Markus Lupfer is a London based clothing brand. Dannie Bennett is a 3rd year fashion student who wanted to to collaborate on a live project she got from Markus Lupfer. The brand is quite quirky and each video is very stylized as can be seen from the videos on their website.
Here is a copy of her brief, showing how the collaborative video fits in to the project:
The final major project will conclude in three separate final outcomes. All three of these outcomes will be produced in collaboration with London fashion brand, Markus Lupfer. Through liaison with the Markus Lupfer brand I have defined a brief requiring me to produce an initial outcome in trend predication, a second outcome in print design and illustration and a final outcome in marketing and branding. Through the trend prediction outcome I will liaise with the brand in order to understand and assist in the development of their conceptual trend basis for Spring/Summer 2014. Through this I will then develop my own further 4 conceptual trend ideas, which I will finalize in a trend prediction book. Further to think I will develop a range of conceptual print ideas based on Markus Lupfer’s key trend for Spring/Summer 2014. This outcome will require me to produce a fully illustrated capsule collection and a range of professional print and fabric samples in order to present to womenswear design department at Markus Lupfer. The final marketing and branding outcome will be the key focus of the final outcomes within the final major project. Through my brand research I have identified Markus Lupfer’s failure to actively market their brand. This has lead to a poor consumer brand image and also a poor level of brand awareness within consumers. Through this research I have identified three key areas to develop. The first area within the marketing and branding final outcome will be to produce a commercially relevant lookbook for the brand’s spring/summer 2013 collection. Further to this I will seek to produce a commercially relevant video advertorial campaign for the brand’spring/summer 2014 collection. The final branding and marketing outome will be to redevelop the brand’s packaging and labeling in order to be more in level with the brand’s premium price point and identity."
I split this collaboration with Brian, another animator on my course.The director wanted to project interesting imagery onto the models. Before the shoot, I took a few of the videos she liked and used the tools on AE to make them weird and wonderful. I also gave a few of the videos to Brian to edit and Suraj (a 2nd year), so that we had a variety of videos to project over the models on the day. Here are my edits:
On the day of the shoot I was in charge of lighting and staging the models. The original look that Dannie wanted to achieve was similar to these images:
This created an unusual lighting set up for me because the projector created an unusually large shadow behind the model and Dannie wanted to be able to control that. Also with the models being shot from the front they looked really flat. After a while of experimenting, I took the projector away and decided to light the models correctly and overlay the images on top in post. This way we would have even more control over the video shot. I put a strong light infront so the models still had that shadow behind them and the final piece would look as though it was projected onto them. Here is a making of video showing what happened in the 2 day shoot:
While the shoot was taking place I was taking the footage and creating daily edits. These may not be in the final video but they would give the director a good idea of how the final will look. It gave me an idea of the footage fit in with the music. Fashion is not my forte so i used this time to really get into the directors vision and give her something that she would like. The music is not my taste either but it was appealing to Brian and Dannie, so this was a good chance for me to get to know their style. The daily edit turned looks really good and influenced the way the final piece was edited:
The final piece was edited by Brian. I took the footage and perfected it that little bit more by removing any cracks and pieces of tape from the stage where the models stood. Its not a very noticeable part of the video but because this was going to be projected on a large screen I wanted to make sure there were no imperfections any where.
This music video by Michel Gondry is very inspirational to me, It has taken me several viewings to figure out how he has created the effect. but every time i watch it, it seems as though I have missed something. I believe that the video is played normally on the left and in reverse on the right but also flipped over. then half way through, both videos are played in the opposite direction but also flipped over. there is definitely some sort of weird transaction when the camera zooms into that message reading ' you killed me' in the middle of the video. and because our eyes are naturally used to reading writing on the screen forgetting that its a split screen, we miss the change over. I may be wrong.
This video reminds me that special effects don't always have to be complicated to be amazing. Some times keeping it simple creates more of an impact.
I was asked to create backgrounds and characters for a game that students were going to make for a competition. The game story was of an astronaut who crash lands on an alien planet, level one he is on the planet surface Level two is an underground city on the planet where he has to find the parts to fix his ship. He ends up leaving on an alien ship in level three.
I took this opportunity to organised a few of my piers together and be the art director for the game. I created level one above and then asked my piers to create the other levels, sticking to my art style and after a few mock ups, these were the final level previews.
This project was originally my tutors idea and after talking to him about it we decided to collaborate on it. The original idea was to have a group of people around a table and a camera continuously filming. As the camera goes round once, an effects artist goes in and makes marks on the actors faces. The whole thing is done live. This was influenced by The Perfect Human:
This project then developed into two people, a couple who would be seated a meter away from each other and be staring at each other with no expression what so ever, but the effects artist working on the live in shot would be show the emotional abuse going on between them. The violence they inflict on each other would show up as bruises on their face and torso. This idea used less people and the message was less subtle. I started a story board for it:
The idea I had here was to make the actor preform really slowly, if they were to move in the shot at all. so the effects artist can come in and create their art. I made a test for this:
The Feedback from this test was that the FX artists would be in shot and would therefore be under pressure to finish a wound on time. This may effect how believable of the wound is. I did not want to carry this risk so I decided to have a rethink about the whole story. By this time I knew it would be difficult to work with two actors in this story, if it would have to be re thought. So I cut it to one actor and decided the conflict would be self inflicted. Here is the first story board i came up with:
I really felt like I was on to something with this new story but it was a bit borderline. I definitely knew that I wanted to play with the MILO camera rig for this project and create a singe world through a mirror for this young lady who is trapped in an abusive relationship and looking for a way out. I was told to mix the story up a bit more and really put in some physically horrible deformations as the video played on. I wrote these down as a bullet points and then made a story board out of them:
By this time I had found an actress for my effects artist. I had gone through the makeup routine with my actress who is a burlesque dancer and had a scar painted across my cheek to see how the effects artist works:
Now that I had a good idea how the effects art was done I could go about perfecting my story and then planning the shots in the three days I had to film. I asked a friend to be the actress so I could take actual shots of the story board and put them together in the way i see the final film:
This gave me a good idea of the bits I wanted to change. It was not big changes, but subtle ones to make the final film look better. first of all, the camera would not need to pan 180 around the table because she will well in shot with a smaller pan. Secondly, the prop table needed to have the bottom drawer removed so she could sit in front of it comfortably. Also I realized that after i had all the footage i would be able to pick and drop the best footage to create the best edit for the film. It may not resemble the original story board. But to have this opportunity i would first need to go through the story board and create a shot list so i knew what to film.
through out this process i had kept my actress and FX artist informed about what was going on, so on the day of the shoot i had a good connection with them. I was able to tap into different emotions with my actress and make her cry and smile when it was time to film a particular shot. I made a quick test edit from the first day:
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I sent this to my piers and it received some positive and constructive crit. I knew that i was on the right track. Using a piece of unidentifiable music I edited the rest of the video and i am very happy with the out come. it means different things to different people who watch it but definitely connects with them. The thought of no background, the only item in the scene is the table draws alot of attention to it and i think that creates a dream like state in the viewer and then thy openly accept the weird and frightening things that happen to the actress as her own thoughts and imagination playing tricks on her or memories from the past coming to haunt her. Here is my final piece:
A 3rd year media student asked me to help her on a group project. They were making a webisode mockumentary series which looks at humans in the same way as safari documentaries look at animals. I was asked to animate a camera in space zooming into the earth, through the clouds and into a building where we come close to a dish with germs in it which form to create the title. I used the opening of The Big Bang Theory as my inspiration for this piece.
I started this process by putting all the main parts of the animation in the right place. I then sent it to my piers for their opinion and was told that it looked really fake when the camera came in through the ceiling. I fixed this before adding some extra bits to jazz it up like a beam of light around the earths circumference and colour correction. unfortunately I was not able to supply sound for this project but all was well because they did not ask for it.
Lev Vladimirovich Kuleshov (1899–1970) was a Soviet filmmaker and film theorist who taught at and helped establish the world's first film school, the Moscow Film School.
For Kuleshov, the essence of the cinema was editing, the juxtaposition of one shot with another. To illustrate this principle, he created what has come to be known as the Kuleshov Experiment. In this now-famous editing exercise, shots of an actor were intercut with various meaningful images in order to show how editing changes viewers' interpretations of images.
In addition to his theoretical work, Kuleshov was an active director of feature-length films until 1943. Since 1943 Kuleshov was serving as the academic rector of Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography.
Kuleshov edited together a short film in which a shot of the expressionless face of Tsarist matinee idol Ivan Mosjoukine was alternated with various other shots (a plate of soup, a girl in a coffin, a woman on a divan). The film was shown to an audience who believed that the expression on Mosjoukine's face was different each time he appeared, depending on whether he was "looking at" the plate of soup, the girl in the coffin, or the woman on the divan, showing an expression of hunger, grief or desire, respectively. Actually the footage of Mosjoukine was the same shot repeated over and over again. Vsevolod Pudovkin (who later claimed to have been the co-creator of the experiment) described in 1929 how the audience "raved about the acting... the heavy pensiveness of his mood over the forgotten soup, were touched and moved by the deep sorrow with which he looked on the dead child, and noted the lust with which he observed the woman. But we knew that in all three cases the face was exactly the same.
Kuleshov used the experiment to indicate the usefulness and effectiveness of film editing. The implication is that viewers brought their own emotional reactions to this sequence of images, and then moreover attributed those reactions to the actor, investing his impassive face with their own feelings. Kuleshov believed this, along with montage, had to be the basis of cinema as an independent art form.
The effect has also been studied by psychologists, and is well-known among modern filmmakers. Alfred Hitchcock refers to the effect in his conversations with François Truffaut, using actor James Stewart as the example.
Hitchcock, in the famous "Definition of Happiness" interview, also explains in detail many types of editing. The final form, which he calls "pure editing", is explained visually using the Kuleshov effect. In the first version of the example, Hitchcock is squinting, and the audience sees footage of a woman with a baby. The screen then returns to Hitchcock's face, now smiling. In effect, he is a kind old man. In the second example, the woman and baby are replaced with a woman in a bikini, to which Hitchcock exclaims, "Now look, he has become the dirty old man."
Kuleshov demonstrated the necessity of considering montage as the basic tool of cinema art. In Kuleshov's view, the cinema consists of fragments and the assembly of those fragments, the assembly of elements which in reality are distinct. It is therefore not the content of the images in a film which is important, but their combination. The raw materials of such an art work need not be original, but are pre-fabricated elements which can be disassembled and re-assembled by the artist into new juxtapositions.
I found this effect repeated and developed further in ‘Forest Gump’.
Michel Gondry's vision and career began with his emphasis on emotion, according to Gondry himself much of his inspiration came from the film ‘Le voyage en ballon’.
‘When I watch this movie, I dream I’m flying and then I do stories where people are flying. I think it’s directly influencing.’
He pioneered the "bullet time" technique later adapted in The Matrix.
How to create this effect in Maya and After Effects:
Gondry made his feature film debut in 2001 with Human Nature, garnering mixed reviews. His second film, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was released in 2004 and received very favorable reviews, becoming one of the most critically acclaimed films of the year. Eternal Sunshine utilizes many of the image manipulation techniques that Gondry had experimented with in his music videos.
His following film, The Science of Sleep, hit theaters in September, 2006. This film stars Mexican actor Gael GarcÃa Bernal, and marked a return to the fantastical, surreal techniques he employed in Eternal Sunshine.
According to the Guinness World Records 2004, Michel Gondry's Levi's 501 Jeans "Drugstore" spot holds the record for "Most awards won by a TV commercial".
On January 3 2013, Gondry released his latest animated short Haircut Mouse on his official Vimeo channel.
One day when experimenting with After Effects I wondered to myself if I could create a paper rip effect completely digitally. Its one of those things that I have seen on TV but I can remember where. If I could, it would make a fantastic transaction for videos. I think it comes from those cheesy scene transactions that I saw on 'Kenan and Kel' when I was younger.
I thought the best way to make a reusable torn paper transition would be to make a matte that any layer can be track matted to another layer in After Effects. I began by ripping up a dark page in a magazine and scanning the two half into Photoshop. I then used the magic wand and colour grading tools to separate the pictured part of the paper from its torn edge. I isolated the torn edge and made it a separate layer. Then I isolated the the two image pieces, making them a seperate layers, Top and Bottom.
This is what the final looks like, you can not see the tear because it fits nicely under the Top (black) layer. this can later be luma invert matted to any layer in After Effects. The Bottom (white) layer must have the torn layer parented to it and can be luma matted to a copy of the same layer as the Top. Both couples must be pre-comped and then the page turn effect can be added to the Top layer and animated to create the illusion that the paper is being ripped in half. If this is used as a transaction, the next piece of video can be layered under these two layers.
I decided to use this effect to create the 4Seven Ident and enter it into the competition. I thought it could be a nice quick animation which I could use to learn a new skill, and if it worked out well I could make into a little tutorial and give back a little something to the motion graphics community.
Here is an image which influenced me a bit. Its a very unusual effect which seems like it would be too difficult to achieve physically but can be done very effectively using digital means.
Watch the animation at: http://vimeo.com/60763684
My Final:
I'm very happy with my final piece, It has been a nice little break from my other, longer project and I have learnt a new skill! I don't think I need to make any real improvements on it, but I have the effect in my catalogue to use when ever I need it.
For the longest time I have wanted to do character animation in After Effects because I could not achieve the quality I wanted in Flash. I looked around the web for tips and tricks on how to do this and found a fantastic tutorial on building a puppet in Photoshop and rigging it in After Effects. Daniel Gies has made a brilliant tutorial which I followed to create my character. It incorporated a good mix of coding and creativity to control the character.
vimeo.com/danielgies
I knew this character was going to take a long time to rig and animate correctly so I had to create an animation around 1 character with limited movement, because he would not be able to turn past 90 degrees. I was confident that the character would influence the story.
I created a test character head using some of the skills I learnt in the tutorial and was amazed at how smooth the animation looked. This raised my confidence in creating a believable character to animate with.
Password: chime
I wanted to create a character who could act and hold a scene by himself , so the top two names that come to mind are Charlie Chaplin and Rowan Atkinson. I used to watch Mr Bean alot, as a child and still do. I also took influence from his style of acting, I saw a making of Mr Bean and saw just how much of the show is improve by Rowan. The show usually contains simple goals, which are reached in a way that is out of the box and comical. Alot of the background and props are also influenced by the show. The wallpaper is a typical example, the repeated pattern sets the 90s stage for the animation.
I wanted to style my characters clothes on a modern gentleman. I did not want the animation to look too aged. I feel the mix works well. I really like the bowler hat and umbrella/ walking stick.
I started drawing sketches of the character so I could visualize the image of the character in my head. I had to then upload the face on Photoshop and break the pieces of the face up into different layers. The hair was the hardest thing to break up because I wanted the hair clumps to look seamless in the final. I colour graded the layers in Photoshop before importing the into After Effects to move them around in 3D space.
Final Design Sketch.
I continued working on the contrast and colour of the hair and face when I was constructing the face on AE, This project has to have the most compositions I have ever used in a project and it required me to use almost all the AE tricks i know and learns some new ones. I have full control over the eyebrows, eyes and mouth sync.
Final Character Design.
Im quite happy with the final design, its meant to look like its made out of textured cardboard. The final image is surreal but It fits the scenery and therefore makes a convincing animation.
The backgrounds were made with a mix of textures and photographs I took. In the above image, the rack with suits is a picture of my wardrobe and the wooden paneling are textures arranged in 3D space to get the shadow correct in After Effects. The pictured taped to the door was composited in Photoshop by combining a character i drew and painted with a background of a landscape, marked into a textured photograph piece.
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To finalize the images I colour graded the comp and added lighting in the appropriate places with alpha mattes. Once all this was done, I was ready to animate the character. The story was simple, a mans race against time to get ready for the moment the clock chimes so he can see the woman he likes. I thought an appropriate deadline for this animation was the clock makers competition that was soon approaching. I have created the animation and entered it into the competition, but feed back from my group indicated that i needed to make a few changes, which I plan to have ready for my final show.
Here is the piece I entered into the competition:
Password: chime
Improvements to be made:
1.Variety of footstep sounds.
2. Some scenes drag, not enough happening.
3. Acting is not good enough.
4. Clock Sound building and animate second hand rather than minute hand.
5. Make clock 3D to emphasize second hand coming down.
6. Don't show credits until animation is finished.
7. Final tick on door opening.
8. Show that he gets close but never gets to kiss her.
I was using some of the facilities at uni for my 'Ah shoot' Project when I got talking to Matt about this music video that he has in the pipeline and I thought it was a fantastic opportunity for me to learn some skills from a professional and show that I have worked in a boutique VFX house.
I began by editing some of the raw footage using Final Cut Pro which is a software I know very little about but it was not hard to pick up some basic hot keys and effects. We came up with different ideas on how to resolve problems in the video. One problem was that the poets movement was pretty wooden so we had to cut and edit the best of that together.
The original tone for the video was going to be black, white with certain red objects in the scene because it links in with the fantasy of a girl so obsessed with her music, as if its her ex lover and she's going through all his stuff. I liked the idea but wanted to give it a bit of a Sepia tone. We discussed that the colour grading will be done in DaVinci Resolve because the AE version created thick red colour bands around lighting sources.
Another problem we had was driven through the first one. The storyline was not clear, which If I think back to when I learnt poetry in school, its supposed to be ambiguous. Matt had the to put text on the wall of the apartment to combine the lyrics with a visual. I took this as an opportunity to create an effect test by taking a scene from the video and finding out how difficult it would be to make text stick to the wall and make it seem as if it was meant to be there. I chose a particularly girly-curly font and scaled it up to make it seem as though it had been spray painted on the the wall in a similar fashion to how I have seen people graffiti their notebooks in school. I then overplayed a load of them on top of each other and using a camera tracker in AE I was able to pin it to a centre wall. There is a bit of a glitch where it moves slightly but the over all positioning works. I created a mask for the window and a mask for when Carys walks in front of the wall. I used a fractal noise to make it seem as though the text had rubbed off and smudged a bit. This gave us a go ahead for any text we want to put on the wall.
This bit was for personal development. Making the window look as though there was a world outside it. I knew that Matt knew how to do this but I wanted to give it a go so I could take it to him and ask what I was doing wrong. You will notice below that there is a bit of a glitch where the green shows through the mask. I took this too him and he helped me correct it but I kept the original to remind me of how I can fix a similar problem in the future.
At BlueGFX I was able to talk to Niels Stevens, the Representative from Adobe, who asked me why I was not editing the music video on Premiere Pro. When I asked him what the advantage of that was he gave me a demo on how Premire Pro CS6 works seamlessly with After Effects CS6, so I can add effects to comps with out the need to render and export. The only problem with that is, I need a computer which can handle running both programmes simultaneously.
This was a company I met at the Launch Conference and they are a start-up company who have an app that they want to take to market. I thought it was a brilliant piece to get involved in. Brian and I went to one of thier gaming events and said that we would like to create an advert for them to push thier app because it would be an amazing way to get our work out there through them. We first created an asset video, with minimal animation, but getting the text right and the general lay out in place.
The feedback from the company was positive so I went ahead and got creative with the animation using this video for timing. They wanted the new video to be faster and clearer that the product was a phone app. I started working on it and got really involved in my advert so Brian made his own version. Below shows how I used multiple comps and nulls to create big animations with the power of parenting. Using previous experience in info graphic commercials I was able to get a decent balance in speed and quality, whilst trying to clearly communicate the message the company wanted me to. The owner of the company took this advert to the I series Multi-play Insomnia gaming festival and showed it to the boss at Call of Duty: Black Ops.
There are a few changes that still need to be made but its something which lies partly in how the guys at WEWANA: PLAY advertised the product to me. These changes will be made in due course. Here is the advert shown to the public so far:
This is my proposal for SS1. I created a script for a 3 minute comical video with a friend of mine, Chester Constable who is a script writer. The story in short is of an American agent and a British agent who have to capture one target. The story shows the different behaviours and actions between the two agents as they get themselves into situations which prevent them from their goal.
Here is the script:
Ah' Shoot
V/O: In the winter of 2012, The President of the United States and The Prime Minister of the UK decided to settle a dispute regarding who was better, MI5 or the CIA. A photo of a suited man holding a briefcase is shown. We slowly zoom in on the target’s face. V/O: It was decided that both countries would hire their most impressive agent to eliminate one target. The first agent to take out the target would prove that their country has the better national security. Two photos are shown. One of a suited man shaking hands with the queen. Another of a different suited man shaking hands with Ronald McDonald. V/O: A picture of the target is all that either agent has to go on and neither are aware that they are in competition with the other. CUT TO: Title screen - "Ah' Shoot" CUT TO: INT.HOTEL ROOM. DAY An alarm clock goes off. The time reads 7:58 am. Camera pans to British Agent lying in bed, staring at the clock. The British agent turns the alarm off, brushes teeth, gets dressed, checks his laptop, eats his breakfast, grabs keys gets in his car and drives off. (THIS is the series of quick cuts we discussed) CUT TO: INT. OTHER HOTEL ROOM. DAY An alarm clock goes off. The time reads 10:00 am. The American agent swipes it off the bedside table. He fixes himself in the mirror, grabs an energy drink from the mini fridge and leaves money on top of it. He then leaves the room still trying to get his blazer on, exits the hotel and goes round a corner. He smashes a car window just as an old man is pressing the button on his keys to unlock it, gets in and drives off. CUT TO: EXT. DRIVEWAY. DAY The target can just about be seen through a window. In the bushes outside the target’s house, the British agent crouches, looking through binoculars. A football suddenly hits the binoculars out of the agent’s hands. A young child’s voice off screen calls out: "it’s over there!" The Agent looks out from the bush, shakes his head and quickly scarpers. While this is going on the target leaves his house. Moments later, after everyone has left the scene, the American agent pulls into the drive way, arms his gun and breaks down the door. He walks down the hallway checking each room. A clock chimes and the agent opens fire on it. CUT TO: EXT. STREET.DAY The target walks along the street with the British agent following. The American agent pulls up on the other side of the street. He gets out of his car with a briefcase and heads into a large building. CUT TO: INT. LARGE BUILDING. DAY The American enters a room and heads over to the window where he has a good view of the target. He opens his briefcase and pulls out a sniper rifle. He looks at it with disappointment and puts it back in the case. He runs back down to his car, gets another briefcase and heads back up to the room. He opens this briefcase to this time reveal a giant rocket launcher. As he trys to aim the launcher out the window at the target he sees that the target is going down a flight of stairs, out of the agent’s range. CUT TO: EXT. TRAIN STATION. DAY The target sits down on a bench at a platform. The British agent appears and is about to take out his gun when he is approached by a middle aged woman holding a crossword book. The British agent aids the woman with the crossword. As he is doing this the train pulls up at the station. The woman and the target get on the train and the British agent waves bye to the woman. As the train pulls away the British agent realises he has lost the target. The American agent follows the train in his car. The British Agent is trying to flag down a mini cab. CUT TO: INT. OFFICE.DAY The American agent bursts through the office door and heads for the elevator. Once inside the elevator, the agent positions himself on the ceiling ready for the target to enter the lift so the U.S agent can drop down on him. The target enters the office and presses for the elevator. The British agent soon follows armed with a gun. As the lift doors open, and the target steps in, the U.K agent fires his gun. The American Agent drops down on top of the target and takes the U.K agent’s bullet. The lift doors close. The British agent takes the stairs. Now inside the lift with the wounded American agent who is struggling to get up, the target realises he’s in danger. The doors open and the target runs out of the lift. The British agent appears at the top of the stairs and opens fire on the target. The target goes round a corner and comes to a dead end. He turns and sees both the U.K and U.S agent pointing their guns at him. The two agents look at each other and then turn their attention back to the target. A Ninja star suddenly flys in through the window and hits the target square between the eyes. The target collapses to the floor, dead. He’s fucking dead mate. We pan out from the office to reveal: CUT TO: EXT. TOWN CENTRE. DAY A Chinese assassin, located about 5 miles from the office, his hand positioned in a throwing motion. He makes a call. It is China who has won this bet.
End
I wanted a chance to do the post production and VFX for the video, but for that I needed the piece to be filmed. This project was a bit ambitious but through my research I found this video by ILM and The Orphanage for Iron man:
Creating a VFX Reel seemed like the smarter option as it gave me a chance to work on the shots that I could use my skills in rather than worry about the whole story. Here is my final 3 Shots:
I'm very happy with the outcome of this project. I have learnt a lot from my research into Ironman, Star Wars, ILM and The Orphanage about how the VFX work with the story and help tell it. The effects do not help make the acting better, but the actors in my 3 shots worked really well so there was nothing to fix, just the pleasure to add the effects. The third shot in this sequence was the original test shot that I made for criticism from my piers.
I was quite pleased with the feedback. It showed me that it is the small details which can be easily over looked that really count when it comes to selling the shot. I used this advice to the influence the workflow for my next two shots by taking planned breaks and working on other projects so that I can come back and hopefully spot any errors I may did not spot previously. I then worked on the pistol Shot.
Here is the VFX Breakdown for it:
In the original shot I had the actor Afi Walker, preform the shot a few times as I was looking for him to hit these marks one after the other; Lower mask >> Raise gun close to camera >> Shoot >> Slight jolt in arm.
I filmed in HD 1080 but brought the resolution down to HD 720 so I had more option to position the frame the way I wanted. I used the rule of thirds and kept the action point at the top left hand corner. I also tried to create a rough line of perspective from the eyes, across the barrel of the gun to the explosion point. This was a feature I picked up from studying a popular scene from Pulp Fiction:
Creating a believable gun is easier to elude. The gun held by Afi is a plastic toy gun which I spray painted silver, so I had to make it look real in post production. I began by adding an exit hole at the front of the gun which I created in Photoshop using pictures of guns as reference. I knew that the lighting reflecting into the barrel of the gun would be a key factor in selling its reality. Also I had to make sure that the PS image stuck to the end of the gun which I did by motion tracking the gun and then refining the positioning. When a gun fires, a reaction shot is the barrel of the gun pulling back. I thought a good way to create this would be using Maya to match the texture of the rest of the gun. This proved a bit difficult as texturing in Maya is not my strong suit. To fix this problem I decided instead to duplicate the layer and use it as a matte painting to create the illusion of the gun shifting back.
The bullet and cap are made in Maya. I tracked the front and back of the pistol in the frame using two nulls and a camera in After Effects which I then exported to Maya and made a CGI bullet which would travel through both. I slowed the footage down and went through it frame by frame in order to get the best alignment for the bullet to travel. I wouldn't consider myself a Maya modeller but I can make low poly models so I wanted more control of the bullet in AE. I exported a matte, diffuse pass, specular pass and a colour pass (with light). In the final shot the bullet is only seen for two frames but I felt that if I let that cloud my judgement on how well I should model it, that would lower the quality of my work. The bullet was rendered out separately to the cap so that I could place them where ever I wanted in the composite without effecting each other.
To finalise the shot I added some forced motion blur to the PS hole in the front of the barrel and the bullet and cap. I blurred the head and body of the actor, excluding the hand- this created a forced perspective. I added a smoke and muzzle effect to create some realism in the shot. There is a slight camera shake as the bullet passes past the camera, this shows how close the gun is the the camera. There is a slight flash of brightness in the scene as the muzzle is present to blend it with the scene (showing that the light it creates actually hits something). Finally I tinted the screen blue, this was a personal decision because the original orangey colour made the shot look home made and I have seen this tint of blue in many spy and action films; Men in Black and Looper.
Here is a still of the final composite:
Creating a realistic CCTV camera footage may seem easy but its not. Again keeping in mind that the effects must help tell the story, I did my research on what CCTV footage looks like. I looked at a BBC documentary 'The Riots in their own words', which interview the rioters and police who were present at the London riots. This documentary is now banned so I'm glad to have seen it when it was on iplayer.
One thing I noticed in a lot of the footage was white writing on black strips in the corners, indicating where the camera was located. I created this on my work with matching font and colour. the colour later changed to purple as I over exposed the red channel in the piece.
The split screen effect allowed me to move the viewers eye around the screen which almost makes them part of the shot, so they are looking for something to happen in one of the screens, similarly to the security guard in the final film. This shot is designed to be mapped to a monitor.
I found that a lot of footage was tinted because of low quality cameras and i used this to my advantage by only blurring the red channel in the shot I managed to darken the outside scenes because I wanted the viewer to focus on the indoor shots. I used a mixture of still images and videos to create the cameras which switch from one to the other. Lowering the frame rate and adding a glitch when the main action is happening played into the quality of the camera and to the notion that the audience was spying on the action. When you peep on someone you never get the full picture, which is a plot device that mystery films play off.
Here is the before and after of this shot:
A link to the London riots documentary: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01l3y0q/episodes/guide
Took a trip to London on the 22nd, and just got round to writing my notes up in neat :).
The Blue GFX festival was quite exciting, it was the first time I had been to it and it offered exactly what I expected. Not really a chance to network but a really good opportunity to talk to the companies who's software I use and get an idea of what they are going to be bringing out. I enjoyed talking to V-ray, Intuos and HDR Light Studio. The graphics on their banners attracted me more than any thing. They all had some 3D modelling demo's going on, which is not what I do but it was interesting to talk to them about how much they were focusing their programmes to create better lighting and reflections to create a better, more realistic composite. Except for Intuos who simply had bigger and bigger tablets.
I also had the chance to talk to both Adobe and Autodesk. I have been considering moving over from After Effects to learn Nuke and Smoke for compositing so it was good to see what the rival companies had to say about each others programme interface and user satisfaction. I attended a talk given by Niels Stevens on the new Adobe 6 Suite which won me over and made me realise that I should be looking at Adobe Premier Pro CS6 as my compositing software because it interacts seamlessly with AE6.
I enjoyed the talk given by Daryl Shail for Pixel Farm. They are a visual effects company who are currently working on creating time effective 3D composites. The demo was fun to watch as each statement was backed up with videos (which seamed difficult to manipulate), made 3D quickly and simply.
We later went over to Escape Studios, who presented a tutorial using dynamics in Maya to demonstrate how they run classes. It was very impressive, and if i struggle getting work after Uni I will definitely consider studying there. There is a lot of talented staff who have worked on some big productions. Talking to the students there gave me a good insight on how the course was run and how much they learn.. But with a great course comes a great price. About £9000 for 12 weeks, is not funny. But working in the animation industry is more of a dream than a job so I'm definitely keeping my options open.
This was a project done for an advertising university group who were creating a campaign to spread the message about guide dogs for the blind. The image I created, according to their brief shows how scary the world can be for blind people.
Since the project was only for university I was comfortable using images from Google. I took two pairs of cats eyes and masked them in different ways to make them into six different pairs. I then created a mouth for each tree using the cracks and crevices already in the tree as guides to make the mouth opening look realistic. I was going to use the bear and lion as reference to create sharp jagged edges.
The day to night conversion of the image took some time to perfect because the sky is very bright, so I had to create multiple masks to get the colour just right. I added a slight glow around the faces on the trees which compliments the glowing eyes. The stock footage smoke helps create some depth in the image.
I attended this conference and represented TL Multimedia as it opened itself to the public. The company is run by Tim Lozinski, who holds the details of a group of freelancers with different specialist areas. He brings in work from large companies and the Freelancers divide it amongst themselves to produce it. I am now effectively part of the company, specializing in Motion graphics, Visual Tricks and Digital Puppetry.
I created this ident which was played at the conference. It was made using the TL Multimedia logo, which reminded me of a rub-ix cube and I created this using 2 null objects which control the revolution of the top and bottom 3D layers and a third null object which controls the spin of the whole cube. Here is the final:
Networking at the Launch proved really effective for me, I met some really neat people from big organisations and start up companies. I'm not much of a gamer but I gave my details out to a few people for chances in advertising and creating graphics for apps.
Managed to get in touch with a start up company called WEWANA:PLAY who were looking for some graphics to go into their app. I attended one of their gaming evenings and met the whole team, this could end up with some positive work.
As I have uni projects to work on I'm trying to focus my time towards those.. 'need to make the grade before you make the trade'. I'm currently editing a music video together for Frog and Peach Productions'. which is creating a fantastic learning curve in technique, style and reaching a visual brief set by someone else which is key in being a professional.
Here is a cover of the Launch Conference by ITV and below is the link to the TL Multimedia website:
Iron Man (2008) is a Marvel superhero based film directed by Jon Favreau. It stars Robert Downey, Jr. as Tony Stark. John Nelon was the visual effects supervisor on this film. He Delt specific tasks to different companies around the world. ILM, created the majority of VFX, The Orphanage created some of the smaller shots and The Embassy created the the crude Mark 1 suit sequence.
Kent Seki, from Pixel Liberation Front, was the Visualisation/ HUD Effects Supervisor in Iron Man. The HUD design was influenced by the Dave's helmet in 2001: Space Odyssey(1968).
Space Odyssey Helmet
Artists rendition
Story board artists drew shots of Tony Stark inside his mask. The depth in-between the graphics inside the Ironman mask allowed Robert Downey Jr. to preform with his face and eyes. This created a believable control panel. Every single widget in the helmet has been thought about, each one has to be intuitive. Every panel activated from a collapsed mechanism to a large widget which moves forward in Z space. 3 things that had to happen:- - The actors performance had to drive the action of the HUD. - The Z depth had to be believable, so widgets appeared in the direction the actor was looking. - Each shot had to have an alpha event, so a 'targeting shot' could be distinguished from a 'horizon lock shot'. The approach to design the different HUDs:- Ironmonger HUD- the design Stark Industries would release to the military, vector style graphics, aggressive, mean and primitive.
Tonys' HUD- Slick Technology, reflects his personality. Colour was an important factor here; in the 80's amber was hi-tech, in the 90's it was more blue/ cyan. Through out the film his helmet HUD shows progression, so the Widgets change colour from when he is 'scanning' to when he is 'flying' but in the Mark 3 (Final Suit) everything is uniform.
The white interface is clean and simple which makes the HUD look more advanced, animators used colour to pop up widgets for attention such as 'low power' or 'target'.
In the Mark 2, there are many different Widgets for each control. But in the Mark 3, The Orphanage animators created an omega widget. This would be a simple compus style graphic with little information around the sides, but when Tony looks at it, a lot more information pops out as the graphic evolves from its rest state. I have to admit, I did not pick up on a lot of the changes that happen to the HUD until l saw the 'making of' documentary. But its almost one of those subtle effects which gives a little more impact and believability to the film. The fact that the widgets are driven by the actor definitely create believable technology. I have seen on-line tutorials trying to copy this effect. They have not looked at the small details of evolving graphics to show more or less information depending on what else is happening in the scene. I believe it is these small things which add seamlessness and believability to the HUD. Information retrieved from link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUBXmEWudnA&feature=channel&list=UL
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