Narration animatic

I was thinking about giving the character some narration so that it not only gives him more presence but it also further reveals the character's personality more. This particular scene exposes William's innocence and that he's being manipulated by the puppet (Robert).

The dialogue for this scene is "When I was a young man, I've always wanted to make people entertained and to earn a living from it. But this isn't the way I wanted it."



New Animatic from Jack Vanes on Vimeo.

Caroline Leaf

Caroline Leaf animated using sand. She's often nominated for an Oscar and she's known for "Owl who married a goose" made in 1974.

Since Christmas is coming up, we decided to use a lyric based on a Christmas song: "When the snowman brings the snow. Well, he just might like to know."
We used salt as we thought it would make great to use as it replicates the colour of snow.
I found this process to be quite complex as the salt is hard to manipulate. However it is a rather unique way of doing the project.

Here is the final project.


Snowman (2) from Jack Vanes on Vimeo.

Storyboard ideas

Idea one


I was thinking about a hand coming on screen with a lighter. with buildings in the background When the lighter is lit, the hand comes down and the flames cover the screen. Afterwards, the buildings are now all on fire. I was thinking of masking out the buildings, so that I can make the sky turn from night to day in an instant. A snowy or rainy weather could be suitable so that the fire on the buildings go out.

I was thinking of a hand coming on screen to light a candle. The candle then explodes, creating matter. A giant bird, which I will mask out, appears on the screen of fields. The background could then change rapidly.

Here's another idea I had. This involves an animated stickman escaping a dynamic paper on fire in front of a green screen.

Final task: Personal Project Research

I have picked up a book called After Effects Most Wanted by Christian Darkin, Chris James Hewitt, Joost Korngold, Peter Reynolds, Mark Towse and Simon Tyszko. This book is about visual effect artists who are well known for their fine visuals, especially in After Effects. This might provide me with some inspiration for my project as well as knowing new methods of After Effects.


Peter Reynolds
Reynolds started his career in fine arts. He started in Animation and motion graphics. He also worked with traditional art techniques and even some digital based art, which was the time he realized that working on visuals was what he wanted. (Page 6).

Reynolds presents a project which he did for a commercial. It involves combining 2D and 3D elements. He made a spinning dollar coin change into a spinning cap to reveal it is a coca-cola bottle top. While this idea is good for other uses, I don't think this could be useful for my projects.

Mark Towse
Towse is the founder and manager of Bigimpact TV ltd, founded in April 2000. He usually writes for magazines and is one of the UK's top After Effects specialists. He's made many tutorials and articles related to After Effects and DV. (Page 20).

Towse presents a project with a heap of creativity and freedom. He used footage of snowboarders and masked them out and also added some soundtrack. Masking is a good part of visual effects and will probably be used for my project.

Simon Tyszko
Tyszko is a fine artist, filmmaker and photographer. He works mostly at gallery-based artist, in a various rage of media, including neon, video, film, books, glass, fabrics ad assembled objects. He's won a number of rewards for various works including two catagories in the London Photographic awards in 1998. (Page 48).

Tyszko is responsible for creating a dynamic split screen using two different stock footage of cars. This effect is interesting though it seems to not pertain to my project ideas.

Chris James Hewitt

When Hewitt was younger, he found his love for creativity when he started to experiment with the likes of Photoshop. He received a design diploma at Oldham technical college before he was recruited by top northern based design agency Computer Love. (Page 82).

Hewitt uses After Effects' 3D elements to create a high use of detail in light rays. This idea is good and would be nice if I created it for my project so I might take this into consideration.

Christian Darkin

Darkin is a writer, animator and film maker. Darkin made a project in which he created a 3D fish in 3DS Max and then super imposed it onto real footage of the sea to give an impression of the fish actually appearing in the sea. This is the one I found very inspiring. I like the idea of adding an animation onto real life footage.
(Page 174).

Adding to footage




This video involves rotoscoping animation. For its time it impressed its audience as it was one of the very few medias to actually be animated using this technique.


The section of the video that I find most notable is the part where the hand comes out of the comic, implicating animation on real life footage. I particularly like the fact that it doesn't lose its rotoscoping technique when exiting the comic. I might take this into consideration when doing my project.

Oskar Fischinger

Oskar Fischinger was a German animator. He is known for his work on working with excessive colours. He has made an animation which involves stop-motion using a cigarette.

We thought the idea of stop motion and using excessive colours would be a great way to reflect on his work. In my case, I was in charge of the background as I added more paint on it within every frame to make it transform on screen as the cubes move around the stage.


Group Project from Jack Vanes on Vimeo.

The Martian

The Martian is a movie that is full of visual effects. It usually involves a lot of chroma keying as seen in the Behind the Scenes video, most of the action is done in front of a green screen. The movie also involves a lot of colour correction to replicate the atmosphere of Mars.
What makes this more impressive is that the high amount of detail on minor aspects such as the backgrounds.



The movie made a high impact on the critics as this film was well received. The ratings were very well given and the box office was also a big success.

Adding motion blur

Here is a method of adding motion blur highlighted in the training book Adobe After Effects CC 2015 release by Brie Gyncild & Lisa Fridsma (Page 88). This method might be helpful in making the character slide more smoothly across the screen. 

Here is the motion blur used on the skater. This method is not really noticeable and it doesn't add anything new. However, it might help if it was to be used for projects that are at a faster pacing. 

Motion Blur from Jack Vanes on Vimeo.

Character Animation

Here is a scene I have animated that reveals my character's personality. I acted this scene out in front of the class and based on the feedback, this scene would be suited for the character. If I had the chance, I probably would've added more dialogue. And probably would've done better character acting.


Character Animation from Jack Vanes on Vimeo.

Mary Ellen Bute

This weeks work will be based around Mary Ellen Bute. She was known for her moving art, which involved music and colour scores.

For this project, we were put into a group of 4. And each one of us had to do 2 seconds of the soundtrack and then match up later. The soundtrack was the classical Land of Hope and Glory. We decided to use red, white and blue to fit the classical music as it corresponds to the national colours.

I was particularly fond of the video "Spook Sport" in which two triangles dancing around to the classical music playing in the background, which is what I decided to make something similar to that.

Mouth Chart

Here is the mouth chart for my character. This will be needed for the dialogue for the character.

Animatic

Here is the animatic to the animated scene which will reveal the character's personality.
Character Animatic from Jack Vanes on Vimeo.

Chroma Keying and Tracking

I am happy with the results. I thought the chroma keying really worked well meshing into the background. And I thought that the motion tracking method helped with keeping the fire in position with the eyes. Overall, I think this turned out to be excellent. If I could go back, I would have been more precise with the fire in the eyes when she blinks. I also would've played about more with the color correction on the fire as the fire in this video seems a bit too red to me.
Chroma Keying and Tracking from Jack Vanes on Vimeo.

This page from the guide book Adobe After Effects CC 2015 release by Brie Gyncild & Lisa Fridsma (Page 250 and 251) will remind me how the motion tracking method will work in the future and will possibly add further development to it.

Integrating the character.

I have added the skater that I cut out using the mask onto a video of a car moving past. The key was to make the skater jump over the car, which required some tweaking as the skater's transitions as in the original composition, he would not go high enough to get over the car. To make this more intense, I made it so that the skater is just about on the edge of the car, giving the impression that the car was just about missed.


I've also added a motion blur. This was because I was not happy with the fact that the skater was completely solid, whilst the car had a motion blur as it made it seem not correctly synced. In addition I've added a 3D shadow for the first part of the skater. I had to cut out the shadow towards the end and use the transform sub-layer tool to manually animate the end shadow because when the skater landed, the shadow was not within his depth. It made it appear as if the skater was floating in the air.


Overall, the video turned out well. If I could go back, I would have made more progress with the shadow and maybe looked more into the motion blur to make it seem more like the motion blur of the car. Also, I think the shadow may have effected the car in some way, which is what I would have also made a change to.


Jumping Car from Jack Vanes on Vimeo.

Creating the shadow required creating a 3D light, after creating a 3D camera. Then a shape layer is made so that the shadows have something to cast on. Of course, the light needs to be hidden or else it will interfere with the character.
Here is the method I used to cast 3D shadows on the character from the book Adobe After Effects CC 2015 release by Brie Gyncild & Lisa Fridsma (Page 270).

Skater

This task was extremely time consuming and a tedious process. However, the end results were worth it. There are a few bits outstanding on the skater but overall, it turned out better than I anticipated. This was achieved by adding a mask. But not just one mask, 13 masks. Two for the feet, six for the limbs, two for the hands, one for the head, one for the abdomen,  and one for the skateboard. The reason they were split up in masking is because this way, they would be easier to manipulate capturing as much of the character's content as possible. Luckily this didn't need to be done for every frame. I used the transition tool in the sub-layer to create a motion flow silhouette around the skater.

This is the result of all the masking done with a pitch black background. I'm glad with how it turned out. Though I could've done better with the hands and maybe taken away some of the character's interference as in some areas, the background is conspicuous.
Jump from Jack Vanes on Vimeo.

Jan Svankmajer

Jan's Svankmajer's work was based on stopmotion. His animations are usually grotesque and give the audience a creepy feeling. An example would be Jildo. A semi-stop motion film in which human parts are being eaten. We based our idea on this to make it have an even more creepier feeling, displaying human parts as ordinary food. Food Project from Jack Vanes on Vimeo.

JellyFish Pictures Occupation Positions and Roles

These are the job positions in visual effects that I personally find interesting.


Runner
The runner is the starting point in the company. They provide backup and support for the VFX company, usually providing support in the editing department and production office. A person with no experience in the industry would be suited for this occupation to build their way up to gain experience before further going into a higher ranking position.





Animation lead
The Animation Lead is in charge of all the process of creating the visual effect animations that are involved. As well as running the schedule for the animation, they can also participate in it.





Artist
This is pretty straight forward. The visual effects artists create the special effects and clean them up to a suitable standard. Artists are very important as they are the key to creating the visuals that the audience will see on the screen.




Producer
A producer for a visual effects company oversee the schedule and monitor the budget. They are responsible for the reassurance that the artists and the supervisor make the projects in a good timing and quality. The job is very stressful and challenging but it can be quite beneficial in terms of wages.





Co-ordinator
The timing is essential part of the visual effects company. The co-ordinator works in similar ways to the producer and works directly under the supervisor and keeps all the workflow organized and running smoothly. This way, the production will not fall behind schedule.

Supervisor
The visual effects supervisor makes all the creative decisions and works with the director to make sure they get the visual effects that they want.





Creative Director
The creative direction are responsible for directing and supervising the technical stages of visual effects to make the product quality what it needs to be.


Source: http://jellyfishpictures.co.uk/people/