Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1529668
4 0 P E R S P E C T I V E | N O V E M B E R / D E C E M B E R 2 0 2 4 I had an amazing time working on Twisters with my fellow IMA members, under director Lee Isaac Chung and Production Designer Patrick Sullivan. We all love the original Twister (1996), and wanted to stay true to the spirit while bringing our own sensibilities to the sequel. Shooting and storyboarding tornadoes presented some challenges, particularly scale: The tornados are so huge that to get both the character or vehicle in the shot, they have to be very far away—and when they get close to the base, where it's most dangerous, the atmosphere turns to soup. Having smaller debris and weather helped keep these shots interesting and dramatic. To keep everything straight during the driving sequences, I always tried to cut between interior and exterior shots, so there was a consistent sense of action/ reaction. In the opening sequence, Kate and her friends are seemingly hunted by a tornado that is hard to see with all the atmosphere, and they get waylaid when their car spins out after being hit by a hay bale, which tips its trailer of precious chemicals. Here, 3D models of the vehicle were immensely helpful for getting the perspective and form drawing right as the car spins. In the second tornado chase, Kate and Javi race to place a radar device in the path of the tornado, but must battle weather and debris while doing so. Here, I made sure the light grew darker, the rain more intense, and the close-ups and wides more accentuated to build to a climax for this set piece. In the third tornado chase, Kate and Tyler's teams duel over which of two tornadoes to pursue. It was very important to maintain screen direction of vehicles, and to motivate cuts with characters' looks off-screen, so the audience could track where the vehicles were in relation to one another, who was going where, and why. Some of these panels are more polished, and some are what I call "spaghetti people" or "lollipop people"—if I have time to do nice, clean drawings, that's great. But sometimes the thumbnail has to get shipped when I'm up against the clock. If the departments downstream can interpret it, it's done—in other words, if it's clear, it's clean!! One thing the storyboard team did that was pretty successful was color-coding all of our characters— this is a technique more common in series animation, but with a big ensemble cast, and starting the storyboards before the film was cast, it really helped keep track of who was who in each shot. C r e a t i n g t h e T e m p e s t S T O R Y B O A R D S A N D C O N C E P T A R T F O R T W I S T E R S B Y S A M T U N G , S T O R Y B O A R D A R T I S T STORYBOARDS BY SAM TUNG A. OPENING SEQUENCE. B. SECOND CHASE- PLACING THE RADAR DEVICE.