Lost Planet

Here’s the second half of my interview with Lost Planet Cutscene Director, Mr. Yoshiyuki Tonoe.

[Brian] Can you go over the process of how a script gets turned into a full-fledged cutscene?

[Tonoe] Sure. Of course our work doesn’t start until the story is finalized. Then we take the story and draw up storyboards, and take care of whatever motion-capturing we need to do. Next we get the 3D assets, the character models and other props and environments, from the artists in charge of those things, and fuse that with the captured mo-cap data to start putting scenes together. Finally, we show it to the person in charge of story and continuity, Hosokawa-san the designer in this case, and get his OK, or refine it if needed. Once we get the OK, we show it to Takeuchi-san, the producer for final approval.

Click to read the conclusion to the interview.

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Tonoe-san (right) speaking with Ms. Saori Watanabe (left) and Tsuyoshi Irie (middle) from the Cutscene team

[Brian] Can you talk a little about how the storyboards fit into the process?

[Tonoe] Yes, we do work from storyboards, but I personally think of them as more of a guideline or a general direction for each of the animators to run with when they put the action elements together. So the storyboards I come up with aren’t set in stone, as they might be with a movie or something. During the course of creating a scene, if someone on the team comes up with a great idea, I’ll go back and work that into the scene. I think this allows the staff to be a lot more creative and encourages them to come up with new ideas.

But as each scene features different elements, with some being a lot more challenging than others, I’ll think about each team member and give them scenes that allow them to capitalize on their own strengths. I value the creativity of the staff and do my best to create an environment for them to foster their creativity and let it blossom. I want each and every one of them to grow and learn and become better creators over the course of a project like this. Another thing I do is periodically check in with each of the creators and go over the scenes they are working on. If the quality isn’t up to par, we talk about how we think it could be better and I let the animator take another pass at it.

[Brian] You also mentioned motion capture. Do you have to rent out a studio to do that?

[Tonoe] No, actually we have a motion capture studio inside Capcom, so we can do it in-house.

[Brian] Can you talk some more about the motion capture sessions for the game?

[Tonoe] With Lost Planet, some scenes would be VS versus VS, or VS versus someone on foot. So compared to something like Onimusha, where we had a lot of sword fighting and stunts going on, mo-cap for Lost Planet wasn’t quite as exciting. If you’re doing a VS, all it is a person riding in a cockpit, so it’s just the actor sitting in a chair. There weren’t any person versus person action sequences to film.

Plus, with the Vital Suits, Lost Planet is like a lot of Japanese robot anime, with people fighting in robots and communicating from the cockpit. That was my impression when I first read the script. So when I was working on the storyboards, if it was a VS versus VS or VS versus person scene, I’d write in people getting out of the Vital Suits to talk so we could include more acting and more interaction with other characters.

[Brian] What is your favorite cutscene from the game and why is it your favorite?

[Tonoe] There is a rather long cutscene mid-way through the game. It portrays a very critical point in the story, where things get turned upside-down. Plus, it’s pretty action-packed compared to a lot of the other scenes in the first half, so it’s pretty exciting. That would have to be my favorite.

When we were working on this, it started off as a Vital Suit duel. But at the time the designs for the enemy Vital Suit weren’t ready, so I couldn’t do proper storyboards for those parts of the scene. We had to go into the motion capture session with incomplete storyboards.

After that, our deadline was coming up and we were running out of time, so I just handed it over to the animator to complete. And even without storyboards mapping out how the battle was supposed to play out, he came up with something great for us. I was really proud of him. That whole battle sequence was all him, no storyboards. I am very grateful for his hard work on that, and extremely pleased with how it turned out.

I took the scene he came up with, added the lighting and filters, worked with the effects guys, and wrapped it up. When the director and the rest of the staff saw it and really liked it, I was extremely pleased that we were able to come up with something so great despite the circumstances.

[Brian] Finally, do you have anything you want to say to the fans?

[Tonoe] I think there are a lot of games out there that look cool, but when you actually try the game out they turn out to be not all that fun. Of course I think Lost Planet looks fun when you just watch, but it’s even more fun when you actually play it yourself. I think if you give the game a chance when it comes out, you’ll really enjoy it. So I hope everyone gives it a chance and checks it out.

There you have it!

We’re getting pretty close to the launch of the game. It’s just a few weeks away. That means I have just a few interviews left to go. Check back here for more interviews and more Lost Planet news.

See ya next week year!

—Brian