I had the opportunity to create a safety video for MSC Cruises. The brief was to develop a 3 minute video for the disembarkation process to Portuguese Island. It was a fairly open brief from a creative direction, but at the same time, being a safety video there were some very important and particular procedures to highlight.
- view the video here -
- view the video here -
Character Development and Previsualization(Previz):
The development of the characters started with a series of 2D sketches, once the client was happy with them I modeled and rigged them in Autodesk Softimage. The textures were created in Adobe Photoshop.
I used one character model for the ships crew and modeled different faces along with specific uniforms and subtle skin tone variations.
Before getting started on the previz, I was supplied with a script, which would be used for the voice-over. The audio would drive the visuals and give me a clear idea of the shot lengths and some guidance for the animation. I recorded myself to start, then at a later date we approached a professional voice artist to do the final recording.
The purpose of a low rez previz is to quickly set up camera angles and shot lengths and create a solid grounding on which to build. The sets and props were basic shapes to start, but accurate in their relative size. The characters were stand in characters, because the actual characters were still being developed and approved. From there I animated the characters in a few key positions for framing and story telling purposes.
This process is helpful to show the client, so they can start to see the direction you are heading in. Once the client was happy with the previz, I started refining everything, adding more detail to the sets and animating the approved characters, until it was the final video.
Look Development(lookdev), Lighting and Rendering:
For the final look, I was going for something simple and bold. Being a safety video I didn't want to detract from the important message being told, so the visuals needed to be clear and the animation of the characters needed to be to the point.
As the shots were being finished and the final voice over slotted in, the edit was tweaked and the polishes were made.
