We've then come to the final part of the storytelling and cinematography projects. In this last part we had to create a 3D pre-visualization from the same treatment, storyboard and animatic from before. The way we approached this was we split and divided the work between us in the group, I'd take the modeling, rendering settings of the scene and compositing everything while Ole Petter, Miliam and Tim each took a couple of shots, placed the necessary cameras and rigs, animated it and rendered it out.

In order to get the scene layout correct, I took a look at the storyboard and created a rough layout of the scene based on the shots. Layout image shown below.

From this 2D layout I quickly modeled the scene and passed it on to my teammates who then added the cameras and divided the shots between themselves. Here's a couple of renders from the scene:

After they had finished their animation, I created a render setup that is both fast to render and has a good lighting setup, that'll highlight the bright and cartoony style we wanted. We ended up with a V-Ray setup with a V-Ray sun object and indirect illumination lighting up the scene. Rendertime and quality is both awesome.

As the others started to render out the scenes, I started on the final composition in Adobe After Effects and imported the renders as they were ready. Final output rendered at 1280x720 pixels.

How would you improve the 3d pre-viz that you (or your group) present?
I would personally have added the General into the first few shots, as he's supposed to be introduced to the audience here, fighting zombies from his tank. I believe we could've added a shot or two between shot 2.3 and 2.4 focusing on the General and what's happening to the zombies outside.

What sequence of shots are your most favourite?
My favorite shots in this previz has to be the final two shots (2.8 and 2.9) where Dead Meat is running away from the burning town, gets the flashbacks, stops up and decides to go back.

Our next assignment was to create a 2D animatic from the storyboard we created in the previous project.
While Ole Petter, Miliam and Tim Daniel were busy putting together and labeling the storyboard I sat down and started editing the animatic from what we had. Because the animatic was created at almost the same time as the storyboard, there are some slight variations in some of the shots, but nothing I can't live with.

To create the animatic I used primarily Adobe After Effects and Adobe Photoshop for editing and Audacity to edit and mix the audio.
Because I was the first to finish my storyboard shots, I started out alone on the animatic while the others were still drawing their shots. I even added some additional shots on my own to further strengthen the story and make the story appear more continuous to the audience. I was later on joined by Ole Petter who helped me out finding some of the sounds we needed for the project.

Here's the final 2D animatic:

1. How does sound help to limit the amount of shots?
Sound effects can add a entirely new dimension to the animatic as it can help visualize things that's happening outside of the screen at any given time. It can also reduce the amount of drawn shots because a sound can sometimes give us more information about what's going on between the two shots.

2. What lessons did you learn when producing the animatic that may help you to make a better storyboard next time?
Building some of the animatic in layers and moving elements around can greatly increase the readability of the animatic.

3. Can you begin to see, understand and know more the role of the editor in this workflow?
I already had a fair idea, but yes.

4. Colour: is colour needed in a 2D animatic? Give reasons for your response to this question.
It's not needed in every productions, but can create more interesting lighting and make the characters more recognizable for the viewer.

With the treatment settled, we now had to draw a storyboard describing the story and shot decisions in pictures. We decided early on that the film would have a very cartoony style which was my intention for the treatment from the very beginning. So before we started even planning the storyboard, we drew some concept art for the main characters; Dead Meat and the General to make sure we were drawing based on the same concepts instead of drawing four different versions of the same character. We eventually went for my interpretation for both of the characters with just some minor tweaks to the General. Concept art below.

Having the character concepts nailed down, we could now start planning out the various scenes and shots, so we sat down and discussed and sketched down the rough shots and camera angles we wanted in the storyboard.
Some sketch samples:

After having planned out everything, we split the shots into four parts and started drawing 1/4 of the storyboard each. I myself was responsible for getting the ending and some action shots together.
Here's my final drawings:

I was not much involved into the actual storyboard assembly but creating the initial layout and setting in a few of the shots. I was busy planning out and editing the animatic at the time.

Final storyboard:

I'm overall quite satisfied with the end result and I don't think there's much I'd personally like to change. Maybe just a couple of camera angles and positions, but that's about it.