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Glossary
Here are some terms in the pre-visualization, advertising, television, and film industries that you may not be familiar with. This glossary should be of some help.
Animatics
Animatics are animated storyboards. They are used for various purposes depending on the medium for which they are being produced. Animatics are used every day in the advertising industry to test commercials. They're used to preview scenes of live-action films before they are shot. You'll also find animatics in the pre-production stages of animation and in the video game industry.
Up until just a few years ago, animatics were produced by filming or videotaping storyboards. Over the last ten years, animatic production has become much more sophisiticated. Animatics are now produced with the aid of computer animation (2D or 3D), with special visual effects once reserved for high-end Hollywood productions.
Full-up Production
Full-up production is a term used in the production industry to represent production work completed at the final level, versus work that is done for testing or demo purposes
Focus Groups
A focus group is a controlled study in which people who represent the viewing audience for a particular commercial, film, or television show are assembled in a room. In most cases, the focus group sits on one side of a two-way mirror, while the agency representatives and their clients (or, in the case of a television show, key members of the production staff accompanied by network heads) sit on the other side, hidden from the test group. Focus group sessions are usually videotaped and studied at length later in order to evaluate the group's reaction to the material presented.
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Rip-o-matic
If you have ever heard the term "rip" applied to copying a track from a CD to a playlist on your computer or iPod, then you know what this means. A rip-o-matic is a test commercial edited together from preexisting footage that has been "ripped off" from a film, television show, or commercial.
Storyboards
Storyboards are a series of frames with drawings and words from a script. Visually, they resemble a comic book. The art in a storyboard is usually rough pencils, but it can be full-color art, 3-D figures, photography, or a combination of two or more of these. After the script is written for a given commercial, film, or TV show, storyboards are the next step.
Storyboards are most often used in film and television as the first step to illustrate a visually complex scene and attempt to conceptualize its workings.
After the storyboard, the next step is producing an animatic. The artwork from the storyboard is rarely used to produce the final animatic, as it is usually either too rough or not prepared for easy animation.
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 Samples
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7up
C&H Sugar
Christian Brothers Brandy
Coca Cola
Infrared Roses
KTVU
Lawnmower Man
Levi Straus
Petes Wicked Ale
Sci Fi Channel
ScoopAway Clean
The sample to the left are comps, comprehensives or a design that's comprehensive of a concept etc. This is what everybody in advertising has been using since the beginning to communicate visual concepts quickly and exactly to illustrate to a client the exact nature of the advertising, packaging, scenes and etc. that will be used in the proposed advertising campaigns.
When I first started working for ad companies such as Saatchi & Saatchi, Landor and Associates. They asked me to do comps for ad campaigns some of which are illustrated here on the site. Do you also do a presentation story boards? I said yes, that was a series of images needed to represent a proposed commercial, video production, television production, TV storyboard.
Comps were fun though and much less intense than animation production work or animatics. The deadlines are tight, often overnight or over a weekend, and the challenge intense, being able to draw quickly for Advertising Comps, TV Storyboards and Animatics for animation paid off.
The Research has to be quick, and the use of morgue files essential to have the right ingredients in your hands to begin production. You might grab a book off the shelf or maybe not, or dive into the drawing board and then over to the computer for final coloring or old school grab your markers and get to work. You'd have to come up with an idea quickly, sometimes, consciously or not, dredging up images out of memory that fit the "casting" of that special scene.
Pencils or rough drawings of the scenes are sent to the client to reassure them and to communicate your direction. As often happens as a freelance artist you are not working on site but as some remote location, drawing from your experiences or from life, taking pictures of your family and friends to get over a tight spot.
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