Post Production - Inspiration

I have been browsing the web recently and have come across a couple of cool compositing/3d showreels. It fills me with awe when I see how good these people are at seamlessly integrating
live action and CGI.

Heres one by a guy called David Denly who submitted a showreel to cgcoach. His showreel won him an internship at Double Negative. There, he has worked as a lighting TD on the feature film Paul. Heres his showreel:

VFX Showreel - May 2010 from David Denley on Vimeo.

And heres another which is also very cool..

compositing showReel 2009 from Donald Strubler on Vimeo.

Fun stuff :-)

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The Hoovering - storyboards for our short film

I have spent a few hours today designing these storyboards. I think my drawing has improved as a result of going to a lot of the life drawing sessions. The storyboards are for a short 90 second film we are going to make - a horror spoof about a hoover.
If you click on them they will expand..





I think its quite a funny idea.

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Projected History

Just a quick note to say I have been working on this a bit every week. The model is pretty much done. The texture you see here is temporary, I think I will physically paint a texture and then layer that on. Simon said he would like it looking worn and weathered.



I have quite enjoyed doing this.

25/2/2011 - update

Just when I thought the model was complete..it pulled me back in ! I feel comfortable within my time restraints at the moment, Simon is expecting the ship scene to be complete by the end of term - so in 4 weeks. This has allowed me time to experiment with different modelling techniques. I looked at the model above and thought it would be best to match the front of the ship to my initial reference. This took a surprising long amount of time to do as I had created so many faces and points on the model. In the end I deleted a large chunk of the front of the ship and filled it in again fairly quickly with edge loops. See below.


The rest of the ship still needs sorting out. Ideally, the lines should wrap around the entire structure. I also created some rails that line the deck. Here is a rendered version of the front of the ship.


Here, I tried recreating the ship with nurbs to see the difference. This was pretty straightforward - I just created 4 bezier outlines around and up the ships structure - defining the shape at the front of the ship, then lofted them and created planars for the top and bottom. It took less then an hour to recreate something that had taken me many days! Oh well I guess thats the nature of learning software. To be honest the nurbs ship wouldn't look half as precise if I didn't have the original poly one to model around.

Here is the front of the nurbs ship rendered.


This does look a lot smoother - the way the light bounces off it. But the other one has a bit more character and shape. I also think it would be easier to model the back of the poly ship. Nurbs or polys.. who will win in the end ! Watch this space...

6/2/2011 - Update

I have been very busy recently on my post production project so unfortuantly have not made a great deal of progress on this since the last post. I have modelled the end of the ship with polys now, but the model as a whole still needs to be complete and I would like to try and make a nurbs version again as it does seem to make a much smoother result. So here is my most up to date version:



I have just done a time plan and I would ideally like to aim for a finished model and texture by the end of this week. Leaving next week for the other elements ie. Fog and lighting etc. and the final week for putting it all into the final scene, animating and Rendering.

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Barista update

I've spent most of today on this. Whats changed from the last animatic you ask? Well.. I've done the happy guy again, theres something about the last happy guy that didn't look quite right. I'm happy with the happy guy now. I've also put in where the coffee machine and surface would be in the scene.



Heres the same thing just with slightly altered timing.



I hate to say it but its still not complete. These stickmen take a surprising amount of time to look right and theres a lot of tweeking to do with the vectors so that the lines are always same thickness.

Alex mentioned it'd be nice to get different thicknesses of line in the stickmen to show the weight, but I'm thinking now that it would be more efficient to use the same thickness of line for the body as this would save a lot of time - especially when it comes to animating.

Animating is all thats left to do on this shot. This will probably take another day to do - as I dedicate a day a week to this project - thats another week. I hear rumours that Alex has mentioned something about me doing post production on his project - I look forward to talking to Alex about this..

21/2/2011 - update

I spent a few more hours today on the project just trying to get the animation done. Unfortuantly, I didn't save and Animate Pro crashed so I had to redo a large chunk of the work. I treated this optimistically and re-did the bit of animation more efficiently. It helped having done it already and I used guidelines the second time round to help keep the elbows and armpits in line. I'm finally beginning to use a consistent approach to animating these stick men. The happy guy now moves into his stretched back position..



6/3/2011 - Update

I have spoken to Alex recently and he has said the only way he will get the work flow compatibility to work between our Animate Pro 1 and 2 programmes is to trace over my work. Therefore he has suggested I stop animating and leave it all to him and Alice. I will hand him the movie file from my last animatic and will be put on hold until the post production stage of his project where I have suggested I may be able to help with editing and compositing.

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Post Production - Bins animatic

I spent my time today incorporating our ideas into an animatic for our Bins project:



It was fun, especially to get them into the air and flying. Its a work in progress animatic - I think I will update it as we go along trying out different looks. I've put all our ideas into this and it might be best to make it a bit more subtle and simplify it a bit. Our final bins will be 3D so they'll look very realistic. I should bear this in mind when it comes to designing the other elements.

At the moment I'm thinking it will be good to have the leaves look like they have been stenciled/graffitied on so they will merge in better with the texture of the bin. Another option would be to make them look like real life leaves. The arms could be like corrugated piping extending out. I'm quite happy with the eyes - Ryan showed me how to do this inner glow effect in Photoshop.

I'm happy we did this idea, it's pretty fun - hopefully we can pull it off.

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Cinematography - notes and reference on shots

We are currently on a 10 week (1 day p/week) cinematography course taught by Frankie Keung. We have been learning a lot about how to operate the cameras, different kinds of shots, lighting, and different roles in production. This is in order to strengthen our animations with a deeper understanding of film.

Below I have posted the notes I have taken throughout Frankies lectures. We are lucky to have him as our teacher as he has worked a lot in the industry and is keen to share his wisdom :)









Here I have posted up a page from a 'how to make films' guide that came free with The Guardian a while back. This page is a very useful and interesting guide to the different shots used in film making.



And a page out of the book: Film directing shot by shot by Steven D. Katz.



Soon we are going to be making our own 90 second films. For this I will be working with Emily, Laurence, Miguel, Ryan, Sasha and Alice. It will be good to have a hands-on experience of making a film.

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Double Negative presentation

A very insightful talk was given to us today by Double Negative - a VFX studio based in Soho and Singapore. Alex Wuttke the head of 3D showed us some of the 'making of' behind Inception - I really have to see this film now - it looks cool!

Hannah Acock - Double Negatives recruitment manger - also gave us some very helpful insider advice and tips on what they are looking for in our showreels. It sounds like tough competition to get in as they receive 150 showreels every week! Still, they make a point of watching them all so thats slightly reassuring. The entry position jobs are: Runner, Roto Artist and Matchmover. I would be fine doing any of these as its a foot in the door and I think ultimately you could end up doing whatever aspect of VFX you enjoy doing the most - it could be a bit of everything ie. Modelling, Texturing and Lighting. Or just one thing ie. fx arist or animator.

They also said they come in some productions at an early stage and work on concept designs and pre-visualation. Some other films they have done include Quantum of Solace, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part one, Stardust, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, Kick-Ass and Iron Man 2. Alex said that some perks of the Job include visiting the film sets (this means you get to travel - this could be good or bad depending on where you go!)

It can be amazing how much effort Directors put in to special effects as well. (Special effects are actual effects done within the production - ie. pyrotechnics) And the length Christopher Nolan went to get real looking footage. Theres a model which they created for one scene of Inception thats acually 2 stories high. Just to blow it up! (Actually it may be in more then 1 scene - I'm not sure as I haven't seen the film yet..)



So overall, Double Negative helped produce 500 shots towards Inception, 250 people worked on it (in 2D, 3D and Production.) It took 14 months and cost $20 million. This is just a small portion of the total $160 million spent on the entire film. Incidentally as I have mentioned money here, someone asked about the salaries of the entry level jobs and it is around £14 k p/year for runners and just under £20 k p/year for Matchmovers and roto artists. Thats pretty good I think..

I asked about the working environment - Alex said that at times it can be quite vocal and social - but on the same level everyone is focused in on their work so theres a healthy balance. He said its friendly and cool ^^

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Bins - post production update

Today Ryan and I managed to put a 3d cube into a live action setting:



It took a little while to remember the exact way of doing it but ultimately its quite a straightforward process:
-Do automatic tracking using Matchmover
-Bring in the footage into Maya
-Place your 3d object in the appropriate place looking through the original camera you took the footage with.
-Do a point constraint on some of the key tracking points that are where you want to place your object to or near.

Insa has now dropped out of our group - nothing personal - just that she wasn't really fully into it. Also I think Andy was without a group and Insa suggested that they could work together. Insa said she was cool about leaving her designs towards our project:





Here are some more drawings I did earlier trying to incorporate all of our ideas.





I have a good idea now that incorporates all our ideas which I will work up an animatic for. Today, Ryan started texturing the bin in Maya - its looking gooood :)

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Post Production - Bins

We have decided to go for the first idea/flash of inspiration I had.. To make these bins fly into the air. It looks as though these bins have always wanted to do great things so I'm happy we're going to make it happen ^^ I will be working with Ryan and Insa on this.



Ryan has started modelling the bins whilst Insa and I have been designing what the bins could possibly look like as they come to life. Here are my drawings:







Heres a rough plan of action:



I have also begun to experiment with matchmover and some rough footage which I will continue doing tomorrow. Using a combination of Matchmover and Maya its possible to put live action footage into a 3d scene and mix it with 3d animation. Pretty cool stuff!

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Barista update

update 09/02/2011

I have spent a full day today reworking the animation based on further feedback from Alex on my last animatic. He said that the happy guy goes on a bit too long (originally he gave me 80 frames to work with, but said we could add more time if necessary - I think I added too much..)This is unfortunate as I really like his happy little jiggle!

Today I redrew some new poses for the happy chap and tried to complete the final key frames. This time keeping in mind everything Alex has said and given us about the proper way to draw stickmen! So below is a semi finished piece (lacking the actual animation, final touches and timing adjustments.) I hope to complete this on Friday.

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Barista progress

I have spent today working on Barista. Alex has given us a PDF which he created on how to draw stickmen which is very handy. He has also given us the script which has helped enlighten me on the story that we will be animating. I think it will look real nice visually.

After some feedback from Alex, I have started to re-plan the Act 1 Scene 1 stickmen response to their lattes. I think the bit of animation I produced before was a bit lifeless and dull so this morning I took some video reference of me acting out the happy and agitated stick men:



From this I have drawn out thumbnail sketches of possible moves for the stick men. Alex has said how he would like an over the top approach to the cartoon stick men. These drawings should be very useful in capturing their varying emotional responses in preparation for the animation.











So I took a few of my favourite poses (ie. the body wiggle!) and applied it to the stick men. This is just an animatic.. Hopefully I will be able to make it final before next week. I worked differently to the way I did before, more freely - sketching it all out.

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