Final Shot

This is my final shot which I made up using footage of a hand opening and particle effects to represent petals and the magical 'energy' of the galuppis, conveyed the idea that 'the future is in our hands' - we just have to act to do something about it - which goes back to the original concept of the film and something that Sal wanted to convey with this film is, i think, clearly summed up here.

A Toccata of Galuppis

I sat with chris and sal and helped them grade their sections and apply film effects. The colours work nicely i think, but we had to be careful not to overdo it and lose the original colour schemes.

I did the credits in after effects using text animation presets to fade them in and out, with a particle generator layer similar to the one i created before, and animated it behind to make the credits a but more dynamic and less dull!

This is the final film that we will hand in on friday. I'm very happy with what we have produced, despite the set-backs which we have encountered along the way. Congratulations to all involved and good luck to us all!

my section finished

Well, it seems I'm pretty much there with my section. Sal is happy with it and so am I! The post production I did on my section includes film grain and a gradient which I tweaked so that it was different but not so much so that it looked out of place from the other sections.

Montage/penultimate shot

This was the montage shot and sal wanted a montage of real life footage of key events and issues in todays modern society, for example, riots, deforestation etc, to be integrated somehow into the animation. I tried many things, first of all, blending various bits of sourced footage into the background behind the explosion. But then decided to carry them on into another shot. The result was this sidescrolling shot where the montage is being played in the background and I had the idea to use those environments I had rendered out from vue all that time ago as landscapes scrolling by.

The Particle layer for this shot was really just an afterthought. I felt that the shot lacked point lacked something - a focus or point of interest as to why the camera was moving in the way that it was. Therefore I decideded to animate the particle layer to follow the camera and represent the 'hope' of the Galuppis, which would lead nicely into the final shot of my section and indeed the film..

rendertest of first shot (3rd section)

Droplet destruction

I had been instructed to create an explosion, or rather a shattering effect for this next shot. This was to symbolise the fragility of the love and compassion which these mythical creatures have and the destruction of that love. Initially I was going to work with particles, or perhaps even in 3d to make the shattering, but I decided that it would be more interesting to have something more fluid, so I began to stack up layers of ink drops above a background of time-lapse clouds and was very pleased with the resulkts after much experimentation to get the right look..

droplet forming and falling

This is the second shot of my section for which i am creating a water droplet in vue, because i can animate the surface easily with a moving water texture to make it a bit more dynamic that just working with a still image. I then went to after effects and began to layer up footage of moving smoke and ink above a texture and play around with blending modes and effects until i had created what i thought was adequate for this section. After animating the change of teh the petal into the droplet I went to Sal and stated that to do another transition inbetween into a heart, as previously planned, may be too drawn out in terms of movement and pace of the this part of the film, therefore we agreed to leave it as just one transition -the petal turning into the droplet.

First shot of 3rd Section - particle generators and time lapse clouds

Here are some renders of my first shot which I have made purely in after effects using particle generators and animating each petal falling individually.
We asked our tutors whether we could make the film more of a moving image piece with elements of animation and they agreed that this weas ok. And so we began to source various bits of footage of skies, time lapse clouds and sunsets to composite into the film, which you can see in the background in my first shot.
I wanted to make this shot, and most of my section rather dramatic, as it is the final section of the film and so provides the climax after the crecendo.

A New Animatic

Here is a new animatic we have devised. The film is now split into 3 contrasting sections with each of the core 3 of us working on a section each (the first two in teh first video and my section in the second). My section is split up into these shots:
1: frangipanni flowers and petals falling as a result of the explosion from the previous shot in sal's section
2: a petal falling and turning into a heart
3: the heart now turning into a teardrop
4: the teardrop falling and shattering into a dramatic explosion
5: a montage of human destruction, violence and and environmental issues
6: the final shot of hope which has yet to be devised.

The main themes we want to convey in this new piece are similar to the first but will now be conveyed with different imagary; not so much character based. we want to show that these creatures; the galuppis that our original characters are based on are RARE because of the the amount of human destruction that is present in the world, and to convey a message of hope for change through delicate, beatiful imigary.

A New Direction

Upon showing our tutor Dan Dalli our test shot with Ajdin's model, he confirmed my initial thoughts that the model of the character was not right for the film and did not go witht the original concept. He offered to re-model the characters, only one of which we had seen but by that point we were not confident that we could rig and animate the characters within the timeframe to complete the film, due to the fact that on the whole as a group our strengths lie in other areas. We were therefore advised to re-design the film, practically from scratch, safe in the knowlege that the work we had done thus far would not be completely irrelevent, but now confident that we could complete the film using our strengths; them being 2d animating, compositing and special effects.
These are some images that form a mood board for the new direction of the film, which is now not so linear, but instead will be representational, abstract and visually dynamic rather than having a character based narrative..

Working with Ajdin's model

Here, me and sal have worked on a test shot to establish compositing techniques and visual style using an animated version of ajdin's model which sal has animated in Maya, and which we have put into after effects along with various layers including clouds animated in Vue6.

Model From Ajdin and updated animatic

These are the models from Ajdin. On first glance I found the model of the male character a little overbearing but definately done to a high standard. I am a little worried that it may not fit in with the original concept of the film but we have yet to see the female character and im sure that we can change aspects of it as we work woth it if needs be. Now we have got one model we are going to immedietly start rigging and animating and do some test renders..

Animatic

We have also been working on the animatic, using backgrounds I generated in vue and then simple animation in after effects, in conjunction with Photoshop, of different layers to convey a block out of character and camera movement.. I put all the rendered assets into sony vegas for quick and easy editing to sync them up with a tune..

Working With Vue Continued..

Here I have begun to design an environment in vue with instructions from the director. Based a basic shot blockout I have tailored the environment to include these. It includes one of the characters diving off a cliff where the 'birthing tree' resides, and landing at the bottom of a waterfall, and then a side tracking shot of the character running alongside a river which I have sculpted into the ground plane (see screenshot). I have done a few different variations with the atmospheres and terrain. The results are beautiful but whether we are using them still has to be confirmed. Also we do not yet know whether we can import animations into vue's 3d workspace from maya, so perhaps we will just use 2d elements rendered from vue to make up layers and composite them in after effects..

Inspiration - The Tale of How

Environment design blockouts; working with Vue

I've started working with E-on software's Vue 6 Infinate, a standalone 3d package for designing and rendering environments. This software is extremely powerful and yet vewry easy to use. Therefore its nice to use for environment blockouts, although its very easy to get carried away and just make things that look pretty! At this stage I am just experimenting, seeing what I can produce and it may or may not be used in teh eventual film.

Concept Work

Although I am not actually down to be doing concept work, Sal the Director, has stated that everyone's ideas are welcome in producing what he wants to be a dynamic artistic piece. We feel that if we get a general branding idea for the film, the visual style and artistic direction will develop more easily and with more definition and precision!

Research Images

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Some preliminary research material for the pre-production process. or 'Mood board'

We all love this music video for its post production and special effects. The write on effect witht the lyrics of the song is particularly interesting and may be something to consider taking inspiration from and doing a similar thing with visualising the lyrics of the poem that we are working from later on. We have also taken note of the smoke and particle effects, texturing and grading as we all really like it.

Documenting my progress of working within a group to make a short film for my final year of animation at Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication