You can read the full post here We tried the bar napkin sketches. We tried arts and crafts models. We tried making concerts out of doll house furniture. We even tried using artistic dance to convey our visions to the bean counters that ultimately control the final look of our artistic visions. All of these methods brought us one step closer to the modern marvel that we call pre-visualization. In our capable little hands, we have all of the tools necessary to dazzle our clients with beautiful images of projects yet-to-come. We can plot our mega-rigs in virtual space months before we send them to be produced and shipped around the world. Please don’t take my word for it. I reached out to two pioneers in the previz game to back me up. David Perkins, chief visionary at Imaginary Labs and Andre Petrus, lighting programmer at Clear All Visuals would also like to educate all of us on the importance of previz. When I asked Perkins to give me a description of previz technology, he gave me a very succinct analogy. He said, “Suppose you’re a dancer. Would you wait until you walk onto the stage to begin choreography? No, you go to a studio, maybe workshop your ideas, rehearse, and bring your A-game when you arrive to the real stage.” Previz gives designers the time they need in a controlled environment to make the very most of the rig they may have spent weeks drawing. He continued by saying, “If they wait until the rig is fully loaded-in to begin exploring what it can do, they’re likely going to miss out on its full potential.”