Brain Games – Storyboards

Brain Games is back!  And I storyboarded the promos for the second season.  These were some of the most challenging spots I’ve ever worked on.  Brain Games is a show about the fun quirks of our minds, and many episodes focus on various kinds of optical illusions.  Well, for this project, we were tasked with coming up with something that nobody’s ever seen before… or at least, try to.  Problem is, there are only a few types of optical illusions, and all others are derivations of them.  So we had to put a spin on a few classics, and give it some zazz, and throw in some FX to smooth out the edges.

I worked on these spots for a few weeks, which is lifetime in the commercial storyboarding field.  It’s not like they were long spots, it just took a very long time to determine exactly what it was we wanted to shoot.  It’s a little terrifying to come up with something from scratch, and most of my early ideas went into the trash bin.  But it all came together at the last minute, as it always does.

I like the artwork on this first set, and I had a lot of input on the ‘illusions’ for this one.  These are set up to all be interesting sight gags that are surreal but done practically using camera tricks, elaborate sets, and forced perspective.  A little CG too 🙂  I really liked how this one turned out.  Here’s the boards:

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And here’s the final spot.  I had boarded the “moving floor” shot, but I couldn’t find the boards!  So what you saw above was an earlier idea we had for the middle.  Enjoy!

This second spot is funny- we were bouncing so many ideas around, and I drew hundreds of frames, it seems.  The early work was well drawn- they were pitching to the client and so they had to look good. But things were still being hammered out and changing up until the actual shoot- and so I had to quickly revise a final version that looks about as rough as anything.  But simple drawings are often the only ones that are really needed.

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The simple drawings did the trick and the production went well.  The final spot is looks great, and was apparently even nominated for an Emmy.

Thanks for visiting!