BSA227, rough cut of With Her, 30 September, 2016

Rough Cut 30 September

Parth pushed through and did a rough edit of our shots today.  Now I can do a test shot of the rotoscoping and have a crack at masking to create the hand coming out of the table effect.  Fingers crossed for that...

BSA227, photo touch up, 29 September, 2016

original 

touched up

I did some basic touch up work in PS on Josh and Suvarna's heads.  Besides the practice, we may be able to use this photo in With Her in the credits.

BSA227, filming With Her, 29 September, 2016

I got permission to film in the dining room of Gilmour House on St. John's Girls' School's campus.  Parth and I taxied the equipment in Friday night and dressed the room with furniture from the lounge and stuff from my room. 

I got to dress the set with lots of my drawings.  Fortunately, I had brought home stuff from school and had plenty of it lying around.  Everybody helped me move out after we finished filming, so the timing was very good.

Parth, NOOOOO!!!!  This is an element that was added on the day which I hope is not going to mean huge continuity headaches in editing. We didn't establish when anything was happening, so I'm sure that clock is going to spin around from time to time. Parth wanted him to die at 12, but we didn't manage to do it and had to settle for 10.10.

S1

S2

S3

S5

S6

S8

S10 We're dropping the hand close up and going straight to the caress.  It's really lovely.  This is the first rotoscoped scene. 

S11  The other great thing about this location was the collection of 5 wedding dresses in the dress up box.  This was my favourite, and Suvarna's, too.

S12  Dan asked "Is it you?" in french which gave the scene a really nice feeling.  Josh reckons we should do all the dialogue (there isn't much) in French.  People will still understand what's happening. 

S13  I'm going to test rotoscoping/photoshopping on this frame.

Suvarna posted this photo of herself and I'm inspired to get our rotoscoping this high contrast and good, especially on her face.  It may require going frame to frame in PS or doing a  special mask on her face in after effects.  

S14  Suvarna did her line in English and French, but she's so quiet and the room ambience is so loud we're going to have to do  ADR.  And today is the day I realized we'd need music, anyway.  I just don't think about audio...

S15  Parth decided to shoot these dancing sequences from outside.  As long as we can get it edited so you don't see the section of the room that we didn't clear, I'll be happy.

S16

S17

S20  This shot of Dan collapsing into the chair is going to be tricky because Suvarna is obscured by the bush, but not totally.  I'll have to select little bits for rotoscoping and hope it won't look patchy.

S21

S22

S24 This is our only really complicated shot.  I draped Josh in green which may be irrelevant after I isolate his hand with a mask.  We filmed a clean shot of the set without actors.  Let's see if we can do this!

S25  A rare treat: Josh Clive sans hat.  I ponytailed his hair and stuffed it down his collar.  I'll have to fix the stray hairs in post-production.  Hopefully, there won't be many frames to fix.

S25  I'm not sure how the rotoscoping is going to look on figures who are this close to the camera- could be ok, could look like a giant blob.  It's short, though, so should work out.

S25  As we were filming Dan "dying", his hand kept flopping down which was a much more effect "dead" look than a facial close up.  Plus, you can see that he's got the drawing of the bride on the table  during those close up and I'm trying to avoid cleaning up picky little things in post.  Fix it in camera, I say!  Save the effort for the complicated stuff.  I got to push the hand truck when we tracked this shot in on Dan's face and hands.  Ha ha!  What job title will I get to add to the list for that?

 Our filming day was 9 to 1 with Suvarna and Dan acting for us and Josh also acting and doing some shots/audio with Parth. And we finished just a few minutes before 1.  Yay!  Then I cooked bacon and eggs for the crew and pumpkin soup for suvarna.  Then everybody helped me move out!  Such an incredibly busy day.

BSA227, Nuke tutorial, 21 September 2016

click on lower empty aread- node graph
hit s to change frame rate to 25 and to HD1080.  Under black viewing box, it will say that HD 1080 is on.
start with viewer node, always there when opening Nuke for the first time.
importing footage in Nuke, create a node to read where the file is.
side icons open menus
arrow opens read, importing an image, and write when you want to export the film
rotoscoping in second menu that looks like a candy corn icon
peace sign has colour correction tools
circle with mesh icon for filters like blur
keying stuff under dropper icon

right clicking grey area will bring up same menus without icons.  Can also use shortcut keys like R for read.
can also press tab and then type in what you're looking for.
read node then single click way to where things are kept.
Nodes read downwards.
files will show up when node tree gets hooked up.
second file connection means both get numbered which you can switch between by hitting their numbers on the keyboard
If you want rock on top of the footage, you need to insert

insert blur node by selecting shot and then clicking on blur.  Can use all the ways of looking up nodes and the connection will be made.
select node to have it's menu on right side come out on top.  tiny orangey slider next to "size" changes blur on the picture.
on frame one, with slider at zero, right click harry potter scar icon to right and set key frame in blue.


practice and play with Nuke to see what you can get
next to node graph and curve editor is dope sheet.  Key frames show up here and can be moved around.
 to see rock, create node- M is shortcut and merges multiple elements together

select rock and hit t for transform
rifle site shows up which can be pulled to resize the rock
when exporting, bring in a write node and place it just above viewer.  Nodes are always read from top down.

reformat node when  a clip doesn't fit the size of the composition
select the offending click, tab and type reformat, select that and it will pop in and sort out the size of the off clip

roto node:  bring it in and let it sit for a bit.  sub icons will pop in at left hand menus.  choose spline? to click around item you want masked off.  when mask is completed, Ben will disapper and lamp remains.   go to bezier1 layer under roto root and hover over orangey box until it says not inverted. select it to invert and Ben will reappear.
color correct node goes between keylight and merge so only green screen layer is affected.  Lots more options for correction than in AE.

BSA228, UI and UX design for games, 20 September, 2016

UI (user interface) UX (user experience) HUD (Heads Up Display)

Writer Rumble, my favourite video game (because mahjong has no street cred)

Basic rules:  10 seconds of interest, then they're gone, three clicks to get the info they want or they're gone.    There's just too many websites/games out there and the player is going to move on to the one that's easiest and most intuitive to use.
Think about psychology of colour and shape when designing UI

mock them up in photoshop first and test them before making them in unity/maya?
slice tools in Photoshop then file- export  and save for web (legacy) them all at one time. in settings save at PNG24 to keep transparency around the icon.  save as buttons

rectangle tool (default) has a menu of icons in it so you can choose arrows, circles, all sorts, for the UI

putting it into unity means loading it in through the camera, into an assets folder, game object, UI, load in?  I'm lost.  Will google that when it's time


For my game, I will make a curio box bar that opens up when the curio cabinet is clicked on.  It will show all of the things that have been collected.

https://www.designmantic.com/blog/infographics/the-10-commandments-of-ui-design/

download cinema image effects for unity- free download to finish off the look of the game

3rd Year Program
Full year
personal project (worth 3 papers)
Professional practices- (worth 2 papers)
  - research based on personal project
  - internship
Advanced Animation (may only be one semester)
Screen Arts 3 (contemporary practitioners)

First Semester
Group Project- management

BSA206, Review Pink Floyd's The Wall, 20 September, 2016

1982
Directed by Alan Parker
animation direction by Gerald Scarfe
screenplay written by Roger Waters

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084503/?ref_=nv_sr_1

review of The Wall
I've heard some of the music before (Young Lust, Another Brick in the Wall, Comfortably Numb)
and a lot has been said about it, but this is the first time I've seen the whole thing.
Main themes: social isolation, loss of father/family, suppression by the authorities (school, government)
does animation work well within the film
what genre or mix of genre would you say the film belongs to?
Musical, fantasy, dystopic science fiction, war drama

BSA228, Lulu texturing and rigging, 19 September, 2016

 Rachel walked me through rigging and weighting in Maya ext.2  The auto rig function wasn't working for my figure but the old way isn't that slow.  Not for Rachel, anyway.  Lulu has a thumb and one finger to control her "mitten hands".  I still need to work on the ear weight, but the head looks good.

I textured it long slow way by choosing faces and then assigning materials because I can't remember how to get it into photoshop for colouring.  Well, this did plenty, but there are still areas on her back that should be fur and are still the dress fabric.  Now that I see her in 3D, I think I want her to have striped socks.  So I'll have to figure out Photoshop for texturing anyway.

BSA228, Art Portfolio assignment, 19 September, 2016

Assignment two: Art Portfolio

The art portfolio should be an extension of your proposal and should contain concept art and research so the view can see where the concept has developed and final high quality renders of all your assets. Your art portfolio should show a highl level of expertise and be presented as a professional game art portfolio. Your characters should also include front, side and ¾ animation reels which reflect your motion tree designs, which should include turnaround, idle, walk, run etc.

This proposal should cover:

Characters:

• Concept art and research
• Printed turnarounds
• Animated turnarounds
• Must include items needed for your motion trees.
• Must be light and rendered to a high quality
• Character design must be match the look and feel of the game and your research
• Characters must appeal to your intended target audience
• Animation must be smooth with all pops ironed out.
• Animation must be weighted correctly

Environment/props:

• Concept art and research
• Printed turnarounds rendered to a high standard
• All items should be complete and textured
• Artist development must reflect your intended style
• All items must be technically professionally finished and ready for unity

BSA215, comic research, 17 September, 2016

amelia Earhart's plane (obviously, not the one she disappeared in) at the Smithsonian

I don't draw planes and I'm not going to spend any time practicing when I've got 16 pages of a comic to format and finalize for the pencils hand-in Monday, so I'm tracing over them.  And a little bit of her, as well.  Bad form, yes, but needs must.

BSA227, rotoscope test for "With Her", 14 September, 2016

 Contact details for our "old man" actor.  We're going to skip shooting in the green screen room because we are no longer going to burden ourselves with making a room in Maya and syncing it into the camera with Nuke.  Are we Copping Out?  Let's just say we're going to concentrate on making the film better as opposed to more complex.  I'll have to learn Nuke another way...

We downloaded a clip of "Alex and Irina" dancing at their wedding and converted it in clipconverter.cc  From there we trimmed the clip to roughly 2 seconds.  And rotoscoping those 50 frames took an hour or two, so whoa, lots of work for us to do after editing the film together!  Good thing we've agreed to abandoned the 3D environment.  Once the rotoscoping and frame by frame clean up is done, making it look like a drawing is incredibly easy.  Vaughn did a few tests for us to look at before class and here's what we came up with:

After changing the colour to b/w, we tried a cartoon effect (the "outline" is the original rotoscoping mask)

and a posterize + cartoon effect

posterize effect

and find edges effect

Find edges is our favourite effect because it looks like pencil lines

Our test video

BSA206, Animation 1980-1985, 13 September, 2016

Canada
Gerald Potterton
Heavy Metal 1981
animation divided between studios and directors, lots of rotoscoping
psychedelic, sci-fi fantasies about sex, violence, and rock 'n' roll

Nelvana Studio
Rock & Rule (1983)
similar to Heavy Metal
post-apocalyptic world where mutant animals take over

France
Paul Grimault
formed company with Andre Sarrut and created many short animations
1948 The Shepherdes and the Chimneysweep started but falling out led to halt in production, Grimault won rights in 1967 and finished in 1980 (32 years after start) and renamed it The King and the Mockingbird

UK
Dianne Jackson
The snowman (1982)
nominated 83 for best animated short for Oscars
one of more successful British animators later to be superseded by Aardman Animations

David Bowie????  What?!!?

Cosgrove Hall Productions
The Wind in the Willows (1983)
worldwide success of stop-motion film led to a 52 episode TV series and second film a Tale of Two Toads (1989)

UK/USA
John Halas
Dilemma (1981)
claims to be first fully digitized CG film (following limits of previous experiement in Autobahn (1979))

Canada/Germany
Frederic Back
German by birth, films examine Canadian culture
Crac! (1981) a story of the life of a rocking chair
early example of pastel shaded look that was popular in the 80s

Canada
The Big Snit
Richard Condie

UK
Gerald Scarfe
15 minutes of animation for Pink Floyds film The Wall 1982
mental breakdown of a rock star Pink (based on band's experiences)

UK/Canada

Steve Baron
Money for Nothing 1985 Dire Straits
 landmark in CGI, some rotoscoping around live action

lots of rotoscoping

Take on Me by a-ha

Today's blog entry:
In your own opinion, what remake or reboot of a film is WORSE than the original?
Stanley Donen's Charade with Audrey Hepburn and Carey Grant was incredible.  Jonathan Demme's The Truth About Charlie with Thandie Newton and Mark Wahlberg is AWFUL.  Full disclosure:  I was excited about it then I saw this:

 Mark Wahlberg in a BERET.  no.

 Not a substitute for Cary Grant in an overcoat.  So I haven't seen it.  You can't remake excellent films.  Why not take a bad movie with a good concept and remake that instead?  Do it until you get it right?
In your own opinion, what remake or reboot of a film is better than the original?
Parts: The Clonus Horror
Great idea (clones discover that they're being kept alive as parts for their real world counterparts), terrible execution.  I know it from Mystery Science Theatre 3000.  So unintentionally hilarious.

The remake, The Island, is much much better.  Is it a strict remake or just a lot of ideas from multiple sources mashed together?  A significantly bigger budget plus better actors makes a huge difference as does adding more action pieces.

Is there a film from your past that you would like to see a remake of?
Great movies shouldn't be remade, good ones can go either way, so why not remake bad movies and make them better?  So, don't do Casablanca or The Godfathers, do something from fiction that has has a strong story but hasn't had a good shot in live action.  Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice was tolerably well done in the past but really took off when it was made into a 6 part? mini-series in the 90s with Colin Firth.  When they tried to make it again in the 00s with Keira Knightley as a movie it sucked.  I think I'd vote for remaking The Chronicles of Narnia.  The technology is there to make the world come alive, now they need a better script and child actors.  Maybe in another 20 years.