Call of Duty “Extinction”- Cinematic

Lucky me, I got to work with the very talented folks at The Mill earlier this year, and storyboard their cinematic cutscene that they were doing for the new Call of Duty “Extinction” series.  It’s a DLC expansion game, I believe, which means it’s a smaller, downloadable game, part of a very popular franchise, and it’s got a very accelerated production schedule.  So, they know who to call for storyboards!

These COD projects are tons of fun to work on.  I get to draw stuff like monsters, guns, battleships, weird alien environments, and I have a good deal of creative input here too, although that’s probably due to the very tight production schedule.  Not enough time to split hairs, creatively!

I’m not a big video game player these days, so I’m a little unsure of the whole big story context, but in this cinematic, we see a paramilitary commander exploring a mysterious cave, coming across monolithic object of alien origin, touching it, and releasing a monster, which wakes him from his “nightmare,” into a hellish vision of the future, curated by an apparition of a woman with special powers he seeks to harness, and she reveals a startling truth, which wakes him AGAIN into actual reality, where he finds himself aboard an experimental navy seacraft, now under attack.  He rushes to the medical bay and sees his prisoner, the woman from the dream, helpless and restrained, but nonetheless he suspects her of orchestrating the attack on the ship.  He moves to the viewing deck and we see the attacking see monster descending upon them…

Here’s the boards:

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These storyboards were the very first pass I pitched to the director after reading the script.  I actually don’t have the finished boards… I have no clue where I put them!  It’s possible I deleted them mistakenly.  That’s a shame, but it’s still cool to compare my boards to the finished product and see the similarities and differences.

Here’s the final movie.

Thanks for checking this out!  See ya next week.