Line art and concept art activates creative juices, but I'd like the end result to be either be entirely 3D (ala
Pixar animation) or live action with all the wiz-bang
digital production provides.
One of the methods I use for story ideas is to alter
interesting photos, imagine a situation with characters, and determine what motivates them to be there. I may overpaint the photo,
paint it entirely with modifications, or build a 3D model of the interesting traits and fill in the blanks.
I recently used
Blender for the latter process and animated a sweeping camera following a character and it's escorts (represented as retangular boxes) inside what could be a prison, compound, bunker, observatory, etc. You can get a sense of the environment in this crudely rendered 42 second shot.