It’s similar to the pre-vis stage of movie special effects. You’re using basically anything available to create a facsimile of the final scene, to see if your framing and pacing work the way you intend to. In film, artists will often use action figures shot with their phone, because it doesn’t matter if it looks janky since it’s not a scene going in the movie to begin with; it’s a test to see if your scene works at all. Game development and filmmaking share a lot of overlap in workflows these days.
For an example, see the leaked Heart of the Swarm ending animatic (StarCraft spoilers, obviously). It’s a super janky rough cut to try out the scene’s flow before pouring their full resources into it. They had most of the art assets already in place since it’s a sequel, but for the parts they didn’t they used concept art and even music ripped from the Transformers movie.
It’s similar to the pre-vis stage of movie special effects. You’re using basically anything available to create a facsimile of the final scene, to see if your framing and pacing work the way you intend to. In film, artists will often use action figures shot with their phone, because it doesn’t matter if it looks janky since it’s not a scene going in the movie to begin with; it’s a test to see if your scene works at all. Game development and filmmaking share a lot of overlap in workflows these days.
For an example, see the leaked Heart of the Swarm ending animatic (StarCraft spoilers, obviously). It’s a super janky rough cut to try out the scene’s flow before pouring their full resources into it. They had most of the art assets already in place since it’s a sequel, but for the parts they didn’t they used concept art and even music ripped from the Transformers movie.