Role

Lead Cinematic Artist

I was in charge of all the scenes for the DLC from direction to their final quality, but I chose this scene specifically as a showcase of what we achieved. I was heavily involved from the script writing phase, oversaw the performance capture, directed the storyboards, layout and music and quality checked everything from facial to lighting and VFX.

Responsibilities

Direction

• Holder of the vision for the cinematics.
• Overseeing storyboards
  • Giving feedback on storyboards done by the team.
  • Drawing storyboards and doing necessary tweaks based on captured performance data and layout needs.
• Providing the directional intent and feedback on color scripts.
• Overseeing the direction for PCAP from the cinematic team’s side.
• Overseeing layouts
  • Giving feedback on layouts done by the team and outsource.
• Overseeing the direction for English and Japanese VO sessions from the cinematic team’s side.
• Providing the directional intent and feedback on the music of cinematics.
• Member of weekly Art Direction Group giving feedback on lighting, VFX, facial animation and body animation in order to bring everything up to the new quality standard we set with the DLC.

Leadership and Management

• Fostering a positive and safe atmosphere within the cinematic team.
  • Helping team members grow by not only providing constructive feedback for improvement, but also praising what was well done.
  • Encouraged voicing ideas making sure that everyone got the credit for theirs for the ones we took forward and for the ones we did not, explained why that was the case.
• Blocking unreasonable requests either outright or workshopping them into something feasible before they reached the team.
• Plotting out the whole cinematics schedule all the way from preproduction to release with enough flexibility to account for delays, surprise requests and other unexpected developments.

Narrative

• Brainstorming concepts and how to improve story beats.
• Ensuring story logic remains sound.
• Polishing English dialogue and assisting in Japanese↔English localization.
• Improving scene flow in story workshops.
• Holding planning meetings with all disciplines involved in cinematic work once the screenplay was ready to iron out major problems before performance capture.

Cinematic Planning

• Creating flow diagrams and mapping out staging for cinematics.
• Communicating with other disciples to align scene requirements and limitations.
• Making orders for necessary characters, props, environments from the respective teams.

Performance Capture

• Preparations for performance capture.
  • Running scene briefing sessions for the PCAP director on site.
• In charge of direction from the cinematic team’s side and for on-site support at shoots.
• Overseeing motion capture data deliveries.
• Acting for additional mocap required in scenes and gameplay.

General

• Japanese↔English interpretation during meetings with overseas partners.