Here Ends My Second Year!

So the hand in of my final project also marks the end of my second year. This means that next year is my final year, which will also be one of the biggest years of my life to date. I will continue blogging over the summer holidays when I start to do research for my client and research projects next year. I look forward to next year even though I know it will be a busy.

Overall I am pleased with the year just gone and I look forward to finding this years overall mark. I feel I have developed my skills greatly in a variety of softwares including 3DS Max, Maya, Photoshop, Illustrator and of course After Effects. I suppose there is only one thing left to say now and that is bring on next year.

Compositing Project - Analysis Of The Production Process

The final project of my second year was ‘compositing’ and it was given in two parts. The first part I had to take my chrome character from a previous project and place it within a real life image. The character had to walk behind an obstacle such as a tree or a coffee mug as if it was always meant to be there. The scene had to also contain matched aspects of light, shadows, reflections, colour tone/grain and masking. The second part to the project was to piece together a composition from the different elements given to me and then apply at least four different creative effects within Adobe After Effects.

I learnt throughout this project that compositing is vital stage at the end of the design process as it allows you to easily manipulate how the overall animation or film looks. This can be from adding simple creative effects such as noise, colour changes, blurs, distortion or editing, adding or removing elements within the scene. I found to be useful when compositing both parts of the project as it allowed me to change the overall look without spending hours rendering over and over again within 3DS Max. I found that rendering the different elements separately and then layering them within Adobe After Effects is a valuable method to editing any scene as it saves time on rendering which is important when producing a project quickly and effectively for a client.

I also found that you can apply different effects to the different layers easily such as the ‘glow’ I used on the window’s, in part two, to emphasise the effect of light shining through them. The other effects I used were a ‘fast blur’ on the cars and the trail to give them more motion. I used some noise on the billboards to give the effect of a pixelated screen.

Compositing is a useful skill to have when producing animations simply for the main reason of time saving, especially if a client chooses to change something they aren’t happy with or want to add of change something e.g. a logo or colour. 

Overall, I enjoyed this project, I learnt many new skills one of which is learning more about Adobe After Effects and working with that software. It is a useful tool for an animator and I can see how it could be utilised for special effects within the film industry, something I am hoping to explore in the near future.  I would like to extend my knowledge further in Compositing as I feel that it would be a very useful skill to have and would leave me with a larger work opportunity in the future. It is now something I am considering to pursue, as I never thought I would of enjoyed it as much as I did. I’m sure I have only just touched the surface of compositing and therefore I would like to go further in depth and find out more on how to composite different scenes. As the technology improves the possibilities of merging an animated world and the real World seem endless. Having now reached the end of second year and going into my final year I will be working on and thinking about where my future lies and this project on ‘compositing’ has definitely open a new door for me.

Part 1 - Final Compositing Animation

Part 2 - Final Compositing Project

Below is the final second part of my project, I have added four different effects including, fast blur, glows, noise, colour change and hue and saturation. I put all the elements together in the correct layer order and this is my final outcome.

Part 1 - Second Render

I sorted the shadows out, they could do with being a littler darker too, to match the shadows already within the scene, I still need to change the character to chrome. I'm thinking of starting this project again so I can improve the final result.

Part 2 - Compositing Test

Compositing test, piecing together animation using lectureres files, making it easier to edit later on if necessary. No effects have been added as of yet.

Part 1 - First Render

The first render of part 1 of my compositing project shows my character walking behing the mug. However the shadows are very rough so I am going to change them for a ray traced shadow to make them sharper. I also need to change the character to chrome so that the room is reflected within the character to reflect the scene.

Compositing Project: Brief

1. Composite a Chrome Character into a photo or video. Using a previously created character (from Andy's Bots & Bananas) Animation of the character will be left to your imagination, however it must involve some part of passing behind a real world object. Render and composite, in After Effects, a 125 frame sequence of your character within your 'real' environment. Render elements must be in 16bit .exr format with the final output as a quicktime h.264. The scene/shot must comprise of at least 2 surfaces [ground & vertical] and 1 real world obstacle [eg mug/tree]. It must contain matched aspects of light, shadows, reflections, colour, tone/grain, masking 

2. Piece together a composition from given elements and apply at least 4 creative effects . Analyse the production project and write a 500-1000 words article focusing on the production pipeline used and justifying each aspect of the provided 'render elements' and your methods of composition.

Location, location: Still Render's

Here are four of my Still Render's that I have taken from my scene: 

Still 1

Still 2

Still 3

Still 4

Location, location: 500 Word Evaluation

The new brief I was set was called, ‘Location, location’ for this project I had to design, model, texture, light and render a sixty second walkthrough of my chosen location, which is based on a published story or script from a different time period. The interior location had to be set either in a room in a residence or monumental space i.e. church, factory or historical building. I would also have to include all the visual elements such as the furniture and objects that described within the story. The reason behind this project is to design a location, as it is important to support the story and the characters. Whilst undergoing this project it was essential for me to consider the architectural period, genre, dramatic atmosphere and mood, colour and lighting conditions of the location.

For this project I chose, ‘Crooks’ Bunkhouse’ from the book ‘Of Mice and Men’ as the location I would model. The reason I chose this book was because we never learn much from the character himself but we do from the description within the novel and the object’s that can be found. There are many objects within the scene such a hame, an alarm clock, boots and medicine bottles etc. From the description I imagined the room to be made from wooden panels, have an angled roof with dusty light shining through the cracks and the window. I also imagined the room to be quite dark with the objects scattered across the room but neatly placed.

I found this project extremely enjoyable to do as I love making the object’s look realistic to bring the room to life, making it look old, used, cold and lonely. I feel my modeling skills have dramatically improved from the beginning of the last year and the last ‘Still Life’ project helped me to achieve this, making this project seem somewhat easier. Problems that I had last encountered during the last project were ones I wanted to work upon and improve this time, such as the lighting and layout. I feel I have managed to achieve this by adding the volume effect to a directional light, which gives the illusion of dust particles being caught within the lights path. I felt that I managed to create a dark scene that shows what I set out to achieve, which was a ‘lonely, old negro’ who has many possessions.

Overall, I enjoyed this project, I learnt a number of skills but one mistake a did learn from was to always backup your work as early in the project I saved everything directly onto my hard drive and in the end I lost everything and had to restart the project. I feel that this mistake has taught me some valuable lessons but in the end I felt that my second attempt was better than my first, which is something I am proud off. This project will help me with my future career as it has taught me that the atmosphere and design of the room is important as it is vital to support a characters mood, environment and personality. Therefore when I design characters in the future now, I will also think about the environment that they will live in and how the modeling lighting and texturing will affect the way character is portrayed.

Location, location: Final Render (With Sound)

I have now added sound to my animation, I used one of the soundtracks that can be found on one of the films. Here is my finished walkthrough:

Location, location: First Render (Without Sound)

Here is my first render, I have added the lighting and placed and textured all of the object's within the scene. Below is the first render without sound:

Location, location: Object's

The next stage was to start modelling the object's, So far I have modelled the alarm clock, Hand Riveter, Shotgun, Knife. Below are a few images of these objects: 

Alarm Clock

Hand Riveter

Single Barrelled Shotgun

Knife

Location, location: Started Modelling

This week I finally started modelling the basic layout of the room I will be using, I have made individual panels so that the like can shine through the cracks. I have given it a slanted roof as the the passage specifies that Crooks' bunkhouse leans off of the side of the barn. I have also textured the wood a lightish grey wood as I feel that it gives it a worn and old feel. Below are a few images from my progress so far:

Crooks Bunkhouse 1

Crooks Bunkhouse 2

Silent Comedy: 500 Word Evaluation

This was the fifth project I have been set this year and by far the most challenging. The brief I was given was to design, build and animate a Character that can apparently think, decide, pick something up, drop something, walk, climb, trip, slip and fall. At most two characters may be involved in the piece, and the primary focus will be the Character Animation itself. It is suggested than only a limited "set" be designed for the film, as the majority of the artist's time should be spent on the development of the character(s), making them into believable on-screen entities.

At the beginning of the project I found the idea of having to build a character and rig it quite daunting as I thought it would be a major struggle and a very time consuming process. However I did find it quite easy especially the building as I developed my skills dramatically with the software since the beginning of the year. The process was still time consuming but I found this to be a positive aspect of the process as it meant my design would be a perfect as I could make it.  One I had designed the character I found the toughest part of the process was the UVW Unwrapping it took me a while to get it done but it all paid off in the end and this was the same for the rigging too.

The next step was to design the environment the character would act in. As the brief suggests, we should stick to a simple environment and focus on the character and so this is what I did, I made a simple room with one window and then used an omni light to add light and shading within my scene. I found this to be effective as it kept all the attention on the character and his actions. Although the storyline wasn’t very strong I think it keeps the audience interested and from the people I have shown the clip to, they have all laughed at the end, which is a good sign for any comedy.

Overall I am pleased with my final outcome and the new skills I have learnt as well as the ones I have developed. I now know how to build, unwrap, rig and animate a character effectively. There as a few changes I would of liked to of changed if I had more time such as the sound’s I have added, although some are very effective, other’s just don’t seem to fit as nicely as I would of liked them to. The overall outcome is something I am pleased with and is an animation I could develop and improve. This particular project is perfect to help me with my future career choice as I character animation is the field I wish to progress into as it excited me the most. I feel like I can now continue to produce more character’s and build a larger portfolio for myself.