Anyway, here are some pics from the first night, where half us volunteers worked to prepare for the event. The next night we had a whole new group of volunteers to work the event. I heard a rumor there are pics of the second night but I have yet to find them.

Cinematics, as a name, worked fine for the studio’s infancy. After all, we began as a game cinematics and animation studio, so it made perfect sense to call ourselves exactly that. Like when I named my cat, Cat, and my hermit crab, Mister Hermit Crab. Same logic. However, after three years as a studio, we have produced all manner of game art, building several dream teams of concept artists, asset modelers, VFX artists, character modelers, technical artists, and of course, animators. While our animation team is as strong as ever, our other teams have built a reputation themselves for producing Triple A work for Triple A titles. I can honestly say after sixteen years in the game industry, this is the best team I have ever worked with and I am proud to represent and serve them to the best of my ability.

So why the name change? Cinematics is too specific. It no longer represents the studio accurately. We still have a great cinematics team. In fact, a much more experienced and overall better cinematics team than before. Cinematics just happens to be one team of many around here and I want to make sure our game art is given equal time in the spotlight.

So what else is changing? Much of the change has already happened. As I mentioned before, we have expanded greatly in the last year alone and will continue to expand as long as we maintain a comfortable size. Our teams have experienced massive amounts of work on many great games. We have focused on the things that matter most to both our team and clients. This is quality, reliability and creativity. Our current clients have experienced all of this first hand and continue to rely on us as an extension of their in-house team. This will only get better.

What do we have planned for 2011? Well, I’m glad you asked. Education is a huge priority for us. On top of our commitment to producing the best work possible, we plan on contributing greatly to the education of future game artists and animators in Portland. We currently work very closely with the Art Institute of Portland, giving students valuable work experience and on the job training. Moving forward we plan on expanding this training to include more talks and workshops where students can hone their skills in specific disciplines such as concept art, character design, modeling and texturing and animation. Our mo-cap studio is still in its infancy but we are also set to become an official course at the AI for mocap training.

Producing more passion projects is a huge goal for us this year as well. We are currently in production of our first animated short set to debut this spring or early summer. These hyper-creative internal projects allow us to push ourselves to produce the best work possible, and help us to develop more efficient and organized pipelines for future client projects. This will be the first year you will see what our team can do, given full creative license on a project.

More work with independent games on the ipad and iphone! Being gamers ourselves, we have a soft spot for independent games and considering we are in the Golden Age of the independent developer, we are diving head first into this amazing new age of creativity. We have had a great experience working with independent developers this last year and we will continue to expand this portion of the studio. We have special deals in place to help make it possible for independent developers to have a solid art team to partner up with. There is no reason why a great game shouldn’t have great art to compliment it.

We will also continue to focus on creating the best ethical work environment for our team members. One that is conducive to culture, creativity and productivity. We want to make sure that if you are a talented game artist living in Portland, that Supergenius will always be the number one studio to work for.

So why Supergenius? Pbbbtt. Duh. Why not?

You know what it is. You’ve heard the advice. Some would say it has existed since the beginning of film narrative. Some would say it existed much earlier, when man first painted images on cave walls before a great mammoth hunt. The images told the story of how they took down the beast long before they ran out across the plains, screaming, naked, junk flapping, with spears hoisted toward the sky. Problems could be solved in advance and steps taken to avoid calamity. Steps like don’t stand in front of the hairy elephant, or maybe we should cover our shame before someone gets hurt. This is one way early man learned to keep their mammoth hunts on time and within budget.

Early man was smart. Maybe smarter than modern man? Who is to know? They didn’t keep records. We have only their storyboards as clues to how they lived. If only there was a method to study the past and the world around us…but I digress.

Always storyboard. Always. Make time for previsualization, or “previs” as we in the field of brevity say. Be prepared. Know your battlefield. A clean team is a mean team. Hygiene is its own reward. Storyboards are the map in which we rely on for successful navigation over the tempestuous waters of media production. That last one is good. I suggest you tattoo it in old English across your forearms, lest you forget.

Storyboards are quick and cheap, and their value far exceeds their expense. They are definitely cheaper than changing direction halfway through a project due to an unforeseen, yet foreseeable issue. They not only can, but will, save your team days, weeks, months of work down the line. Yet impatience and the need to see something on screen STAT is often the siren song that leads us to the razor sharp, jagged rocks of a badly planned project. Do not be fooled. Resist! Oh demons of impatience, leave thy child! The power of previs compels you!

I am guilty of this myself. I am only a man. Shame on me, nevertheless. Shame on me. I have traded precious previs for expedience and paid the price. It is a raw deal, I tell you. It is a deal with the Devil himself. I have erred but see the light. Blind but now I see. Consider this blog entry my Amazing Grace.

Template Scenario

If this entry is my Amazing Grace, then we shall consider the studio I now captain, my Amistad. I am sailing toward the Great Isle of Redemption as I write this. We never, ever, under any circumstance skip the previs stage. Of course all projects are different and some require or allow more detail in previs than others, so there isn’t a perfect one-size-fits-all process, but there are guidelines. We need to be creative and pragmatic at the same time. To help illustrate a good template scenario, let us invent an imaginary project. In this project we are given the liberty of defining our ideal previs situation, with plenty of time in the schedule. Picture the following scene. It is set in the parking lot of an elementary school where a soccer match is scheduled to begin. Two suburban moms are fighting over the last SUV sized parking space. It is a brutal fight to the death.

1. Brainstorm ideas for the fight scene. List potential weapons they can use such as a car seat, baby bottles, happy meals, a Thighmaster, etc. List insults they can yell at each other such as “your child did NOT make the honor roll you lying skaz!” or “Your Pilates instructor is a terrorist you Hobag!” etc.
2. Come up with a shot list that includes the elements from your brainstorm session. You will obviously have to come up with a narrative using the list, but you’re creative, so I’m not too worried about it. Make sure you book-end it with a compelling intro and finale. Include time estimates for each shot.
3. Create storyboards using the shot list as your reference. From these storyboards you will be able to define camera position, camera movement, action, content and dialogue. Being able to simply draw these scenes ahead of time you can experiment with the camera angle, such as placing the camera behind the windshield of the SUV or shoot from the ground with the baby bottle in the foreground, out of focus.
4. Cut your storyboards up into individual screens and create an animatic using your favorite editing suite. With this animatic you will be able to demonstrate how scene transitions will look (screen wipes, whip pans, etc.) You can also include scratch dialogue tracks which help synch up your shot times with the audio. If you have music, even placeholder music, you can work out your edit timing far in advance. This can save you silly amounts of time. Animatics are fun to play with and you can figure out a lot by trying out new things. This animatic will be the template in which you can replace each static, sketched scene with final rendered animation. Of course there will be adjustments and changes along the way but they are minor in comparison to cutting a scene that took hours or days to set up and render.

1. Use the animatic to create an asset list of all elements that need to go into the scene, including setting, people and characters. This list will help you schedule your project, since you can predict what needs to be created from scratch, what you can reuse, purchase, or if you need to contract an extra artist to create the asset. You will also get a good idea of how to light the scene and what kind of effects will be needed. All this information is crucial when planning and scheduling your project.
2. Go on to animate the best soccer mom fight your client or the world has ever seen.

Of course, the schedule does not always allow time for this entire process. In that case I give you permission to skip the animatic stage if you are in a pinch. The storyboards should hold enough information to keep you on the right track. If you do have the time though, I highly recommend going through the animatic stage. It is the best way to fully understand and predict what the end result will look like. The further you get into a project, the harder it is to change things without seriously upsetting the schedule.

Another plus of good previs is that it serves your client well. What serves your client well, serves you well. By going through the previs stage hand in hand with your client, they are able to insert their creative input and see the results quickly. This ensures no major changes happen down the line and helps facilitate a symbiotic relationship between you and your client, also known as a “Promance.” A Promance develops when you are open to your client’s input and they, in turn, are respectful of what can and can’t be done within the time frame and budget. Whenever possible, create the conditions hospitable to an effective Promance. You will be rewarded with more projects, more money and ultimately a new friend.

Retrospective

Us narrative animators aren’t the only ones who benefit from good previs. It is a vital tool for game developers as well. It is surprising to me how little I have seen gameplay storyboards in all my years in the game industry. My first job in games was actually as a storyboard/concept artist. Uh oh, I feel a flashback coming on. The year is 1995…San Francisco…wavy lines, echoes….

I had just been hired on to the team at Blam as a storyboard/concept artist. I wrote about Blam in my last blog. We were a young spunky group of game developers working out of an old dilapidated Victorian on the corner of Union and Van Ness. One particular memory that stands out is from the first daily meeting I attended. This was my first impression of the game industry and I had never seen anything like it. Here were twenty five to thirty young people crammed into a living room strewn with Godzilla toys, game controllers, RC robots and comic books, all debating and opining about the creative direction of the game. It was the most diverse group of people I had ever seen in one place all working together. It was a novel experience for me.

What was especially interesting to me about this meeting, was that everyone seemed to be on the same page speaking the same language, which for me sounded like, “blah blah blah, persistent bits, blah blah, bamboo punk, blah blah, barrel attack,” you get the picture. I know a lot of that came from just having experience in games but this was more specific and related to this particular project. How did all these people know this game so intimately, especially considering I knew some of them had come on board just days before me? That seemed an awful short time to be that acquainted with it all. I thought there was no way I would be able to wrap my head around it quick enough to hit the ground running, which was required at a small developer like Blam. You had to pull your weight when your team was that small and you were so visible.

It hit me all at once. I was zoning out, staring at the wall, when I noticed it was covered in pictures. But not just any pictures. Storyboard pictures. Every inch of every wall was covered in gameplay storyboards. Every single mechanic of the game was represented – barrel jumping, staff attacks, door puzzles, bombs – all fleshed out in rough, yet detailed form. Of course there were plenty of character and environment concepts too, which is why I probably didn’t see the boards right away. My eyes were drawn to the colorful art, like a child, not the black and white sketches of the storyboards. All it took was one full three hundred sixty degree turn and I was caught up. I found the Rosetta Stone.

I spent the next few months drawing storyboards, learning the ins and outs of game development and having a helluva good time. As a storyboard artist I worked closely with the designers, turning their ideas into images, which I then submitted to the programming staff. The programmers used the boards as a blueprint for game mechanics and as the project moved on, they implemented the important ones, set aside the iffy ones with potential, and scrapped the ones that were pure designer-wish-list. Not having them would have been a disaster. Worse than driving with your eyes closed. In story-boarding the picture tells much more than a thousand words. It eats a thousand words for breakfast and defecates a bazillion, give or take a trillion. Seriously.

For those of you who are reading this, thinking “What is this guy talking about? I don’t need no stinking storyboards. Pbbbbth” I ask you to please stop and remember the wisdom of our noble ancestors and their sacred storyboards. Before you go running out into a field, lightly armed and naked with your junk exposed, draw it up first. The big hairy elephant is yours for the taking.

Epilogue

The same day I am writing this this I am drawing up a batch of boards for a client, worrying about the schedule. I am thinking about how much quicker I would get this done if I could just jump into the project at full speed. I realize a scene I am working on wont work the way I planned. I fix it in five minutes. I think about how many hours, how many days it might have cost me if I discovered it two weeks from now, when the project is in full swing.

Paul Culp is the Studio Director of Cinematics, a game animation studio in Oregon. www.cinematics.com

“Whats up Sammy?”

“Oh nothing, I just cant seem to get this guy right,” he sighed. I nodded, knowingly.

“He looks good,” I told him. Whats the issue?”
“He’s just too generic.” he said throwing his pencil down. “He looks like every other dude out there. He needs something, like on his spear or whatever.” I held up the book, squinting my eyes to make out the silhouette.

“Put a little dude on there,” I said, matter of fact.

“Do a what?” he asked.

“Put a little dude on the spear,” I repeated. “When all else fails, put a little dude on there.”

“Like what kind of dude?” he asked, unconvinced.

“Put a little dude on his spear thingy. Make the little dude the weapon. Give him a big munchy mouth that bites enemies, or a bird of some sort. He needs him a Compelling Accoutrement. A little dude can solve that.”

“Okay Papa, I’ll give it a shot. You are so smart and cool.”

Okay, I made that last part up, but the rest of it is true. Before I tell you how the story ends, let me give you a little history on how I came upon that little piece of advice,and the term Compelling Accoutrement. I cannot take credit for it. It was a wise man who opened my eyes. A sage of sorts. It all started around 1995 at a small game development studio in San Francisco. This paragraph is getting wavy…you hear chimes…echoes…1995….

I had just secured my first industry job as a concept artist at a little developer called Blam. They were located in an old Victorian above a bar called Micks Lounge on the corner of Lombard and Union. I came on board as a refugee from the dot com explosion just in time to watch all my friends get rich. It was like leaving the Billboard Top 40 and joining SST to print zines and book punk shows. This was fine by me because at twenty years of age, I had plenty of time to get rich. For the time being I just wanted to hang out with the cool kids, and at the time the cool kids were making games.

My first impression of Blam was that of a house party that never ended, but all the party goers had a purpose. The smell of stale beer, microwave popcorn and Wu Tang’s 36 chambers takes me right back to that time. The beer smell was from out back where the bar stored its empty kegs but the popcorn and Wu Tang were a Blam thing. Not sure why popcorn, I think it was a programmer thing. There was a strange focus to the place. It was the first time I had seen people whose lifestyle and job were one in the same. An ideal I have a hard time letting go of to this day.

Each room in the building was reserved for a discipline, with designers in one room, programmers in another, artists in the living room, etc. The concept art room, where I was stationed was stocked with every art supply you could ever need while the TV played a constant loop of Miyazaki flicks, Ninja Scroll, Akira and Bob Ross. Vince Castillo, the lead concept artist was a Pacific Islander who could crush me with his earlobe but instead let me watch him paint these delicate concepts with watercolor pens. CJ Guzman, my other office mate was a regular character machine and I still don’t fully understand how he pulled out some of the designs he did. I’m not fully convinced he wasn’t a closet mescaline case. Normal people just don’t spend that much time in their sub conscience and come out normal.

Before Blam I had many lives. Holiday shop window painter, graphic designer, screensaver animator, dishwasher, line cook, interior trim contractor, web designer, but I had never seen anything like this. It was intimidating. I wasn’t sure if I should thank the Gods for such a cool job or get out of there before I woke up naked and delirious with some vital organs missing. Still not positive I did the right thing, I chose the former and spent the next six years of my life at Blam as a concept artist, 3D artist, animator and eventually art director before I left to start my own game art studio in 2000. But that’s another story.

Blam went through several reputations, most negative towards the end but for a while there we were known as the creative studio and were often tapped by EA, Mindscape and Stormfront for original IP’s. They were looking for the next Crash Bandicoot or Spyro the Dragon and for some reason believed it was going to come out of that little Victorian on Lombard. We drank that particular brand of Kool Aid ourselves and believed we were one concept away from immortality, fame and fortune. It didn’t occur to us at the time that while they trusted us with original ideas, they weren’t so confident in our execution. Who cares right? The fun part was writing design documents and making characters, as far as I was concerned.

I remember one design, specifically, I was married to. It was an action/platformer that took place in the land of nightmares and monsters accessible via the closet doors of children. (Keep in mind this was a few years before Monsters Inc.) The main character was Prince Boogie, the son and heir to the Boogie Man’s throne. Boogie was a little blue Pokemon-like cat creature with bat wings and a half moon emblem on his belly. I was getting close to a final concept but ended up blocked for a week or so and it was getting to me. The character was missing something and I sat there staring at the page, foreshadowing my son’s predicament twelve years into the future. I’m convinced I would still be there today, like some modern day Rip Van Winkle, if it wasn’t for CJ and his sage advice.

“He just needs something on his tail,” I said to him. “His profile isn’t unique enough.” CJ thumbed through my concepts for about a minute or two.

“Put a little dude on there,” CJ said. The rest of the conversation was the same one I had with my son twelve years later. I put a little dude on his tail and it was perfect. The rest of the game practically wrote itself, all based on the little dude on there.

This advice became the foundation for a game character and design process developed over Blam’s remaining years by the President, Jay Minn, CJ and I. We apparently couldn’t finish a game to save our lives so we became scholars on the subject instead. The character portion of the process simply states that at its core, any good game character must have at least one Compelling Accoutrement. A Compelling Accoutrement can be anything, as long as it identifies the character and will stand out on screen no matter how swamped the screen is with visuals, enemies and NPC’s. There can also be more than one per character, but too many will create noise and defeat the purpose. It has to be simple and iconic. Cloud had his giant sword. Mega Man had a cannon for an arm. So did Samus. Yoshi had baby Mario. Mario had his hat and overalls. Sonic had his sneakers. Kratos had his swords chained to his arms. Klonoa had his ring with a little dude on there. The list goes on and on.

Often the Compelling Accoutrement would be the conduit for the Compelling Mechanic, such as Kratos’ swords, but that’s a whole other essay.

Bottom line is, when all else fails, put a little dude on there. It has yet to fail me. Sometimes it opens up a whole new world of opportunity for game design and character personality. Try it out. You can test it on anything. A bland game character, a photo of Andie Macdowell. You can make anything compelling by putting a little dude on there. Even Andie Macdowell.

Blam dissolved at some point after I left. I believe the old Victorian is now an overpriced, bay-view apartment building. Last I drove by there was still a bar on the ground floor full of white people from Marin dancing to Smash Mouth. CJ is still churning out amazing work. He recently sent me a graphic novel that had one of his stories in it. The first panel is a whale with the number 3 on his side, like some sort of racing vehicle. Brilliant. A racing whale.

Sam finished his character. After all that he didn’t end up putting a little dude on there, but the experiment led him to add another compelling feature that worked, and that is the point after all. The exercise is to herd your train of thought down a different, less traveled road. He came upon the Greek symbol for Omega and used it as the shape for his visor. Well done. I bet CJ would approve.

Another great relationship we have fostered has been with the Art Institute of Portland.  They have been a valuable partner in helping to establish Portland as viable destination for game development and entertainment in general. Our work experience program has us working closely with student interns, helping to sharpen their skills and allowing them to actually get their hands dirty on some games.  This way they can enter the industry with a title or two under their belts and kick start their new careers with a bang.  As long as the Art Institute keeps churning out young fresh talent we will continue to corrupt them with our video games, toilet humor and rock music.

Since you are reading this you probably noticed some changes to the face of Cinematics.  We decided to kick off 2010 with a fresh new website and animation reel, showcasing a few of the great projects we worked on last year.  The website also has a few more bells and whistles, such as this blog, for instance.  We are very excited about this new forum where we can voice our thoughts and experiences at the studio and hopefully entertain a few readers in the process.  The Artist Profile Series will be posted here, along with studio news and updates and we will also get to hear from our team members who will be contributing their thoughts and experiences as well.  Expect to see some useful tutorials from our animators, maybe a project diary or two and if anything, just plain goofiness, which we can always use a little more of.

We’ve also reached our dirty little hands into the world of social networking so you can become a fan of us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter or soften your brain with our videos on Youtube and Vimeo.  Is there no end to this manifest destiny of animation madness?  No, my friend.  Not even close.

A very special thanks to everyone we have met and worked with in 2009.  To the amazing and talented artists and animators who have joined our team and are continually helping to make us the best game animation studio in the world.  To the incredibly friendly, intrepid and rock solid clients who have trusted us with their most valuable franchises and pay our rent.  To the knowledgeable and courteous faculty and instructors of the AI.  To their talented and ambitious students who put up with our tormenting critiques and back breaking work schedules.  And to our friends and colleagues in the industry who support us and listen to us yap yap yap after a few post work beers.  We love you all.