Sunday, 9 April 2017

VFX project



on the first day of phil's lessons we first went into creating a 3d landscape in a 2d photograph using photoshop and after effects, this was very tricky as alot of the programing realied on a well taken photograph but i did end up creating one which worked.

i have a verson on my computer at uni. 

we then learnt how to use cameras in photoshop and use animated layers to create composited landscapes to tranverse through. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-NfaXYFzJk
this made me think of the adventure time opening graphics. 
i really like how this looked with animation. it required moving layers in responce with the camera. i is something i want to use more in my work. 

I then moved onto one of my big influences which was
Saul Bass



i really like the simple vector animation in this opening sequence and it became a big influnce for me. 
I started making simple shapes on after effects to practice with it. 


I really liked the idea of using the light from windows to show something happening in a building. 

i wanted a vector style of something like this and working with a character in the rooms. from looking and practicing with diffrent windows the film came to me 


REAR WINDOW 


i thought this perfectly fitted what i wanted to do. so then i went home to story board what i should do. 

this story board was fairly complicated. if i had more time i would of moved the character to diffrent situations 


my other idea was to work with using a telescope as my camera. have it zoom in and focus ect and have the outside a blurred bigger verson. 


here you can see i liked the bright colours for the window contracted with the black character. 


through practice a made a telecope that worked in class, it could focus and it had blurr around the rim, i did this using layers and maskes to tell what should be effected. 





Then i had a problem, i didnt have time to fully focus on this project so i had to simplify and use assets i could use in my other animaiton. i therefore dicided to focus away from cameras and towards character animaiton. something i really wanted to learn. 


me and phill then talked about duik....he gave me a tutorial to watch. 

https://www.lynda.com/DUIK-tutorials/Looping-walk-cycle/492721/543522-4.html?autoplay=true

this was so usefull and i watched the whole thing ....5 hours :O 

I REALLY LIKE DUIK....ITS A LIFESAVER 


this was my arm animation using the IK rig 
i decided for the walk cycle i wanted i could use the auto rig successfully


this was my first version 

i was good practice and the movement worked fairly well. i felt comfortable doing it with a nicer looking character (no offence mr stick man) 


this is my final character i made in illustator. i think it looks fairly good, i like the stylist look. 



i then animated him using duik in after effects. i started with body and leg position, then foot rotation then arm movement then hand roation 


 i think it went well, it looked fairly smooth, the only issue was the gap between the loops, but phil let me know i could copy the keyframes from the start and that fixed it.

this is how i created the lights turning on and off effect using iluustator layers and oppasity. i tried maskes but i couldnt copy and move masks to make identiical windows. this internet didnt have a easy solution .....if there is one let me know 





this is what it looked like with all the layers put together. i think it looked okay



i will now talk about style, this is something i worked on after the animation but its usefull to say. i really like vector animation, it looks so simple but infact there is so many layers to make it look good, i got inspiration from lots of vector art 








this is the style i love but i want to do this proparly i knew it would take soo long, so i decided to change the style using pen paths and textures in illustator to create a look
this can be seen with the crane, i used this to add depth to the image, i animated it as i thought it was a nice detail. 


i did do the stars with dots at the start but i liked to connect them to my style so looked into more simplistic looking style, i looked good, i drew them all randomly. 



this is the look which came out. i think it looked nice. 


for font i put alot of thought into what style i wanted. 


if i was going to be realist i think im not 100% happy with the font, i think i needed more time to get it great. 



this is how i put in the character. i could change his(her :0 )  speed and position and when they disipeared. i could i flip the character using an effect. 



the rest of the animation was through simple key frames. 



music i wrote in FL STUDIO....i wanted a chilled jazzy feel so used a double bass and celo combo with keys ontop. 

its got quite a few layers.  




what i learnt from this was duik animation, so i think it was very successful for me. i think i am getting better and it is something i want to continue with. but with another idea. 


if i could change something it would be to add in cameras. but i didnt have the time. 

:)