Week 4:
I spent this week working with Daisy to get the proposal ready. We got most of the writing and research part written up in class time and I stayed back a little after class just to finish it all off and do some referencing. I just used a basic Photoshop template and saved it in Daisy's temp storage so we could both access it and therefore all the pdf pages will look the same style.
Over the next week I intend to have the storyboards drawn up, with collaboration between Daisy and I so I am drawing the right things from the right angles.
Week 5:
I finished drawing the VFX boards up and gave them to Daisy to fill in the writing. I then started on the Concept piece. To do this I modeled the mountains in Maya and messed around with Toon Shader until I had colours that I liked. Then I took a photo of Connor (the actor) in a pose as if he was a bit unbalanced and on a moving mountain. I took the photo into photoshop and rotoscoped over it. After that I messed around with blur effects and layer opacity, as well as the liquify tool to make cool light effects and to give the sky an unearthly feel to show the colourful, psychedelic style that we are aiming to achieve. Unfortunately for me, I forgot to check the assignment guidelines before I started the concept piece and, in a lapse of judgement, I used the same size page as I made the written part on-which was A4.
It was only after completing the piece that I noticed this. I couldn't just change the image size because it would always stretch oddly. I also tried to save it out and then import it into a HDTV scene and make it scale in proportion, but I didn't like how that looked either because it messed with the composition, meaning I lost a lot of elements that I had spent a long time working on and I had liked in the image. Finally, I decided that I would simply just pull in all of the elements that I had made into a new file that was in HDTV size individually and see if I could edit them each so I could keep all of the elements that I liked as well as have it in the right format. I did that, and it worked.
We went out to film all of the outdoor shots on the Friday morning. We found a spot by the beach that we quite liked. The spot had an uneven ground and a rough, rustic sort of look about it. Luckily, we avoided the rain and it worked out that we managed to capture the dull, grey day that we were hoping we would get. Daisy worked the camera because I was afraid to handle equiptment worth more than all of my assets combined. We refered to the story boards for the shots we would need and, I think, we managed to get everything we went for. We plan to film at least some of the green screen shots next week, the aim is to compile all of the footage and assets that we need so we have as much time as possible to work on making it look good.
Week 6
I began to model the eye-plants that grow into the scene. I did this in Maya. Unfortunately, my Maya account began to play up as it had done in the beginning of the second semester. Every time I try to set the project the whole program crashes. This meant that I couldn't do any more modelling until it was fixed.
Week 7
Maya began to work for me again, so I finished uv unwraping the EyePlant. I put a texture on it.
I decide that I wanted to try put a simple rig in one of the eyes because I want to have control over the movement. I don't know how to do this or how well it will work so it's a bit of an experiment.
I began to rotoscope the first shot. I imported the clips into ToonBoom Harmony. I regretted our decision to rotoscope about six panels in. I didn't mind the repetitiveness too much, but it did annoy me when I was used to photoshop and I was trying to use ToomBoom which doesn't seem to have as much variety in terms of drawing tools. I felt like I was working inefficiently and it irritated me.
I finally finished the first shot of rotoscoping though!
Week 8
I'm slowly getting through the rotoscoping. It's tedious but I'm happy enough with it so far. I tried to render out a shot of the mountains but the render just came out black. I wanted to try put the lot together to try and see what the result looked like, but now I'm hungry so I'm gonna eat instead.
Week 9
I just kept rotoscoping. I moved on to the shot with the hands coming out of the eyes, which proved to be one of the more complicated shots. I decided I would just draw in the hands from my imagination, using other peoples hands and my own as a vague reference. Even though hands are my least favorite thing to draw because I've always really struggled with them, I managed to sort of figure it out. I still haven't got it done but overall, I'm relatively happy with how the line-work is looking so far. It looks very unrealistic, but considering the scene, that is the style that I am going for anyway.
Week 10-11
I finished rotoscoping finally, but now I've finished I kind of wish I could go back to it because now Maya is being temperamental again. I am struggling with combining the eyes and the mountain together. I also can't open the content browser because everytime I try to Maya crashes again. I don't think the content browser is very important though because I don't think we will have time to animate the sky moving anyway as I still have to do more with the eyes, which I haven't even attempted yet., and am a bit afraid to even try.
Apart from Maya, we are pretty good with everything else, I just have to make a space background, which I will do as I struggle with Maya. I will do this on Photoshop because it's just far less complicated and I'm annoyed with Maya enough by this point.
I'm hoping that it will start working for me soon.
I came up with some ideas to help troubleshoot/avoid all the issues that I am having with Maya. I am attempting to see if they work this weekend. Mostly it is down to cut scenes and stuff and this will hopefully mean I will be able to show the same animations, I'll just be able to do it in a way that is simpler, and hopefully as effective. I am hoping to have animated and rendered all of the final Maya elements by the end of this weekend, if all goes well.
Week 12-14
I have finished all of the Animation which I have also edited into a clip! Daisy is editing the live-action footage together now with the animated clip now. I have a friend who does music who asked if I had anything she could help work on earlier in the year because apparently they are encouraged to work with screen arts students. I asked her if she would like to be involved with this clip and she said she is eager to try and make some sounds for us. I got the animated clip to her when I finished it but once the full thing is rendered I will give her a copy of the whole thing to refer to.
We will hopefully have some sounds within the next couple of weeks and then we can put it all together and render it out as the finished product!
Week 14-16
We got some sounds from one of the music students. She put them onto a rough protools session, but then there was some weird cross over thing between how the different computers read the files because it was made in a different version of protools so I got one of the audio students to help me fix it and find all of the missing sound files. After that I edited together the sounds before asking the same audio student to look over it and make sure I had it sounding Ok before I exported it. Then we were done the entire thing so I chilled out in the sun.
I spent this week working with Daisy to get the proposal ready. We got most of the writing and research part written up in class time and I stayed back a little after class just to finish it all off and do some referencing. I just used a basic Photoshop template and saved it in Daisy's temp storage so we could both access it and therefore all the pdf pages will look the same style.
Over the next week I intend to have the storyboards drawn up, with collaboration between Daisy and I so I am drawing the right things from the right angles.
Week 5:
I finished drawing the VFX boards up and gave them to Daisy to fill in the writing. I then started on the Concept piece. To do this I modeled the mountains in Maya and messed around with Toon Shader until I had colours that I liked. Then I took a photo of Connor (the actor) in a pose as if he was a bit unbalanced and on a moving mountain. I took the photo into photoshop and rotoscoped over it. After that I messed around with blur effects and layer opacity, as well as the liquify tool to make cool light effects and to give the sky an unearthly feel to show the colourful, psychedelic style that we are aiming to achieve. Unfortunately for me, I forgot to check the assignment guidelines before I started the concept piece and, in a lapse of judgement, I used the same size page as I made the written part on-which was A4.
It was only after completing the piece that I noticed this. I couldn't just change the image size because it would always stretch oddly. I also tried to save it out and then import it into a HDTV scene and make it scale in proportion, but I didn't like how that looked either because it messed with the composition, meaning I lost a lot of elements that I had spent a long time working on and I had liked in the image. Finally, I decided that I would simply just pull in all of the elements that I had made into a new file that was in HDTV size individually and see if I could edit them each so I could keep all of the elements that I liked as well as have it in the right format. I did that, and it worked.
Here is a photo of a rotosoped Connor peeping out from behind some mountains. I thought it was funny.
We went out to film all of the outdoor shots on the Friday morning. We found a spot by the beach that we quite liked. The spot had an uneven ground and a rough, rustic sort of look about it. Luckily, we avoided the rain and it worked out that we managed to capture the dull, grey day that we were hoping we would get. Daisy worked the camera because I was afraid to handle equiptment worth more than all of my assets combined. We refered to the story boards for the shots we would need and, I think, we managed to get everything we went for. We plan to film at least some of the green screen shots next week, the aim is to compile all of the footage and assets that we need so we have as much time as possible to work on making it look good. Week 6
I began to model the eye-plants that grow into the scene. I did this in Maya. Unfortunately, my Maya account began to play up as it had done in the beginning of the second semester. Every time I try to set the project the whole program crashes. This meant that I couldn't do any more modelling until it was fixed.
Week 7
Maya began to work for me again, so I finished uv unwraping the EyePlant. I put a texture on it.
I decide that I wanted to try put a simple rig in one of the eyes because I want to have control over the movement. I don't know how to do this or how well it will work so it's a bit of an experiment.
I began to rotoscope the first shot. I imported the clips into ToonBoom Harmony. I regretted our decision to rotoscope about six panels in. I didn't mind the repetitiveness too much, but it did annoy me when I was used to photoshop and I was trying to use ToomBoom which doesn't seem to have as much variety in terms of drawing tools. I felt like I was working inefficiently and it irritated me.
I finally finished the first shot of rotoscoping though!
Week 8
I'm slowly getting through the rotoscoping. It's tedious but I'm happy enough with it so far. I tried to render out a shot of the mountains but the render just came out black. I wanted to try put the lot together to try and see what the result looked like, but now I'm hungry so I'm gonna eat instead.
Week 9
I just kept rotoscoping. I moved on to the shot with the hands coming out of the eyes, which proved to be one of the more complicated shots. I decided I would just draw in the hands from my imagination, using other peoples hands and my own as a vague reference. Even though hands are my least favorite thing to draw because I've always really struggled with them, I managed to sort of figure it out. I still haven't got it done but overall, I'm relatively happy with how the line-work is looking so far. It looks very unrealistic, but considering the scene, that is the style that I am going for anyway.
Week 10-11
I finished rotoscoping finally, but now I've finished I kind of wish I could go back to it because now Maya is being temperamental again. I am struggling with combining the eyes and the mountain together. I also can't open the content browser because everytime I try to Maya crashes again. I don't think the content browser is very important though because I don't think we will have time to animate the sky moving anyway as I still have to do more with the eyes, which I haven't even attempted yet., and am a bit afraid to even try.
Apart from Maya, we are pretty good with everything else, I just have to make a space background, which I will do as I struggle with Maya. I will do this on Photoshop because it's just far less complicated and I'm annoyed with Maya enough by this point.
I'm hoping that it will start working for me soon.
I came up with some ideas to help troubleshoot/avoid all the issues that I am having with Maya. I am attempting to see if they work this weekend. Mostly it is down to cut scenes and stuff and this will hopefully mean I will be able to show the same animations, I'll just be able to do it in a way that is simpler, and hopefully as effective. I am hoping to have animated and rendered all of the final Maya elements by the end of this weekend, if all goes well.
Week 12-14
I have finished all of the Animation which I have also edited into a clip! Daisy is editing the live-action footage together now with the animated clip now. I have a friend who does music who asked if I had anything she could help work on earlier in the year because apparently they are encouraged to work with screen arts students. I asked her if she would like to be involved with this clip and she said she is eager to try and make some sounds for us. I got the animated clip to her when I finished it but once the full thing is rendered I will give her a copy of the whole thing to refer to.
We will hopefully have some sounds within the next couple of weeks and then we can put it all together and render it out as the finished product!
Week 14-16
We got some sounds from one of the music students. She put them onto a rough protools session, but then there was some weird cross over thing between how the different computers read the files because it was made in a different version of protools so I got one of the audio students to help me fix it and find all of the missing sound files. After that I edited together the sounds before asking the same audio student to look over it and make sure I had it sounding Ok before I exported it. Then we were done the entire thing so I chilled out in the sun.
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