GET TO KNOW THESE TOOLS

WANT TO WORK IN ART AND STORY? ANIMAL LOGIC’S TEAM BREAKS DOWN THEIR GO-TO TOOLS FOR PRODUCTION

Think outside the box:

I mostly use the Adobe suite, but really you should just use whatever's required for your problem. I was working on a project for a circular screen and I had trouble getting my head around how it would work. So I would print things out on paper and just stick them back together in a circle. That was my previs: cutouts and sticky tape. – Toby Grime, art director

Fonts and VR:

I'm likely to get out real brushes and inks. I also love making fonts, and I've got a nice little tool called Fontself Maker which plugs into the Adobe tools. Production designer Kim Taylor also used Tilt Brush here to create the jungle sequence for The LEGO Ninjago Movie, which let the director do a walkthrough in VR. – Felicity Coonan, art director

Real-world tools:

I’ve been breaking into Maya and Zbrush, and I use a Wacom Cintiq, but I also like real-world traditional tools like pencil and paper. It's always good to break out of the digital world and get back to the roots to get the feeling and the emotions while illustrating. Even with LEGO, I would get pieces of paper and chop out things to try and work out how it would fit on them. That was really, really fun. Even using blu-tack to try and form a wig on a LEGO character head. – Fiona Darwin, concept artist/art director

Cutting storyboards:

I use Photoshop and Toon Boom for storyboard work. For editing storyboards, I like Premiere. It has, alongside all the cutting tools, a designated re-timing tool where you can cut then stretch. This feature is probably completely impractical for editing live-action footage, but if you're trying to prototype the scene with previs or storyboards, it's the best thing. – Simon Ashton, storyboard artist