Essential and always the starting point of the visual process. We have some excellent storyboard art talent and also experience of directing CG animated scenes and FMV. We can visualise a story from a script or verbally working with a director.

We are also accustomed to working with the clients own storyboards, either as is or with discussion and advice from us on “bang for buck” revisions that could be made before moving to production.

Animatics are ideal for gauging timing and flow, often saving some expensive mistakes in final production by allowing the director/editor to play with ideas in an inexpensive and iterative workflow. Traditionally, animatics are 2D and taken from the storyboard artwork; however we have also worked on 3D Animatics using early production assets and in-game models. This is especially good for videogames where a location may have already been defined, and so all the action needs to fit a defined space.

The 2D animatic style can be taken further into presentational quality - take a look at the 2D Animated Productions section below.

Here at Atomhawk, we have perfected the art of 2D “Projection Mapped” animated production. We first used this technique for the mood trailer to the video game, Necessary Force, taking 2D images (concept art) and breaking them up into layers that are then projected onto 3D objects and planes to add depth and parallax. We have since perfected our methods and have created several videos using this technique with varying art styles. Adding animated characters and vehicles and blending the boundaries of 2D and 3D is no problem for us. and this is a great way to present a new concept.

We like to have everything covered and our 2D Design department are able to produce a whole range of animated Flash-based assets, and also recently produced an entire music video in Adobe Illustrator and Flash. We are able to provide Flash animation for web and Flash enabled games, as well as produce vectorised and animated artwork that is then rendered to video.

Our studio by its specialist nature isn’t able to deal with large scale 3D production. However we are more than capable of taking on small productions for CG animated logos, pre-visualisation video and 3D animatics. We also take on small-to-medium scale compositing and post production work.

We are also an ideal partner for consultancy on in-game cut scenes and pre-rendered FMV, having had many years of experience working on these areas in the game development industry.