BSA228, Problems to resolve before showing the game at Flicks, 9 November, 2016

tree chandelier:  my texture and bump map has dropped off and I can't reconnect them

Curio button box on HUD screen needs to be connected to Curio box scene
Start menu needs play movie? button
IF
I can film a "fly-over" of the game.  It may be worth doing that so people don't get caught up and frustrated by the maze.
Speaking of which, adjust the jasmine and lavender mazes so there's more walking room between the hedge rows.
Ask Rachel why animation for front door isn't going in.  I've stripped the whole front door out because there were a lot of weird redundancies in the game.

BSA228, finishing up the game, 7 November, 2016

HUD?  should be around the borders of the screen while the game is in action.

Tree chandelier.  My intention is to connect a particle fizzy light thing to make it look like fireflies are hanging around the tree.

I went into Maya to get the animation set with the blend shapes.  Then it dropped off when I selected delete history.  Not sure what to do now... I'll find out in class tomorrow.  I added another pair of glasses and made both of them a contrasting colour so they'll all stand out from the face.

BSA227 and BSA203, Southsure Emerging Artist Awards entries, 5 November, 2016

With Her

 Hey, that's me!

 And that's Parth

And I got the hand in the right place and restored the whole rotoscoping sequence.  

And we've got a nice, simple credit sequence.  Which is how I discovered that none of the copies we had saved over two computers were the most up to date version of the movie.  What a pain in the butt.  I am soooooo tired.  Tomorrow I'll find out if the version we saved in the dropbox is the old or the new one we wanted to submit.

BSA227 and BSA203, Southsure Emerging Artist Award entries, 3 November, 2016

Dragonframes is the program that the latest stop motion class used.  The program we used to observe our shots expired so I need to pick this one up pretty quickly.  In aid of that, Vaughn has sent me this link and a pdf tutorial, too.
I checked a tripod, clicker, camera, led light and laptop out from Chris.  I've brought it all home so I can set up a shooting stage in my room.  The natural light may not be the way to go, but I'm going to give it a try.  I never liked shooting in the basement.

Here are all the shots, in sequence.  The stop motion is extremely dark, but I'm going to try to use that to my advantage.

BSA228, house inspiration, 3 November, 2016

I need to do more work on the roof of my video game house.  This picture of the Winchester Mystery House is inspirational; just look at that cone roof.  My roof already has three of those.

BSA227 and BSA203: Southsure Emerging Artist Awards entries, 2 November, 2016

Parth and I are entering "With Her" into the Flix and that means another pass at making things look good.  We did what we could for our assessment today and Rachel had very good feedback.

Here's what I'd like to fix:
Rotoscoping
hand emerging: match each frame up to cover the hands
bride emerging: same thing.  big problems with the head and veil.  dress also has problems
close up 1:  get rid of waggling side hairs
Come, David:  keep cutting frames apart and redo "sneaky peach face" frame completely.
heart clutching:  Fix that sequence by putting one black layer behind it all to show where white bits around head are
Erika hands David the pen:  Her dress is too white.  bring down the overexposure to darken it up.
I need Parth to colour correct footage and export it in chunks so I can match frames up in After Effects.
For Flicks, I'd like a more simplified credit sequence at the end.  Our names and what we did on one frame each, not multiples, and "Special Thanks to" in same place each screen so it flows.

I'm fixing up the project I did for BSA203, like I always intended to, with stop motion bookends.
Ashes to Gold
stop-motion sequences to be shot:

 establishing the doll: minimum of 50 frames

 close up of the book: 50 frames

 close up of doll's face with chin tilting down: 62 frames

 book open and reading: 45 frames

book opening #1: 75 frames

 to this entry

 scanning the book : 50 frames that can create a loop

flipping page #2:75 frames to 

this entry:

flipping page #3: 45 frames from  Phantom Limbs

flipping page #4: 75 frames from Medusa entry to shut book

roughly 550 frames to shoot.  in garage with darkness, lights and tables?  Or at home where I can eat brownies when I want and natural light?  Remember?  slow, slow, movements, keep it steady and unrushed when changing poses.  

Use doll, and both sizes of book because the bigger book's pages might turn better.  Look downstairs to see if by some amazing coincidence, anything was saved from stop motion project last year.  Maybe use porcelain doll's fixed up hand?  At least get armature and recover with clay.  The bed?  Surely that's long gone.  

BSA227, wrapping it up, 2 November, 2016

In addition to being our class project, Parth and I will enter this into the Southsure Emerging Artist Awards.  We're turning in our best efforts today but will have another go at it in a few days to refine our mistakes.  

12 ROTOSCOPED SEQUENCES.  OUTRAGEOUS!!!!!  

I will count how many frames that amounted to and update this blog later with Bold and underlined words.  I was able to figure out a way for Parth to help me with the rotoscoping:  he isolated the sequences in after effects, turned them black and white and them exported them into PSD files.  That saved me a few hours of cutting and sorting, which was much appreciated.  

Harder than it looks and a terrible result.  It was deemed "acceptable" by Parth, which I'll take.  

This scene was going to be 375 frames long but I asked Parth to cut it down to 100 as there was no way I could finish the rotoscoping in time.  

original shot: I thought that covering Josh's head in greenscreen fabric would help. Not so much.  The clean shot didn't match up, so the masking shot idea was scrapped last week. Instead, vaughn showed me how to size up the shot to naturally mask out Josh. 

 Except, in the last second of the shot, the green can be seen.  So I took 1/3 of the left of a shot early in the sequence where you can't see Josh and used it as a mask.  The rotoscoping was going over the top anyway, and it completely covered him.  I'm sure that there was a higher tech way of achieving that effect, but it was too late at night to figure it out.  Hooray for layers.  Because it worked.

"clean" png layer

on top of the action layer

and under the rotoscope layer

 I also need to brag on how I figured out how to match the original footage (which had to be resurrected to get the right shot length) and the segment Vaughn sized up for me.  I put both sequences into the same composition and copied the transform? details from the sized up to the original footage and voila, it was all the same size and matched the rotoscoping.  Because eyeballing it and playing with proportions wasn't cutting it.

Next best special effect:  making Josh's long, curly hair look like a short haircut.  Not the most stylish by any means, but should pass by anyone who doesn't know Josh.

I thought that drawing in some of the loose hairs at the side of her face would look good, but I was wrong; it is unintentionally hilarious to have them wagging at all times during this shot.  I will fix this for our Southsure entry.