way around.
The creation process of game cutscenes is so dynamic that your storyboarded shots will immediately be out of date at every stage. Moreover, going straight to a 3D animatic means that you can have something moving to drop in the game in either a rough export or simply a bink video so the rest of the team can get an idea of pacing etc as they play through their levels.
You can see more info on the various iterative stages of level and cutscene creation in Mass Effect 2, starting at around the 13 minute mark in this talk here: http://vimeo.com/14147964 Dusty and Corey take my Hub Depart, Arrival Tower and Arrival Mall scenes for the Thane Aquisition level through the various stages beginning around 25:00.
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