Visual Development Stages

Most common forms of the idea/design development stage (pre-production) are;  

– Concept art, designing and presenting (coloured detailed drawings, for environments often fully rendered paintings) the overall look and feeling of whole scenes or (sometimes) also smaller details. 

– Story art, loosely developing the storyboards, concentrating on the composition and characters performance, it is essentially a visualisation of the script (animatics are a step further and actually put those sketches in video sequences).  

– Character Art, concentrates on the design of characters that are featured in the production, their physique, facial characteristics etc., this heavily overlaps with the realm of Costume art, which in both, CGI and live action, designs the clothes the character will wear during each shot.  

– Visual Development, is a Cinematic design, visualising the narrative and the potential compositions (most often tricky shots only as it can be costly).