Style Sheets for Production

What are these? They are known as 'Style Guides' and they are the bible of any animated film -these little puppies are the 'how to' in any visual medium.


Normally the art director/production designer are the ones that create these pages that explain to the crew how to easily (hah!) follow his design vision. I was graciously given this assignment from Sam Michlap- As art director, he was swamped with work and told me to 'Go for it .... I have complete trust in your abilities on this.' I have to admit- I LOVED this assignment. My one rule of thumb is that if the viewer can't understand it in 1/2 of a second what I am trying to explain- then I haven't done my job correctly. I guess it comes from growing up with a bunch of future engineers, physicians and attorneys- sometimes you have to dumb things down to get your point across (they being the dense ones, not me- LOL!).

New Stuff!

Actually this stuff is old........ ! Isn't that how it always is when you are getting a blog up and running? Anyway- the work on this post is from the Video Game world- it's from EA's GoldenEye: Rogue Agent- and these are just the lighting passes.






The game environment artists blocked in the geo and then the vis dev artists would paint over the screenshot- do a quick photoshop pass on it- make sure that the level had a more consistant lighting plan. Video games were a new frontier to me-having *never* picked up a playstation 2 handheld controller- and then in my first meeting, was asked to 'walk around the environment in God mode....' Huh. In front of 20 people and comment on the old Bond style designed by Ken Adams? Sure, nooooooooooooooo problem... hahahahaha!!!!! Well- after that, I was ordered to play an hour a day (at work) ANY video game, as long as I figured out how to navigate the environment. My nephews were jealous that game playing was part of my normal job routine- and am proud to say I now own a PS2- but I only play guitar hero on it. I'm a HUGE fan of this game. When people asked me what I did for a living at the time- I told them that I was corrupting the youth of america.