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..