VFX - Production

Scene 1: Pieces on black screen

I started off with the first frame of the storyboard and created the geometric shapes with the Pen Tool, so that i could change the size of the shape after I'd created this. I used the pen tool instead of the shape tool, because I feel like the shapes created with the pen tool gives me more freedom to shape the shapes. I used scaling to make it look like the shapes pop onto the screen simply by making them go from 0%, to 150%, and then back to 100%. Doing this over 4-5 frames makes it look the pieces come into existence smoothly, instead of just suddenly being there. I feel like using this effect makes the shapes look more cartoony and playful - it also works better with the music. I made the chimney piece come in a little bit later to show that it played a slightly different role than the other pieces, and to give the pieces a sort of personality - making them act a bit human ads to the feel of it being a childrens movie. To create the smoke coming from the chimney I used the particle playground tool, to essentially just create a stream of visible particles spouting from a certain point on screen. I turned the gravity dial so that the particles would float upwards, and then I played around with scattering, opacity, colour, and frequency, until it looked like smoke floating up from the chimney. This was also to set it apart from the rest a little bit, and make it look playful. I then used positioning, rotation, and the pen tool to make the pieces float off screen in different ways, again, I did this to give them personalities, and to stick to my style of Pixar/Disney. I also used pre-comps with each piece and animation to keep my work space tidy, and to make it easier to keep my animations separate. At the end of the scene I also turned all of the individual compositions into one big one, so that I can move it around easily, and make space for the next scene. 

Scene 2: House and Title

Creating the house itself took ages and four millennia. I created each part of it with the pen tool, and then coloured in based on what I could find on the internet. It has a cartoony feel, and the simplistic lines and colours makes it look very nice a Pixar-y. After saving the entire house as a pre-comp, I carried on the animation of how the pieces move from the previous screen, until they safely landed on the house, so that the house would be completed. After that I made the balloons pop in the same way I did with the pieces in the first scene. I figured this would be a fun way to spell out Pixar, before covering them up with more balloons, and then having the house float away and reveal the title. I feel like this whimsical style really fits the tone of the film, and ads to the sense of strange adventure.

Scene 3: Clouds and Director

I wanted the rest of the title sequence to be about the houses journey through the sky. So in this scene I wanted it to swoop by while revealing the name of the director. The clouds were drawn in Photoshop, and then imported into After Effects as psd files. This allowed me to move them around as I please as transparent layers. I made them move across the screen with a simple position change, as well as the house.

Scene 4: The change from day to night

As well as showing the house travel, I wanted to show that this was a long journey. I did this by doing one long scene where we see the scenery change from a warm sunset to a star filled night. The sun and moon both move with simple positioning, the moon being slightly larger for the larger than life cartoon feel. I also had the name of the co-director here, and just as with the first one I put a mask on it so that the object moving over the text "reveals" it. The background was a gradient, which I set to change hue over a certain amount of time - first from sunset to early night, and then to dark night. I also created a star effect by creating a normal shape with the shape tool, and then applying the Ball Action filter. After playing around with the different settings to make sure that the scale, distance between particles, random movement, etc was correct, I made sure I put expansion to a lower level, so that I could make it expand slowly while the house floats across the sky. I feel like this scene in particular captures the feeling I hoped to portray with the entire sequence - the small explorer in a big world feeling. 

Scene 5: Disney and balloons flying off

Every good adventure has to come to an end, and like in the film this sequence ends when the balloons deflate/ fly off, and the house starts falling down. This was all done by simple positioning, and the text was hidden under the house so that it was revealed when the house fell. I was trying to create a feeling of dawn in the background, as to bring the cycle of day, evening, night, and dawn to an end, but I'm not sure I succeeded completely. 

Scene 6: The End

The end image was drawn in Photoshop and then put into After Effects. The background is a gradient I created to show the morning, and the sun rising on a new day and a new world. All in all I think my title sequence tell the story of adventure, and captures the feeling of the film very well. Accompanied with music from the film, it gives a sense of childish adventure, as well as a cosy feel.


TJ

VFX - Storyboarding and idea

I went through a lot of different ideas before I decided which style and film I wanted to do. After three workshops with Phil, and testing out (and refreshing) my After Effects skills, I decided I wanted to do something minimalistic, and simplistic, with the skills I know very well, instead of trying to create something using 3D and camera effects poorly, as these were very new concepts to me, and not something I was comfortable using yet. I did try to play around with it briefly, but I quickly decided that I could create something better with the skills I was comfortable with. 

I think it was in my fourth lesson that I started looking at different title sequences, and came across the opening of Pixars Monsters Inc.

It's a very simple title sequence, but it still does what it's designed to do, all while keeping true to the cartoony, playful, feeling that Disney and Pixar films inspire in all of us. This is what I wanted to recreate, without copying them. After trying out the different effects shown in the above video I had a rough idea of how to use positioning, scaling, and mask paths to create simple, but effective animations. 

Keeping true to the cartoony feel of other Disney and Pixar films, I decided to do my title sequence to the Pixar film Up. Below you can see the storyboard I drew. 

I decided to start the sequence similarly to how the Monsters Inc opening was, but I then wanted to go into how colourful and adventurous Up is. Considering it is about an old man rediscovering what adventure and youth feels like, I wanted the sequence to be colourful, light, and childish. Starting on a black background with just some pieces of the house, and then turning it into a simplistic narrative about his journey from the darkness to the light jungle - just like in the film. 

TJ

Sound is different from music. The same components are used, yes, 

but sound can make you see so much more.

Hello hello hello, testing testing, 1 2 3. 

So today I set out to record my sounds, and here are the sounds I've decided I want: 

-Tapping that increases in intensity and power.

-Tapping with slightly different sound (made by tapping microphone) -I didn't use this one, too noisy-

-Tapping that resembles a heart beat

-Bomb explosion sound effect, made with voice 

-Bomb dropping sound effect, made by whistling 

-Plane sound effect, made with a fan

I recorded all of them, and most of them sound relatively good. I will absolutely have to edit them slightly, maybe distort some (the whistling for one as the pitch is too inconsistent). 

I also played around with some synth on Garage Band because James and I discussed an earlier piece he had made, were the synth sounded like artillery fire. I tried it out and I got some interesting results, but I also felt like it didn't fit my piece. I will definitely incorporate it in future projects though!

Here's my final piece: 

Final Sound Piece

Now that you've listened to it, I'll tell you what I did to make it sound like that. 

First of all I had to do noise reduction on all of them as my mic records a lot of the buzz around it. (I recorded by my computer, and the whirring from it was on the tracks.) I used the Heavy Reduction preset, as I wanted all of the noise to be removed. 

As I wanted the tapping to be quite loud, and the other sounds to come in naturally and not abruptly, I had to play around with the amplifier. Some tracks, like the tapping and the heart beat I had to amplify, while other tracks like the explosion and the bomb dropping I had to quiet down a bit. In the beginning of the piece I turned them down to about -25db, while later in the clip when I wanted the bombs to be "closer" I turned them to -5db. 

As I mentioned just now, I wanted the bombs and planes to seem far away in the beginning and then come closer. I did this by using an FFT-filter, and putting it to a low pass frequency, so that only the lower frequencies pass through. I curved it, instead of shelving it, as to make it sound like it was coming closer.

And that's about it. I'm quite pleased with my final result. 

-TJ

Can you hear that? Sounds like a sound project. So fresh and audible.

First things first, this is the second time I've ever played around with sound. The first time I was convinced I could create the next big party tune, but alas, Adobe costs money, also, creating a Billboard Top 10 hit takes a lot of time. (Needless to say I benched the project. Watch out though.) 

But this also means that I'm excited to get back to it and play around with actual, professional sound editing software magic. 

Nothing like some fun photoshopping to procrastinating making a blog post. 

Experimental sound project, let's go! 

In our first lesson with James we were told that our piece should be based of an image. We were presented with 8 (I think it was 8, oh well) different images, and among the herd there was one that I recognised. 

"Guernica" by Pablo Picasso 

HISTORY LESSON 

In the spring of 1937 the Spanish Civil War was raging. And long story short, the Republicans, supporting the left-leaning government, fought against the Nationalist forces led by Fransisco Franco. If you know anything about history, then you know that Franco isn't necessarily known as a nice guy. If you need any convincing of why he isn't a nice guy, then you should know that he was supported by both Mussolini and Hitler, two of Europe's least nice guys.  Anyway, Hitler and Mussolini, who both were very right-winged in their political ideologies figured it'd a good idea to have Spain as a ally, but also that this civil war was a great way to test out their weapons, as to show the rest of Europe that they packed some real fire power - essentially one big scare tactic. 

Well, in 1937 Guernica was the next target. Italian and German air-forces bombed the poor city to rubble. It was completely unnecessary. History lesson over. 

I guess I have a certain soft spot for this part of history, as a town were I have roots, Dresden, also was bombed without reason not a mere 10 years later. Anyway, let's get to recording. 

What I want

I have a very clear idea for what I want to create. I want the piece to start out quiet with a steady beat. I then want it to come more and more chaotic, with planes and bombs whizzing by. It's a simple project, but I feel that this is what I hear when I look at this painting. 

-TJ

After effects is enough to drive any sane man to the brink

So the filming went swimmingly, with the help of my girlfriend, a tripod and a camera held upside down. I did this to easily film my feet without having to crouch. I then cut it all together in Premiere Pro, and of course rotated the footage. I'm not showing the step for step of this because I'm assuming that you're strictly interested in what I did in After Effects and not Premiere Pro, as that was last term. 

(I also transported my Premiere Pro sequence to After Effects using dynamic link. Very useful. 10/10 would use again)

So the first thing I had to do was stabalise the footage as it was rather shaky. I wanted to do this though without having to crop too much. I used a tool called Warp Stabilizer VFX, and these settings: 

I had to change these settings slightly after this screenshot to ensure that it also cropped, not only stabilised. I kept all the other settings like this. 

And boy does this take ages. I'm not even sure how long I watched this screen: 

Good thing I've got nice feet.

After I was happy with the stabilisation, I went on to add text, and to make it appear. I chose the point where I wanted the text to exist, and then I added a mask so that I could control when it would appear. 

To make it swipe from left to right I selected Mask Path, and then selected where in the time line the entire text would appear. I used the same effect during the entire film, so that it would have disappeared again by the end. 

These are all the effects I used in my project, because it's all I needed to create my vision, but as I want you to know that I know about them, there are other effects I could've used. For an example the whole concept of Keying, and how to use a green screen, or get the green screen effect without there actually being a green screen. I made a blog post about it right after the lesson because I found it so fascinating. I will most likely use it in future projects. There are also an immense selection of different effects one can add to whatever project. Most of these helpful tools can be found under the window tab, and after that on the right hand side of the screen. 

Sidenote: I wanted to add music to this project. Some tribal drums that would increase in volume, but as I didn't have that idea until the end of the project, (The day before the deadline) I encountered a problem when using the dynamic link and the file was unusable in After Effects. 

This has been my first time using After Effects, and I must say I found it rather difficult at first. It's time consuming, complex, and the possibilities are endless. I've found out that the best way of working with it is to try different things - some work, others don't. There is simply too much stuff you can do for being told all of it, most of it you will discover by accident :) 

Have a wonderful Easter! 

-TJ

being reunited with Phil was absolutely lovely

So when we were first assigned this project, not gonna lie, I thought it sounded like a piece of cake. Walk in the park. Like stealing sweets from a baby. (Theft is bad. Don't steal kids.) But would you look at that, after effects are kinda difficult and complicated! 

Now the theme in itself wasn't very difficult, and that in itself might've been one of the reasons for why I postponed it for so long, and focused on other projects. But I still had this idea swimming around in the back of my mind, I wanted to make a statement about how we as digital artists show you a world that in no way is real. I think that's easy to forget sometimes. I mean, just have a look at our course - Digital Film and Screen Arts. 

What I'm saying is this, humans and technology has come very far. So far in fact, that it's almost impossible to see where one ends and the other begins. And I think that we, film makers, show that as well as any other group of people. Even when we made a documentary we edited, colour corrected, added sound, cropped, and changed what we would then portray as a piece of real life. 

But it's not is it? I keep hearing people say stuff like "We'll fix it in post", "Don't worry about the lighting, I'll colour correct it." "Just pretend you're saying your lines, we can record the actual lines in the studio later, and then overlay them." Are people aware of this? 

So I had my concept, now how would I portray that, and how can I make two screens, and after effects work for me? 

As any good artist I started researching, and I came across loads of artists discussing whether digital art was real art. This wasn't exactly what I was looking for, and after hours of looking I couldn't actually find anything to inspire me for my own statement. After all what I want to achieve is to show people that we we show them as the final product in no way is real. 

I decided that whatever video I ended up making it should be very simple, as to show that even the simplest videos, the ones that look raw and organic, aren't. This is wha t I settled on:

The left video is a video of legs walking around, exploring nature, and in general enjoying life. Something easy, away from machines and computers.

The right video however I have decided will be a screen capture of some of the editing process. This will show how this simple clip has been remastered, and added to. I also want the right video to add to my statement about digital content not necessarily being a true adaptation of life. 

I know this is a text heavy post, but the next one will have pictures of the process. 

-TJ

Oh God, do I feel sorry for whoever hires me as their editor

What particularly interested me about this lesson was the ability to track a certain character or person in a film, and cut them out of the film. It's all called Keying, and you have to use the Keylight effect. You find that in a window on the right hand side of the program. What you do to do this is: 

1. Create a new composition. 

2. Drag the desired clip to that composition (Should be of high quality! Preferably 1080p!)

3. Make sure you double click on you footage, so that it is selected. 

4. Select the Roto-Brush.

(Okay, I was sure I made a screenshot of all of this, but they are all of a sudden not on my hard drive anymore. How rude.) 

5. Use this tutorial on youtube: 

by username MyQualityVideo's

And after all this work, you might be able to make something amazing like this! 

Oh well, it was a lot of fun, and I'm sure I will use this effect in my future projects! 

-TJ

"quality content"

So this is what I made in After Effects today. I liked it.