Story Idea Building
Whether creating a still image or motion picture, our main purpose is to tell a story.
This section is all about how I like to get inspired as I work.
I'm learning all the time, through noticing the little things that people do - like the shapes their faces make when they're listening to someone else or performing simple tasks. Things that are easy not to notice because we all do it - all the time.
What we're doing in this section is drawing inspiration from the world around us - to help us decide on what story to tell.
When I get a story in my head, I'll often start by creating some scenes that will work with it and save them. So much of my Story Creation process will result in some concept art, which is almost always an animation.
As I explain in the Carrara Story section, I usually use my Content Collection as inspiration for the basis of my story, characters, places, etc.,
My content library is pretty large, but there's always more. So I also use my wish list. Still not finding that something special? I browse the store and either buy what fascinates me or add it to my wish list. This process really helps me build a cohesive flow through an entire scene I'm dreaming up with the content I need to bring it to life - and it's a Lot of fun!
Watching movies and exploring video games not only relaxes me and gives me something to do while I'm waiting for a render to finish, it also helps to spur me into new ideas or ways to take my ideas and implement them. People who know me also know that I watch all of the "Special Features" that come with movies and games. While they don't give hand-held tutorials, they talk about their process - and I get a lot of ideas from that.
Bioware's Mass Effect game came out while I was deep (DEEP) into authoring free mods for their D&D game at the time: Neverwinter Nights. So I wasn't really interested in checking out Mass Effect. Never even knew what it was about.
A few years ago, EA Games offered me a chance to try Mass Effect 2 by giving me the Digital Deluxe edition. That version comes with a wonderful three-part Behind-the-Scenes documentary about the game. Fantastic!
Before I got far into the game, I went to EA Games and bought the entire trilogy and all add-ons for it. I guess their gift to me really paid off. But what it did was to show me, for the first time what the game was all about - and since it came with that documentary, I related to it in much the same way as I do with Daz 3d content. That game still inspires me to no end, and I just recently found and bought the Legendary Edition, which upgrades and updates the entire trilogy to 4K with fresh models of higher definition, newer visual effects... the whole nine yards. And Shephard, the character we play, now looks the same in each of the three games.