Rough designs: Copyright Dino Athanassiou

Some rough designs for a short film that my good friend Timmy Wong was developing at Stardust a while ago, Timmy and I had fun brain storming ideas for this project and these were a few of the characters I came up with for the film.

HYDE rough thumbnail boards: Copyright: Stardust Studios LTD 2012

Here are a few examples of my Thumbnail boards on my personal feature project HYDE, based on the original short story "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" By Robert Louis Stevenson, The final script was written by my very good friend Simon Ward Horner, a talented artist, script writer and director who was able to realize my vision for the kind of story I wanted to see on the big screen.  What follows in the examples I've uploaded is a very rough sketch pass on how I see the film translating visually from the script.

The great thing about Simon's script and his overall style of writing is how visual and clear he describes the events.
The characters and action spring out from the page making the boarding process a shear pleasure to illustrate.

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The colour thumbnail page below is an example of how I used the Cinitq to get in close and add certain details, even colour, to help me flesh out the events and mood, in the end I discarded this method for the faster approach of sketching directly onto the actual hard copy script and scanning the finished pages of the script.

Once I am happy with the initial thumbnail blocking, the tie down boards are relatively fast and easy to execute.  It then becomes a process of deciding what will work as a wide shot, mid shot and close up, also adding extras in the way of setting up a locations,  adding pans and truck in's etc. 

 Henry Jekyll deep in thought, a rough colour pass.

A few experimental graphic panels for a version of HYDE as a graphic novel.

A few rough colour sketches for the opening shots for HYDE,
 

Slow cross dissolves as we reveal London's famous landmarks silhouetted against the smog filled sky's of old london,

Continue cross dissolves revealing more iconic landmark locations 

Eventually ending up in the slums of  Soho.

A possible look for Tanner, the convicted killer jekyll manages to experiment on before he is executed at the beginning of the story.

HYDE: Copyright: Stardust Studios LTD 2012

More pics from the Hunger Games shoot:

The lovely talented Jennifer Lawrence and Me.

Cato, AKA Alexander Ludwig.

The VFX Crew Tshirt design. 

A sketch for Sheena Duggal.

More pictures from the Hunger Games shoot:

Once I boarded the final Mutt sequence, we pinned up all the board panels, (I must have sketched over a thousand panels before we agreed on the action and overall performance). Gary Ross then pitched the whole sequence to all the key personal on the shoot.

I finally finishedall all the boards!! now came the ardious task of shooting the sequence and planning the shots which all took place at night, Luckily ahead of time, I suggested using large cardboard cut outs to represent the Mutts, this helped to establish eye line and overall size comparison. 

Glimmer AKA Leven Rambin gets the final touch up from her make up artist.

The dreaded Cornucopia, "What, you want me to go up there!..?" Picture by Sheena Duggal.

Proof that I was actually working....

Jennifer Lawrence reading between takes. Picture by Dino Athanassiou.

Gary Ross riding his bike between takes.... I think he was trying to escape!!
Picture by Dino Athanassiou.

Alexander Ludwig AKA Cato, I told him he reminded me of the Terminator. Picture by Dino Athanassiou.

Here are some pictures I took during the live action shoot on Hunger Games, In North Carolina

The director Gary Ross adjusting a prosthetic dummy of Glimmer, the unfortunate victim of the Tracker Jacker wasp attack: Picture by Dino Athanassiou


 In 2011 I had the great priveledge of working closely with Sheena Duggal the head VFX supervisor on the Hunger Games, and the great visionary director Gary Ross. I was asked to board the climatic mutation Mutt sequence on the film which required me to be on location NC in order to work closely with Gary Ross. I then went onto supervise the animation on both the tracker Jacker wasp sequence and the Mutt attack sequence at the end of the Hunger Games finally.

Above, a lighting reference model of one of the Mutts.... Spot the real Mutt...?  

On the shoot with Sheena Duggal the head VFX supervisor on HG and all round top woman.

Again, which one is the Mutt...?