Category: Shoot Boards

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Lineage: Red Knights! Storyboards

A couple years ago, I had a great time working on a series of spots for a very popular (in Korea) game called Lineage.  The anthem spot was about a minute long and had lots of action and fun characters, and it’s the subject of this post.

The story goes- we find our hero protagonist “Bugbear” in the middle of a battlefield, who breaks the 4th Wall and calls out to us, the viewer, to witness he and his compatriots, with their powers combined, topple the evil Death Knight!  Though victory may be short lived- that’s the law of the land around these parts.  Witness!

And, here’s the final spot!

This spot had it all- fun characters, action, humor, sex appeal.  I love the sense of escalation, and the the way the final product came out is just really awesome- you can really see the quality in the craftsmanship of the animators and designers.  Such a great team!  Here’s some cool detail shots before you go:

Thanks, catch you next time!

-Max

 

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:30 Animals Animation B&W Cartoons Family Females Kids Males Music Video Shoot Boards Storyboarding Toys Uncategorized VFX

Talk, Read, Sing! First Five California – Storyboards

Here’s a very fun project I did a while back, that I’m excited to share- storyboards for the First 5 California “Brainy Birds” commercial, which was part of their Talk, Read, Sing! campaign.  Basically: talk, read, and sing to your kids, and watch their little brains grow!  What a fun message.  And I can attest (I’m a new dad myself), kids soak up your words pretty quick, and you gotta watch what you say! Lol!!

There were a lot of challenges on this project- very tight timeline, multiple layers of client approval, and of course, character designs and music lyrics all undergoing revisions as I’m drawing the boards- sometimes it’s like trying to hit a moving target!  But I’m used to it, so it never phases me.  I still had fun with it, and I’m sure that comes through in my drawings.  One particular storyboard issue when blending live action with animation, is whether or not the “animated” parts should be drawn differently from the “live action” parts- like how do you make the animated part of a shot look different from live action, when it’s all “drawn” by nature of the fact it’s a drawing to begin with? But in this case, only the bird characters were animated, so it’s wasn’t as much an issue.  At some point, people have to use their imaginations.

I really enjoy working on animated projects as well, and drawing happy families for me is a snap, so even with all the known and unknown unknowns, I remember this being a fun project.

Here’s the boards:

And here’s the final spot!

 

Hope you liked it!  See you next time.

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:30 Action Animation Color Pitch Boards Set Design Shoot Boards Tech Tips and Tricks

Top Secret Commercial

Here’s kind of a funny notion- a commercial that’s top secret while you’re working on it, and barely disclosed as it airs, and you can’t even guess whether or not you even contributed towards it.  How fun!  Well, I drew the following boards, and the following commercial was aired shortly after, and that’s about all I know.   You might think you know even less, but, you probably don’t!

I doubt I need to spell out the challenges of working on a project in which you – A:) Know nothing about the product or company itself; B:) Can only guess if any other competitors are bidding on the same project; and C:) after the fact, searching for the final aired commercial, and finding no clear trail to trace back to anything you drew, nor to any known competitors of your clients.

Did I work on this commercial?  Was it all a dream? Well, it’s on youtube, and resembles my drawings.   Your guess is as good as mine.

If it makes you feel any better, the projects for Major Brand Names are like 1000x more secretive.  Sleep well. LOL!

 

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:60 B&W Campy Cars Classes / Schools Cleaning Corporate Family Females Humor Internet iOS/Mobile Kids Males Pitch Boards Shoot Boards Software Storyboarding Synergy

AT&T “Market Mishap” Storyboards!

A while back, I got called in to my good clients at DirecTV (now AT&T) to work on a spot for their Adworks campaign- a commercial about commercials! How funny!  But really, it makes sense to make sure your advertising dollars aren’t going to waste, right?  That’s why you hire ‘Ol Maxy, right? and then you use Adworks to make sure the Ads go in front of your target audience!  Otherwise, well… see below!

Our Hero “Ad Man” runs from setting to setting, doing his best to sell product to the most unmatched of buyers- with very predictable results.  But the laughs are an easy sell! Lol!

Here’s the boards!  I hope you enjoy them, this is some of my finest work!

Here’s the final spot!!

Yup, no matter how hard you try, Gladys at the nursing home isn’t going to buy your reduced price Lamborghini.  You just have to face facts!

This project was a little more extensive than most and we had time to board out some “B-Roll” if you will, with options for other shots to help sell up the humor a bit.  It was all optional and really, at the end of the day, humor depends on the performance of the actors and more, so you do a lot of alternative takes to see what works best.  But I did my part and boarded it out my best, to give it a fair shot at success.  So, next up you’ll see some boards that are disjointed in continuity but will hopefully spur a neuron or two and make you chuckle.  Enjoy!

 

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Xbox “Scorpio” Debut Trailer

Earlier this year I had a blast working with the good people at BLIND on their amazing project:  The Xbox “Scorpio” debut trailer.  This officially introduced the world to the Xbox One X, and it’s always an honor to be included on such high-profile assignments.  I’ve generously been given permission to show some of the storyboards I created for them- I think this is some of my best work!

Here’s a slideshow:

And here’s a link to the final video!

https://vimeo.com/221362215

Thanks for checking in!

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:60 Action Animation B&W Drink Food Humor Seasonal Shoot Boards Storyboarding VFX

Aldi “Christmas Carrot” Storyboards

In Los Angeles, Christmas starts in September.  If you work in commercial production, that is!  Indeed it takes a couple of months for projects to get greenlit and produced in time for airing during the holiday season.  So it was that last year I was working on a fun Christmas project for my clients at PSYOP- storyboarding the delightful tale of Kevin the Christmas Carrot- a character conceived for an Aldi holiday commercial.  Aldi, if you don’t know, is a popular European supermarket chain.

The commercial is really sweet and funny- a plucky little carrot just wants to meet Santa, and must brave the dangers of the Christmas dinner table in order to do so.  He dodges hazards of all kinds, and collapses next to Santa’s mince pie and brandy (it’s a UK commercial, so no cookies and milk in this one… in fact, it’s not Santa, it’s Father Christmas!).

It’s all self-explanatory and I’m really excited to show you the boards:

And here’s a link to the final video!

https://youtu.be/aCZrWFrRgbQ

It turned out so great!  Looks like they opted NOT to go with the full widescreen aspect ratio.  I think it might have looked more epic if they did, but I can also see where the 16×9 is a little more suited for a sense of comedy, which was just as important.

There was a lot of brainstorming and tossing out all kinds of ideas that might work as potential hazards for the ‘journey’ montage.  Here’s a few that I thought were really clever (and well-drawn by me!)

What if he had to hop from a soup bowl past a few mugs of hot cider?
I had an idea that when the potato was about to fall on him, he could lay a breadstick across a gap to make a bridge.
It could be a cool action moment as he dashed across! Below, spiky hors d’oeuvres spell certain doom
He could even swing from the chandelier overhead!
It could be funny if he had to hide from a kitty!
Last one- What if we had a fun moment where he was intrigued by his reflection in the glaze of a fruitcake?

What a fun project!  I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.  This campaign tested so well, the client decided to make a sequel!  I storyboarded that one too, so I’ll post that when I have more time.

 

Till then!

 

-Max