Moving image, Evaluation

Moving image
Entertain and evaluate

Product evaluation
¬
Over all I feel I have met the brief well and the video I produced related to the codes and conduction of many helpline videos and advertisements that I have researched for this brief.
One of the main problems which came with the whole brief, was the fact that my organizational skills were poor. I spent to long trying to come up with an original idea and got stuck around one concept with I now have come to realise wouldn’t have works as it would have come off unsympathetic, even untactful. I just wanted to make a hard hitting almost disturbing film which would really make the audience pay attention. But through my classes feedback and further research I found I needed to have some kind of positive outcome.
I really wanted to create this video using 3D visuals. This is because I really want to focus on 3D on my course so I have lots of projects I can show on my show-reel. My original idea would have meant I would have had to create the character in Maya, human feature modeling and animation is something I have not even attempted, I spent a few day trying to create my character with a disappointing outcome so decided I wanted to keep to a similar version of my idea but shoot it all on film. This didn’t really bother me as I really like working in film and have a passion for photography. I felt I could have made this video with some really nice stills using a DSLR, but wanted to use dialogue to portray the characters feelings, also as it turns out I think one of the best part of my video was the acting. The actress I used was some one I knew from the college who had had previously done drama at GCSE and A level. As good as she was, being her friend meant there was little professionalism when it came to filming. Meaning there are not about 45mins of messing about and laughing. As important as it is to be serious and productive on shot, I feel it is a good idea to make sure anyone who is working on a product is having a good time otherwise they loose consecration, get bored and it will show in their performance.
On shoot I had some problems, the nights I had planned to shoot had both poor weather and lighting conditions. This meant I had to just shoot the scenes that were located inside. Again the problems here were down to my organization and choice of location. I choose my friends house as in the scene I wanted it to look quite unkempt and lived in, which this house really is. What I hadn’t thought about was the fact that there would be a house full of people half playing loud instruments. Meaning we had to use one of the top rooms which small and hard to direct the lighting.
Something that did disappoint me was that I wanted to use some more interesting shots which I had researched, such as a pull focus or some interesting depth of field shots, but I found I would have had to use a better camera, special lens and some equipment training.
I started by importing the footage into Final cut. The laborious task was choosing all the clips I wanted, I now know that this could have been made a lot quicker if I had made an EDL ‘editing decision list ‘. This is something I will make sure I do in my future projects. I then went about splicing the video together. I then imported my separate sound recordings and voice over’s, which I edited into my video in-between sound levels to make its sound like the voice was coming from inside her head. I put an eerie echo on these voice over’s to make them sound more like a thought.
After I had edited the whole clip together I brought it in to After Effects and added a tri tone effect on to give it the desolate, bare feel it has now. I played around with the levels and curves, as the lighting in the room was not as well placed as I had initially though. I wanted to take some of the bleached out light and colour off the wall whilst not loosing any of the detail on the character. I then added a anti scratch effects which smoothed out the sequence nicely, and also helped to give it more of a dull smudged look.
I didn’t give myself enough time to edit my piece together for the first presentation of my video. Which meant I couldn’t render out the highest quality HD version, I also had to remove some of the effects I had applied on After effects. This brought the rendering time down to 20 minuets. This was enough to show my first attempt but I would have liked to have rendered it out properly at first.
Another problem I came across was when I came to my second edit was that the After Effects project I originally made was not saved properly which meant I had to make a new sequence and re apply and adjust the same settings as before. This didn’t take as long as it had the first time as I knew what I had to do to make the video look how I wanted it.
If I were to do this project again, I will need to spend a lot more time on organization and time management. Planning a project in full before jumping in to it is essential to a successful product. This includes better analysis of locations and backup plans for days on shoot so that next time the weather wouldn’t be an excuse. I also think that better research right at the beginning of this project would have meant I wouldn’t have spent time over an idea that wasn’t going to work.

Moving Image

Moving Image

Here are some mood boards and storyboards i made up to present my idea to a 'client'.





they are uses to portray the feel of the product and are also used as a way for inspiration.

Enterprise Task 2

Task 2

The companies which will be wanting my talents will be film companies and games companies, one which has really interested me is Rockstar north, I have contacted them to ask for some work experience and am awaiting there reply…

http://jobs.rockstargames.com/rnjobs/jobs2.php

I have been researching many games companies through out the UK and have founf this web site which has introduced me to many companies that interest me.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/

PEST.

Political

Selling myself and products will be easiest to do in the uk. Leeds itself has largely drawn me this year as I really enjoy living in the city and it is also becoming a up and rising appreciated modern media city. I originally wanted to work In London, I have a few contacts who work for the BBC in London, and have been offered to be an understudy as part of a post production team. Working from the UK does have the added bonus of not having to emigrate and leave my family, I no this is quite an immature way of thinking about my future but I would like to get a grip on the media industry in a English speaking country where I know the regional culture, and the tax and licensing rules.

Economics

If I work free lance I will have to possible ask for money from smaller companies who help young freelancers. Such as, Media73 - Film & Video Production Leeds. If I worked for a company in Leeds or London, I will start off on a very small salary and work my way up. Through staring from the bottom I will get a large view of the whole industry.

Society.

There are different locations which i am interested in working from. Working abroad does appeal to me and in many ways it can be a much more profitable and enjoyable. Knowing the culture will help me in knowing what’s culturally liked which would help me to produce something my target audience would like.

Technology

The technology I need would need to be high end modeling and rendering software. These facilities are all very expensive and they would be supplied through whatever company I may work for. Working from home, freelance would mean I didn’t have all the right licensing for the software I use, and would need industry standard computers, powerful enough to house the software.

Enterprise Task 1

Task 1

From the first enterprise lecture we were been given the idea that we need to start deciding what we are as a product and how we will be able to put our selves out into the are particular areas of the industry.

I realized in my first year of college that i really wanted to focus on 3D animation and modeling. This has always been what has gripped me when it came to new films and interesting advertisements. I love the way how you can create what ever scene you want without having to create a scene behind the camera. I’m sorry to say I’m a bit of a sci-fi fan and feel the main reason I am now on my course are down to films such as the transformers and lord of the rings .

I am my own product, I’m thinking I will be working freelance, but would like the stability of working for a company. As a visual effects designer i am being trained to produce special effects, to be used in films and for TV. I am also going to be focusing on modeling and animating 3d visuals.

I have been taught it model and animate on 3D programs including Maya and Cinema 4D. I am comfortable using industry standard editing programs such as Final Cut and Adobe Premier. I also am able to use programs such as Photoshop and Illustrator for image editing/controlling. I can use Adobe Flash and other software’s used for 2d animation and game software writing.

I will price my products and skills competitively so as to not over sell myself so early on in my career, we’ll not just yet… but also I want to seem respectable and don’t want to have no reward for my efforts.

My target market are the people who will be needing my skills such as film companies and games companies.

Moving Image

Here is a video i found during research for this project. i love the intensity of the characters and the stylized look of the intense colors and composition.

Here is a video made by Rob Chiu, it gave me allot of inspiration of using what looks like still images to create an earyness about the character and its surroundings.

Entertain and Evaluate rationale.

We were given a number of different topics in which to base out project around.

These were 'Cannibals, Stay-cation, Lifeline, Make museums sexy and Electronic waste'.

The ones that appealed to me the most were 'make museums sexy', 'cannibals' and 'lifeline'.

I really wanted to go down the comedy route with this project, but didn't see how I was going to be able to use 3d animation with them.

Deciding to use 3D animation made my decision easier as wanted to go dark and felt I could create something thought provoking and visually striking. Originally I wanted to use photography for this project, find a really nice dirty desolate location, an use some still imagery which i would then take in to After Effects and add some dust particle effects and lighting.

I’m looking forward to modeling a character for this project as I haven’t yet made any humanizes characters on Maya yet. My idea was I was going to have a hooded figure in a dark room with his hands up against his head. There will be a woman’s voice over the top saying things like ‘he felt there was no way out, no one to help him….’ The character does not move but the camera pans across his back. I was thinking I need a way for the character to discover Lifelines phone number. I thought a TV in the room will be interesting as it would also create some interesting lighting effect with the character in front of it. The camera moves from the character to his scribbling on paper, I’m not sure how much I should let the audience work out for them selves. I don’t think there’s any need to show a letter or noose. I have been looking at some lighting methods on Maya and think I can create some really nice scenes with lots of shadow and reflection. I want the piece to end with the TV showing the Lifeline ad. The Woman’s voice saying. ‘There are trained people who can help……’ think I want it to end with him opening the window or his room, low angle camera from behind arms stretched up, maybe there could be lots of family pictures on the wall or something.

Job Title

I was told i needed to single out what direction i wanted to go towards for my future. I have thought about it and decided that i want to do something that i really enjoy and could see myself doing it in the future. my industry title is Vfx-Designer.

Through this job title i can use many different design techniques such as 3D Animation/ Modeling, visual graphics and special effects. A part of me is also very interested in maybe moving in to photography as i have always had a keen interest in the field.

My final video

Here is some test footage of low resolution rendering of the animation on maya. It helps to view in this lower resolution because it takes so long to render in high quality. this way you can make the changes you want quicker.

Evaluation

I was very excited when I was given this brief as I really wanted to focus on 3D this year. I choose the SYFY channel as it was the one in the criteria that demanded 3d compositing.  I decided I wanted to use the film Cloverfield as inspiration for this 20 sec ident. The storyboards I drew up at first were far to complex and through my first presentation of my work I realised I needed to break down my idea from a whole story, to just some action of people running on screen and dragging someone off. On top of this I was going to composite the model of the space ship I was going to create.  I started off my project with some test footage. I had never tried to composite 3D on to live footage before so I went about trying to create that. I started on after effects, got some footage from a past project then using tracker motion on after effects I went about picking a point in the footage that I was going to use to track the motion of what ever image or sequence I choose .The result of test footage came through with poor quality so I went about finding another way to track the motion. Match mover is a program that is used for just that reason. I looked up some tutorials to find out how it worked. i had some troubles with the new software. i was then told that it would be a lot more easier to match on to static footage. I filmed on the Friday the 16^th. The people I used to act in my project had done acting either in school or/and in college. I had some problems on set as I was shooting of the street and had to deal with traffic and pedestrians getting in shot. I then started to model my spacecraft. The original drawing I made ended up being to complicated so I drew up a new design. The description of how I modelled it are on my blog. On Maya I had to set up a plane with the video footage so I could set up the perspective camera ready to animate to it. I set up the camera to the same specs as the camera the footage was filmed on, this was so that 3D animation would look correct as is it moved in the focal points of the shot. I then keyed in the animation of the spaceship. I wanted to make it look like it was hovering then when the people moved out of camera it was going to swing round and shoot of towards them out of camera. Trying to get the motion to look smooth was very hard because the model wasn’t just on the Y or X axis it was rotating around, so when I went on to the graph editor I couldn’t just edit the points because they wouldn’t match up.  I then had to try and composite. Once I had set up the camera on maya, compositing the 3D on to the video was just placing it on top on a layer on after effects. I then played around with both the lighting and colour corrections of both visuals. The trouble was the shadows that I had to render separately from maya, because it didn’t render out properly, I had to set up a shadow pass on an alfa channel layer and set up the lighting and shadow so that it would only render out the shadows . I then added some text effect using after effects then took it in to final cut and added some broken camera effects to give it the look of Cloverfield. Over all I think I followed the brief well and produced a product that set out to captivate the audience of people who would watch the channel. It used 3D effects and had visual effects made on after effects.  

Animating in Maya

The images below show how i tried to make it look like the spaceship was in the scene. I had to model with a still of the scene in the background with the camera attributes as the one i used to film the live footage. i had to put a floor in so that i would be able to put a shadow in that would follow the ground of the footage. i had to use a world lighting setting that used the image from the footage which picks up where there should be light. i put in some area and directional lighting in so that the shadows would look realistic to the surroundings.

once i had sorted out the scene i could start keying the motion. i tried to make it look as smooth as possible but it still looks a little to jumpy an not enough like its actually hovering.

Finished renders.

I would like to go back and actually create some decent textures of the model. for what i need it for though i think it looks the part.

These are the cleaned up drawings from my sketches. I took them in to Maya and placed them on planes so that i could model to a guide.

This is one of the later stages of modeling.

I had to change my design as creating it was a bit awkward and i was putting myself through to much in the way of modeling.

some concept drawings i came up with for the space ship.

Pre-Production

Here some storyboards and concept ideas i originally had for this project.

my story soon had to change as there was no way that i was going to be able to get everything in the storyboards into 20 sec or be able to get it all done in time.

Neill Blomkamp

I have been looking at some interesting videos related to 3D compositing and special effects. Neill Blomkamp who created District 9 made this short trial run film before he made the actual film. its shows some very interesting shots and techniques using 3D.

For my first , moving in to my second year on the course we have been asked, to create an ident for television program. I have chosen to develop, design and create a CG composited ident for a brand new UFO series to be aired on the Syfy Channel.

I choose to do this channel over the other options as i wanted to primarily use Maya and create things in 3D.

I have decided to compost a 3D space craft on to filmed footage, i want the style of the piece to look like the film cloverfield.

I am planning to create my video using MatchMover which is partnered with maya. It is a program that is used to track composited 3Dvisuals on to filmed footage.

here is a video i found which i really enjoyed, the concept of having 3d imagery on filmed footage is what i am hopeing to do.

Finished re-make video

Disaster,

 we had to reshoot whilst i was away. The reason i spent so much time on the pre-production was because i wasn't available for the editing. when my projects partners went back to upload the video on the tape they found that all the footage was fuzzy and blurry. they spoke to matt the technician w ho said it may be because the screens on the camera are not high quality and we shot allot of it on manual focus as we used a few pull focuses. even then though i cant see why it came out so badly as we zoomed in full on all the aspects of the shots we set up to make sure we were curtain they we focused properly. and i no that allot of the shots i did were using automatic focusing.  which should have been perfect. what we finally decided was that we would have to shoot during my holiday so we quickly came up with an idea for a skate video as james had a few mates who went skating frequently.

  I drew up a storyboard for the new video so that there were some ideas of shot angles and framing while i was unavailable. 

Although i didn't have anything to do with final editing process i did have some influence in the post production. i have tried to find out why the last batch of footage we made didn't import properly, and have come up with few reasons. its just annoying as the shots and the story to the last video really appealed to me and if we had been able to get the shots of the camera i think we could have had some really nice with, which also had allot of my involvement. I very much appreciate the work my module partners have done in my absence, i just wish i could have helped more.

Digital Video Production.

One minuet video evaluation. 

For my latest brief were asked to work in groups of 3 in making a 1 minuet video.

I came up with an idea for a short thriller, as the brief entailed that the audience needed to be captivated for the whole duration of the production. 

 We all felt we had our own strengths and weaknesses when it came to role allocation but in the end we decided as a group to share the roles so as to get a feel for every part of the job. I guess my main role was coming up with the initial idea, which was adapted by the rest of my group. For this I drew up some storyboards, I had to think carefully about what we wanted in the production. I choose the idea because there were lots of chances to use skills that all three of us could use separately. I put a lot of emphasis on the idea of sound for my production so we could make an effort using the sound recording equipment. We decided to use the directional mic for picking up the sound we needed, as we wanted intense sound (such as pencil scratching and breathing). This was some times tricky as we needed the mic in close up to the action but couldn’t have it in the shot. We solved these problems mostly by changing camera angles. On shoot I moved mostly between direction and sound engineer, although I did enjoy setting up some up the shot. Angling the shots in interesting ways, keeping a sense of mystery in the character by only seeing part of his face for a lot of the film. I spent a lot of the time making sure we had crisp sound coming through the audio converter. one serious problem I came across was that the battery on the audio splitter ran out ,this was a simply problem to fix but could have been seriously critical if we were on shoot away form any shops. One of the hardest things I had to keep track of was the lighting. As we were shooting in-side, we wanted unnatural orange tinted lighting to go with the look of the room in the film. This was a problem as we the only light we had which was able to move was a big lamp light. The trouble was we couldn’t move the light as it would cause continuous errors when put together as there would be light and shadow on the wrong side of the actors face. I found the location in my friends flat, I choose this location as it looked very desolate and clinical, white brick walls and untidy, meaning there was not a lot of set design needed.

 Editing,  As I was unable to be available for editing I put a lot of effort in to post production work and filming, with the camera and I was involved with sound.

 

Mike Eastwood

Digital Video Production.

For my latest brief i was asked to work in groups of 3 in making a 1 minuet video.

I came up with an idea for a short thriller. The brief entailed that the audience needed to be captivated for the whole duration of the production. i though that a gripping thriller would do just this.  

here are the storyboards i drew up for the production they have been adapted some what since filming but the majority of the story is still the same. 

for some reason the colors were inverted when unloaded.

when thinking about the cinematography of the video i wanted to use some interesting shots, the introduction shot is a pull focus from a glass to the main characters hand. i researched how this could be achieved. 

i wanted to use allot of close up shots which would correspond with intense loud sounds we would be using. the pans across the was tricky to shoot so we ended up just using a static shot but moved the actor. 

Modeling on Second Life

when modeling in second life you have to build up shapes and objects to create your over all object, this is different to using 3D software as you dont distort one object but group many. the image above shows how i have created a bin. 

The one below shows the all put together.

Once i have modeled the object i textures them either by simply coloring them choosing to adding opacity or reflection if needed, or i may reference an image and place them over the object, seen in some of the items below on the rubbish pit.

this image shows a group of objects which i have placed in the correct recyclable bins. Part of the job for the players, is to do just that. 

Virtual Environment

For this Virtual environments brief we decided to focus on environmental issues and what people could do to help. we decided to make a type of educational park which peoples avatars could walk around play games involving how to recycle and read up on facts about recycling. here is a plan of the area i drew up which shows the lay out of the area.

The idea was that there would be a conveyor  belt of loads of different types of waste, some recyclable, some not. the participant would have to move the items in to the allocated recycling bins. there are going got be sounds such as fire for the furnace and opening of doors. 

we also wanted to be able to take items form a rubish tip and place then in big containers. such as tv's and washing machines.

I created these items by building up shaped and adding textures. This was what i found most enjoying. i enjoyed making textures on photoshop and introducing images on to these items.

here is an image of the walkway i created, this is what took the most time on my part, for the project. We had a few ideas of how you would get from the higher ground to the lower parts where the pond was and the rubbish tip. i came up with this sloping design which i think reinforces the park like feel to the project.

Special effects in film.

I would also like to get in to special effects on films. transformers i feel is some of the best i have seen. 

I love looking over the behind the scenes of films like these. the way they break down whats real live footage and whats been created 3D. 

3D Modeling.

Throughout this brief i have looked at allot of different types of 3d animation and there uses. love the idea of modeling in 3D and using this in games or films. 

 

Found this amazing new motion designer and director, Rob Chiu.  

his work is so inspiring.  i would love to create work like his for our 1 minuet brief . i love the scrachy editing he has used which fits so well with the music he has chosen. 

Here is also another really great video here, which i really love. i especially like the bit with the crab on the screen. moving through depths of field and rhythm editing around the scetchy music.  

Tomasz  Strazalkowski 

Tomasz  Strazalkowski is the leading artist at 'people can fly' the polish game developer. i found this article in a magazine about 3d design.

he says 'i enjoy mixing techniques and engineering nature, i have always taken inspiration from trees. i made the basic form of the tree in maya, then sculpted it and added detail in Zbrush. the textures and backgrounds were done in photoshop and final rendering was done in metal ray'. 

 

i really like the piece, i like it when nature is created on computers, i imagine making this look realists can be very hard... the tree its self looks very interesting, with a skeleton form and a biological influence. 

here is a design company i have been looking at escapestudios, they have lots of links to finding jobs and ways to further your skills. i am still worried on what i will be able to do when i leave this course in terms of jobs. will i have enough skill to do a job which uses 3d animation, such as a games designer or work in film or advertising. i will have to specialise in my final years but am worried to what extent i can do this.

Murat Pak

Murat Pak is a freelance designer, director and digital artist. He is also the founder of UNDREAM, the creative studio. i have recently been shown his work and fallen in love with his individual style and creativity. working largely with music he creates these beautiful simplistic animations which have great detail and which keep the viewer watching through out his pieces. the use of lighting in his work is also insparational, i one day hope to achieve simulare work to this, i think it would work well with intro's to films or adverts.






i am unable to embed his videos but have put hyperlinked my favorite pieses.

MASNIVI

Butterfly Messiah

this one esspecialy, is amazing some of my favorite animation work ive seen.

Imagin

this is another great one, i love the preproduction work with the titles, and the editing over the animation, i imagin this is done using Adobe After Effects.

QUIDAM 3





some of the latest news in the industry is that N-Side announced the release of QUIDAM 3, the new version of there 3D character creator program. QUIDAM is unique in being able to generate thousands of different characters instantly. this program in whidly used in the industry as it can be run over all major 3D suports with ease.

Now That's Using Your Yahoo! TV commercial @ Yahoo! Video

here is an advert i found and liked the character animation was made on maya, i love seeing animation interacting with real characters when it is done well and the character is humanized propperly. i think they have done a good job here.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

I recently saw the film, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Digital Domain created a 100% 3D CG version of Brad Pitts head that carries the lead characters performance for fifty-two minutes of the movie over 325 shots, this is such a huge acheviment having to composit it on to live footage in such an amount of shots, rather than like on other films where there already on 3d dackgrounds or for smaller roles.





Steve Preeg is a Character Supervisor at Digital Domain. He has been creating digital characters for more than a decade, for movies including Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, two Lord of the Rings films and I, Robot. Steve recently received an Academy Award for his work as Character Supervisor on The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. He also created visual effects for Pirates of the Caribbean. Steve holds a BS degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara.





i really enjoyed the film mostly because i apresiated th effort gone in to the character degisn.

Another great site for maya users is highend3d.com. i have been looking at alot of the tutorials on here but havent been able to put them to use as i have no acsses to maya out side uni. here is a good one i found, very simple but it shows how to model using polygones and editing them. it also talks about texturising and lighting, i cant wait to have a go when i get back.





i want to use the techniques i have found to go back and look at my animation project. i want to make my vehicles look alot more realistic but am not sure if i can do this and not screw up the animation. i am still searching for animation tutorials which i can understand as most of them out there seem to be writen and read by progesionals and find my self constantly out of my depth.

3D Cafe is a site i have recently become a member of. its really good and is at the four fount of 3d animation, it keeps you updated with resent news from the industry and has alot of goot tutorials to follow.

Rex The Dog - I Can See You, Can You See Me? -

here is a music video i found whilst searching through music of a band i have recently been told about called Rex the dog. I think the video is really good and i love the contrast from the simple rounded character animation, much like that seen in the lloyds adverts, to the very detailed backgrounds and objects. the lighting is something which also stands out to me. i have spent alot of time searching for information about this video with no luck, alot of the animatio in there are thing which i think with a bit more practise i could acheive, i no i was able to create things ilke this on cinema 4D. the only problem i would have had was the animation, but i'm looking forward to focusing on this using maya. also the cimematography of the music video was really well done, people mostly over look this in animation buy the bepth of field and lighting really brought the charactes and objects, out of themselves, adding a scene of realism to a visually unrealistic enviroment.