I used the pen tool on after effects to create the feathered “cloud” effect at the top of the ship but I think I was done, for now anyway. I was happy with my outcome.
Month: January 2017
Compositing attempt #3
I know I said that I was going to photoshop a spaceship above the Cavehill but I don’t know, I wasn’t feeling it anymore. I instead wanted to go up to the Belfast Castle and get a nice shot of Belfast from there, there’s nicer surrounding etc up there.
I didn’t know what to go for, I was getting nice shots but not the one I knew I wanted, I hadn’t seen it in my camera roll yet and I needed the right shot before the sun set, I didn’t want to lose that pink glow in the sky. Then I sat up my tri-pod and camera, timed it, and I sat in front of it, staring out into the sky’s abyss.
This is my Image, now I just have to put my Spaceship in it and boom! I’m sitting up at Belfast Castle staring at the spaceship I modelled on my Macbook Pro.
Alright so I wanted to make the spaceship fit into the scene, it needed the correct lighting to make it realistic and I needed it to look realistic. I used point lights first, took the ink dropper, borrowed the colour from the clouds (I’ll give it back someday) and played about with the intensity and exposure til I got something I was content with. Before I did the lighting on the model above however, I took the 3 main colours I could see in the photo, the greys, the pink and the neutral white barrier between the two. I took each colour did an AI-Fog on maya using each colour and tried to see if I could layer the 3 separate images on photoshop, just to see how that would look. Not as good mind you but sure, we live and we learn, try and fail, don’t fail to try.
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- pink fog
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- grey fog
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- white fog
After playing about with the attributes on photoshop, testing the different layers (multiply, overlay, screen etc) this is was the best thing I could come up with. Yea it works but… I prefer the other one I think. And if I take that and do my render passes of the image I could adjust whatever I need to and find something particularly nice!
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- beauty
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- direct_diffuse
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- indirect_diffuse
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- N
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- occulsion
- Beauty
- Direct_Diffuse
- Indirect_Diffuse
- Direct_Specular
- Indirect_Specular
- Occlusion
- SSS
- N
- ID
I took my render passes and layered them on photoshop, Cassie kindly informed me about what would be the best way to layer them, what order and what blending modes to use.
Compositing attempt #2
Okay so, I took the same video but wanted to make it a wee bit better, so I textured the ship, re rendered different footage of it, and had it rotating 180 and “warping” into the distance.
I didn’t know how to create the light for the engines. Do I recreate fire and do a simulation? pair it with the spaceship? Do I do it in After Effects or do I use lighting tricks? I chose to do lighting, I connected 4 blue point lights to each engine, key framed them for take off and parented them to the ship. I think it looked well enough, it’s better than nothing anyway, gives it that bit of extra depth to the composite.
I did the same thing I did in the original composite, 3d-tracking, layered footage and BAM, another attempt at compositing. I wish I could of added sound but I just didn’t really have the time, I can come back in a later stage and add some for my showreel or something.
I edited the ship on After Effects by using the pen tool to create a mask over the ship > inverted it > and feathered it as much as I needed to, to get that cloudy effect over the ship, so that it wasn’t poppin’ too much.
Compositing attempt #1
So I went out today, I took my tripod with me and I took a video of the cathedral. After watching videos on after effects about 3-D tracking I wanted to try it myself so I rendered a video of the spaceship and overlaid it on top of my footage on after affects. I thought a video would of been easier to try first rather than a still image. I thought that I might as well try compositing rather than just testing out my good photoshop collage skills. I took the video onto after affects, did the 3d-tracking of the video, set a null object to one of the trackers and paired the null object to the render of my spaceship and voila, my first very basic attempt at composting.
Modelling The “Venator Class Star Destroyer”
Straight in; First I set up my image planes so that they were all the same size then I modelled out the basic shape of the ship; the ships foundations, my base.
God DAMN! this thing is fidgety. I don’t mind it though haha And I’m enjoying just chilling here, chippin’ away at this model.
> So I added the rectangular bridge down the middle and the “gun” things at the back, I’m actual not sure what they are? Here’s a diagram of the ship below. I’m Inserting insert loops and extruding faces inwards to get those engraved features on the ship, nothing to it.
Panels
I added the panels on top of the the ship, added some mini guns and now this thing is really starting to come together, its rather simple, you could model this ship if you only knew the basics of modelling, I know you could. It looks intimidating, there’s a lot on it and you don’t know where to start but you just have to break it down into sections in your mind. Tackle it slowly and persistently.
The dreaded “side of the ship”
I tackled this part next because I knew if I left it til last it would take me longer to do, I was excited for the engines and I just wanted to get this horrible tedious task over with, especially after doing those panels. I broke it down into its 5 faces it has each side and tackled it 1 at a time. Looking at my references models and also having some impromptu artistic freedom with it.
IT IS DONE! Praise Jeebus
I finished the side of the model finally, it took me a little over an hour but I got it done quicker than I thought I might have. Especially in regards to being a distracted procrastinator at times, even more so with a task I don’t really want to do.
It was coming together nicely and I didn’t want to stop, even though it was 2:30 in the morning and I was that sorta tired where your vision goes blurry? And sometimes your eyes will just lose focus? haha
Literal Nightmares occurring!
Literal Nightmare! I did the engines, they were looking good, then I accidentally deleted them without seeing that I had, did too many steps forward and couldn’t return to undo my mistake. I spent an hour doing them! Defeated, sad, drained and exhausted I went to bed and did them the next morning.
The engines
I modelled the bit the middle that separates the engines on either side and then I moved swiftly on to RE-… modelling the engines the next morning. *sigh* It didn’t take me as long the second time and after they were finished I didn’t care anymore, whats done is done. And the engines were done… again.
Time to Mirror It
I slapped a basic Light Grey & Red Lambert on the ship and now it’s ready for compositing I think! Lets give it a go
“Eoin have you picked a Third Project yet?”
“Ehh… compositing?”
- Compositing
- Rigging
- Modelling
- UV Mapping
- Concept Art
- Topology
- Essay?
For ages I didn’t know what to choose! We had so many options and how was I to just pick one? Who would do an essay btw?.. Anyways, I didn’t know what to choose. I was pretty set on modelling the first few weeks, its the thing I love most, just like drawing I think its kinda like 2nd nature to me at this point, the thing I ultimately practiced most in the end. So pick modelling right? “It’s quite obvious dude, you love modelling”. Yea I know but I love it so much that I want to get better, regardless and while I’m just practicing, testing my limits and progressing with more challenging models I can learn how to do compositing and incorporate my “beautiful models” into my photography. Modelling, Photography & Composting. They sorta go hand in hand right? I didn’t wanna take a quick risk and dive into something that half way through doing I would regret picking, I wanted to consider my next right move as an Animator
And take this question “What do you want to do for your third project?” seriously..
I didn’t give Alec my answer for 3 weeks until I was sure that what I was choosing was the right move, something that I would want to continue to pursue, growing to love it, not resent it. And I was pretty certain that I wanted to do Composting // VFX; I had a good feeling about it.
Zombies
For the first 3 weeks when I was chillin on the fence swinging my legs while everyone else was crackin on with their projects I had the Idea of modelling a zombie for my “modelling project” that I was going to do at the time. I was going to get Z-Brush an model a head torso and extending hand, kind of like a bust. Only because I was starting the new season of Walking Dead mind you, talk about “being influenced”. I then considered that I could still do it, that I could model the bust and have it extend its head and arm out of a dark alley way or something? But, I don’t know, it was my first Idea and I thought that I could perhaps come up with something better.
Running low on time
I was so engrossed in the BBC project I’m doing that I was completely neglecting this project all together. I had to come up with something and just start it. I was out with friends the other day and we were going hikes up the Cavehill, when we got to the top of the Hill on this beautiful clear day you could see all of North Belfast, my home for 20 years. It just looked so open, you could see the whole city as far back as curve of the earth and the big white exposed sky… the whole city vulnerable to an Alien attack. A sky so big it could accommodate a giant spaceship. A spaceship that I could model and have floating above the city.
The next day while I was suppose to be focusing on BBC because my group needed me to, during our lecture and my lunch break I sat and doodled some spaceships before going home… to draw more spaceships. I wanted to get a feel of the shape I was going for, Circular,? Spherical? Rectangular? I didn’t know what I wanted at this point, I had just came up with the Idea of a spaceship. The day I was at Cavehill staring over the city, these are the 3 ships that popped into my head, as quickly as the entered my brain and left, I drew them. Scribbled them rather, all ships that I’m sure my subconscious brain has seen on TV before, like I’m pretty sure the bottom one is the ship from district 9 right?
Contextual Image Research
I did some contextual research on other spaceships, models, ideation of shape and colour etc. I looked on different websites by simply typing in anything to do with spaceships on google images, Artstaion, Deviant Art etc. Searching concept designs for specific games or movies such as Mass Effect, Dead Space, Alien Isolation, District 9, Promethus and even the giant minstrel in Arrival, that was actually quite stunning mind you.
Arrival 2016
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- star trek
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- prometheus
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- mass effect
dead space
More Sketches
Do you ever get when you can’t do work? I was just sitting in front of my sketchbook doodling spiderman, distracted about everything and I just couldn’t pick out a single thought. I needed to start this project and do some concepts of what I was going to model, just to break it down in a drawing before I model it, but I couldn’t summon the energy to begin drawing complicated spaceships.
Because of all the hype around the new Star Wars episode 7 (The reinterpretation of A New Hope) and my LOOVEEEE for Star Wars I did a few Star Wars concepts in my sketchbook
Sketches is the only word, it was a composting project not a concept art project so I didn’t want to whip out the cintiq and start recreating scenes in space. I needed to crack on with the project and I had chose to model a Venator Class Star Destroyer
Back to the house
Texturing
Alright so I took a break from the house to do those signs and character sketches but after a day or 2 I was back at it again. Cassie was busy doing almost everything to the store and the street by lighting, texturing etc, Jordan was away modelling our character and Caitlin was working on Sound and opening credits currently. That left me with a house that was unlit and untextured, so I felt it was up to me to finish my job on the house and get some colour and realism into it!
Before I started, I modelled some blankets for the floor, some socks and underwear, an extractor for the kitchen and using the cv curve tool, created some quick beer bottles. I then littered them around the room just to get that “slob tenant” vibe going.
Not too shabby. After learning how to UV Map a month or so ago, it was still fresh in my mind and instead of what some of the other teams are doing, rather than put everything a boring-flat-lambert, I wanted to put some dimension and realism into the room. So I just took the walls and floor, planar mapped them automatically and quite beautifully the textures applied. Most of the objects thankfully only required an automatic mapping with the exception of some of the more complicated models. It did save me a lot of time, thanks to autodesk 2017 maya haha
I based the depressing decor off my Granny and Granda’s house that I practically grew up in. The portrait of Jesus on the wall, the tartan blanket, rug, old ass wallpaper etc. In regards to the wallpaper brick effect, I didn’t know how to tackle it. Do I model bricks and all that jazz or do I do a photoshop trick. I chose photoshop. I just an image of bricks over the wallpaper, erased around the edge’s to make it look like torn wallpaper, added a bit of browns and voila.
Character Designs
A group meeting was called because we realised we were neglecting our characters. We got together to discuss how they would look, because we needed them modelled as soon as. We quickly agreed that in regards to our research and lighting etc that we could look into a Tim Burton style of character, a thin, creepy, lanky character.
You get the Idea, we looked at Ego from ratatouille; a known thin-creepy dude for his slow paced, slow talking, insect like demeanour. I looked at Arkham Asylums Joker, another famous thin, creepy, pale-faced, sick looking villain that terrifies you with his unpredictable, menacingly ominous behaviour. We too looked at “A nightmare before christmas’s” Jack Skellington, another thin creepy character who is literally a skeleton. A good reference for our thin “skeleton like” character. I took a look at some of the songs he sang in the movie just to watch him saunter about, studying how this thin creepy character was animated to move. I did this too with the rest of the characters I looked at.
My Character Concepts
Alright so, I whipped these up quickly enough. I didn’t need any digital masterpieces, just a rough interpretation of what I was thinking and these were enough. I experimented with some rough sketches in pen, just do get some feels for the character. I wasn’t sure about any of the character walk-cycles, how he would “creepily” search for stuff in the store, so I just did different character poses just to give the team a feel for his movements, how he carries his small body of those long pencil legs. As well as the character and his movements, we will also being seeing a lot of his hands in the shots, on the steering wheel etc, considering we’re doing it in POV as of so far. So I sketched out different types and shapes of long bony, creepy hands, in different positions (on the steering wheel etc) I just thought I was helping the team out by doing so and it will give the BBC and the class a good idea of the character when they see our group sketches in our presentation.
continuing forward…
Signs for Shops
Sketching on Photoshop
Taking a break from modelling, I had said to Cassie that I could do up some signs for the shops, they were all empty and I noticed that in most of the render-views we do of the street, the signs are visible. Cassie said just to do as many as I could and not to worry about whipping up 24 signs or whatever but I did a few, I thought that for the shops in the distance we can change the colour values because no one will be able to read the words.
Okay, so I came up with these; I gave Cassie a café and after I posted it to the group page, Jordan wanted one too so I gave him a bookstore so as he could come across intellectual and astute, you’re welcome Jordan. I had to do wee sketches or doodles for the signs, like the toastie, soup, coffee, books, fancy headers etc so it took me long enough to do the task. I thought it would just take an afternoon. I also noticed there was signs on the wall that Jordan had put in that didn’t hang above any shops, instead hung above benches and next to houses. So I said to the group that if it was okay with them, I could put in some suicidal awareness posters or support the homeless. I knew that once they are on the BBC Archive website that thousands of people would see them and maybe even one person saw the poster, I would have helped the world or somebody, a little tiny bit lol
More modelling! Yaaaaayy
Cassie was focused on lighting the store, incorporating are research into our lighting, creating aifog for the street and trying to figure out how to get it out of the store. She was busy wit that, so I took the model she had done of the house for the animatic and while she was busy doing other things I said that I would happily take it off her hands and add some more things to it, expand it a little. The poor man’s house was a box for crying out loud, he didn’t even have a toilet 😦
In the animation the robber walks up the steps and opens his front door into this box. It’s a nice room so far but it’s not exactly a house yet and I had the time and the energy to make something more fitting for our animation. I felt he needed a kitchen to cook food, a bathroom and another door that could be a bedroom he doesn’t sleep in for some reason. First before adding anymore models to what we already had, I wanted to create a bigger shell of the house.
After I had done that I needed to put some more models in the house. Just Cassie’s models that looked almost bare in that room, looked even more so in this big hollow shell of an apartment, he needed a toilet, a bath, a jar for his tea bags, a desk to plan his heists etc. So if I wanted that I had to move swiftly on and get started, I played it safe and modelled the essentials first incase I ran out of time.
Bathroom
I took it a room at a time, starting with the smaller bathroom. I couldn’t find any decent tutorials however and continued on to model them myself. I’ve been taking risks trying to model these essentials without a tutorial that could tell you how but, I had confidence in my ability as an amateur modeller to at least be able to model a bathroom. First on the list was the bath tub, I thought it was the easiest one to start off with to get me in the zone.
I modelled the tub, then taps and a shower curtain just to make it a bit fancier. I think it turned out fine without a tutorial, lets be honest, and now that I’m familiar with N-Cloth I was able make a shower curtain in 3 minutes. On to the next!
This toilet was an absolute nightmare to model! I must have attempted it about 4 times! Between smoothing cubes and using low poly spheres, I wasn’t sure how to attack it! So I smoothed a cube to make the toilet bowl, added the bottom half with a toilet seat and a water tank behind it. Turned out nice, it’s only a toilet like. Also added a nice wee toilet roll with holder 😉
Essentials? Maybe not, but I wanted to fill the bathroom out a bit more, I gave him a towel on a hook to dry himself and a toothbrush set because Oral Hygiene is important kids! I accidentally modelled a sink forgetting Cassie had already done one, I kept hers in but I may as well show you mine
Kitchen
Alright so Bathrooms done, I moved on to the kitchen and modelled some kitchen essentials. The man needs to eat, he needs an oven and a toaster, he also need a fridge for his food. It didn’t take me long to get some models done.
Again I didn’t feel like I needed a tutorial for a damn Oven! It’s just a fancy cube with dials! Do we even need tutorials for everything? I doubt it, anyway here’s the oven where he can cook his meals and stuff. Also featuring a hob, cus he’s “fancy poor”.
I modelled a toaster, his fridge and a sink; I love now that compared to last year when I didn’t even know how to begin a model, that I now choose what technique I’m going to use, or way I’m going to choose, to model something! Practice, practice.
Living // sleeping room
I moved swiftly on to the next one, knockin out these models for the group! Next on the agenda was the living room, and Cassie had already did a good job modelling a bed, a nightstand, a chair, a few boxes and a television. So I didn’t really have much left to do, it was late in the night and it was either sleep or model some more, so I chose to model a few more things.
I really didn’t need to model that much but it just needed a few more things to make a house a home for this burglar. I modelled the things above, a desk & chair, a coat rack, and a front door, I also modelled a couple frames and a cross etc, but I don’t need to show you pictures of an empty photo frame. It’s barley a model.
The house
Okay so, the next day after my models were done and I could not fill the empty shell I created, after a bit of feng shui and trying to get my feel of the apartment, where things should go etc, I came up with this. Voila! The house with furniture!
Continuing to Model
Caitlin’s Beautiful Store Model
She had modelled the store and then modelled a few things to go inside it like helmets, sand bags, a cash register and a desk for it to sit on.
So for sooome reason, unbeknown to I, my group didn’t know what a military store was! and were getting it confused with the hanger in Indiana Jones that Alec had mentioned at the begin of the Ideation stage. So I took it upon myself to do a bit of research on what is in a military store, visited the 2 that our locationed in the town I’m in and yea… it was pretty much what I expected. They have ammo, equipment for air-softing rifles etc, helmets, jackets, camo etc etc..
It looks quite messy but I was able to single out certain items that I could incorporate into the store that would very clearly imply that it is some sort of “Military Store”. So to keep within the time schedule we set while also trying to help out my team and not just sit there like a total dingus, twiddling his thumbs waiting for his team mates to “do their bits”. I had my list of what I wanted to model to help Caitlin out, I sent her the list just to make sure we didn’t model the same things and I got started
First on this list was a hand grenade, so I typed it into YouTube and my ole friend Mike Hermes had of course already modelled one so he walked me through it and in half an hour I had modelled a Grenade! Think it turned out nicely and now I can add it to the library and have one for whenever I need it again. Take a skip through the video to see the full process.
I didn’t need a tutorial for this I’m happy to say, I just thought a tutorial would have slowed me down and I think what I have it is a perfectly good model of a rifle for hanging on the wall on the back of the store where no one will see. I had modelled a hand gun for my last project so I have a better understanding of a gun and how I should approach modelling it. I have absolute zero interest in guns, or shooting them, air-softing, any of that. But I’ll tell ya! they’re super fun to model.
The shelves were looking bare, and in all of the images I looked at on google as well as the 2 stores I visited, it wasn’t just boots and helmets but boxes of ammo and other things on the shelves. So I wanted to recreate something that would emulate that, I took a cube, made it a box, took some other cubes/cylinders, put them in the box and used N-Cloth to create of nice wee boxes of “materials” and a larger box that imitates a box of clothing. I like N-Cloth, it’s fun to play about with and easy to create some simple but effective things. Below is an Irish flag I created using N-Cloth, my first attempt at using it #proudtobeIrish
After I had done the boxes and I was still playing about with N-Cloth, and because I couldn’t find any tutorials in maya on how to create a t-shirt, I decided to wing it and attempt my own. First I created a shabby model of a shirt, lookin all stiff and what not, made it an N-Cloth material, the hanger a “passive collider” and “point of surface” merged the vertices and let the t-shirt hang off the hanger as much as it could just to see what would happen, granted not much did but it was just an experiment. I then duplicated it, put a few on the rail and voila, “t-shirts on a railing”
A step-ladder, nothing special
Next on the list was boot, I hadn’t modelled a anything similar to it before so I went to YouTube to look for a helpful tutorial and found the one above which was more than informative. I followed along the video using the same reference image that the YouTuber “Lynx0123456789” kindly attached and voila, a boot… and his “mirrored” friend.
The last thing I modelled before Caitlin asked me to send my models to her so she could piece them together in the store was this model aeroplane. I created it to hang from the ceiling. I didn’t use a tutorial but I did use this reference image and it was simple enough to make.
Beginning to Model
So today we got into groups to discuss what had to be modelled because it was the only next step after finishing storyboards and animatics. We had nailed down the concept, the plot, the timing and now we continue on to modelling! hoorah! My favourite part indeed, and because I’m such a gentleman, I allowed the rest of the team to get first dibs on what they wanted to model.
What needed modelling;
- The Store- Caitlin
- The Street- Jordan
- The House- Cassie
- The Car- Myself
I was in charge of modelling the car and I had full control of what the model would be and how I would choose to model it, while of course still having to keep in tone with the rest of the groups style.
The group had mentioned the idea of it being something like a “Classic Ford Mustang” or as different as a “white//black transit van” and we also considered modelling the same car as the trotters in “only fools and horses” but they said that they trust whatever outcome I come up with, they are merely ideas, fuel for the fire if you will!
I watched the tutorial above on how to model a car as well as some videos on my digital tutors account but as I was watching it I knew it would take me about 3 full days to model this car and i just though that was a waste of time and energy! Especially considering I said it shouldn’t take me too long and that when I inevitably get the car done I can help Cassie or Caitlin with the store or house.
So I started brainstorming on how I can create this car, is there a better way? A lazier but just as efficient way? A better car to model? So I brainstormed the entire rest of the day to think about the best way to tackle this objective. I was talking to Caitlin about it, telling her how stumpted I was. That I might have model this car over the next few days ignoring any other priorty and she was saying I could model “a cute wee truck or something”. I liked the Idea of it, she explained that it can still have the same comedic effect as the “Delboy and Rodney” car but would look well and perhaps fit in better with the 1960’s Millhill London location. I had looked at the store she was modelling that she had based off one of the apartment blocks in Disney’s 1961 “101 dalmatians” that was just sooo beautiful man, and I loved the style so I looked into the cars that the characters drove in that to see if I could get some relevant and similar inspiration to match her style.
In my research I discovered “Horace and Jaspers” Dog Catching Truck that they drove, that I thought could work really well with the story, a 2 seater truck for our 2 robbers to sit in side by side like a villainous Disney duo.
There was no tutorials fir it quite obviously and based off these 2 images I acquired I attempted to model it anyway, I had watched enough modelling videos over the past year and a half and was starting to get that next level understanding and appreciation for modelling. A challenge was something I needed, something to give me an Idea of where I’m at before I start doing “modelling” as my specialized area.
It took me roughly 5 hours to model but here is my finished Truck for our animation;
I’m happy with it, I think it turned out okay and the team thought it was “super cute” and were happy with it as well so all is well, just as effective as a ford mustang that would have taken me 5x the amount of time as it took me to do this truck
2D // 3D Animatic
Cassie kindly edited the 2d animatic together using Jordans and my storyboards, including the sound and timing it all out which would help us with our 3d animatic.
So quickly moved onto the 3D Animatic; we had to model animate and time out our animation, so we had to get crackin
I modelled this basic ass car for the animatic after I was done with the storyboards so I could help Cassie out with it, didn’t seem fair that I was drawing and she was doing a 3D an animatic. I modelled both the outside and inside of the car for animating, but cassie was happy enough to animate the scene in the car. I modelled from 20 seconds in for the robber going into his house.
Storyboards
Just because I was feeling inspired, excited and we were on a role, I whipped up a quick storyboard of what I though would have been a good idea for our animation. I tried to come up with something that was simple, something we would get done on time, something that could look beautiful and incorporate everything we had thought about and researched, something that could emulate an interesting message and something that would have been perfectly acceptable for the final animation haha.
“We (the camera) approach the door quite cautiously, with a muffled and frightening scream of pain or angst coming from inside the apartment. The door is already open and we creep into the apartment, we see a shadow reflected in the kitchen, a shadow in dispair. We slowly pan around the apartment, looking at all the clues in the apartment that might suggest why the distressed character might be screaming, the radio plays the BBC script audio and we slowly unravel the clues around the room that suggest whom this character may be. We pan up to the kitchen were the shadow arms out by his side, screams out in terror or pain, we here a thud and the camera creeps into the kitchen, turning round the corner to reveal a person lying in his kitchen glowing illuminously green, like the radioactive paint has consumed him”
The guys appreciated the idea, but were quite set on our other one so we decided that we would whip up storyboards for that rather. Perhaps I was playing it to safe and I didn’t wanna take the fun out of it all so we tried something more challenging which I could appreciate, I do like a challenge. Our spilt screen animation requires 2 storyboards to show what each character is doing so we split it in 2. Jordan took the driver and I took the robber. Heres what I came up with;
The journey of the robber from raiding the store, to finding the box of illuminated scrapings on the table, hopping in the car, driving home, discovering the radioactivity on his hands, hearing the broadcast on the radio and washing the dangerous radioactive material off his hands.
Below is the storyboards that Jordan did and after he gave me them I put them together side by side on a new storyboard. I just used photoshop to put them together, wrote under each panel and did a wee scribbly “storyboard” design to jazz it up a bit for the presentation.
Finalising ideas
So we settled on the plot of our animation; the split screen concept that I had explained in my last post.
“The driver pulls up to the curb just outside the store, the headlights turn off and his compadre steps out of the car and makes a bolt for the store. He breaks into the store through the front door and barges in. All the while the driver sits anxiously and impatiently in the car watching out for any sign of law enforcement, tapping his fingers concernedly on the steering wheel. His partner in crime returns to the car and he drives him home. The driver continues home while his friend walks into his small apartment, where he turns on the radio that broadcasts the script we were given informing that the men who robbed the store touched radioactive paint scrapings, that could result in damage to their body’s in later life without immediate medical attention.”
Now what we have to consider is lighting, textures, models, style, and camera.
NEO-NOIR
Following the research we looked at including Drive, Bullitt, The day of the Locust, To live and die in L.A etc. Notice that the Neo-Noir tone is quite consistent in the research we were doing so I took it upon myself to do some research on it and get back to the group.
Film Noir is French for “Black Film” or “Dark Film”. It encompasses a range of plots: including the central figure of a law-abiding citizen who was lured into a life of crime (a concept I thought worked quite well with our script). Film noir consists mainly of low-key lighting schemes, also mainly associated with stark light and dark contrasts, like dramatic shadow patterns and the classic “light shining through venetian blinds”
Through my Film Noir research I found out a painting technique I had never heard before with a beautiful Italian word called “Chiaroscuro”- an oil painting technique (developed during the renaissance) that uses strong tonal contrasts to model 3 dimensional forms in dramatic effect.
Film Noir is very much cliché and would consist of quite “cliché” things such as [ciggerettes, rainy streets, black/dark, mournful, guns, lipstick, bogart etc] Also still quite beautiful but cliché instances like the shadows of the venitian blinds or banister rods casting shadows on the actor or the wall. The charcters faces may be partially or wholly covered by darkness, the camera shots would consist of low-angle// wide angles// skewed & dutch, all inspiration that we can include in our animation.
We also have aspects such as;
- reflections in mirrors
- frosted // distorted objects
- cinematographic choices that emphasize the storys mood & theme
- angular & confusion shapes caught in a tangible vortex
- voice over narration used to structure obscure narrative sequences
I watched this, a BBC four 2009 documentary called See America Through a Strangers Eyes, that goes over the rules and clichés of a film noir as well as a “defining film noir” dissection video on Youtube, both very helpful and interesting videos.
POV- point of view
I had also looked into the concept of POV camera shots // editing. A concept we were gonna use in our animation. The technique of POV is one of the foundations of film editing. It can be used over the shoulder as well, which can partially include the side of the characters face, it doesn’t have to be as strict as “only through the characters eyes”. Some films are partially or fully shot in POV, for example 1947 Lady in the Lake, a film noir which is subjectively shot in POV.
Back to Drive 2011, a neo noir thriller that includes POV shots so that you are coexisting with the character, seeing it from his point of view! The film is short and gloomy like a poem with a tough hard edge of a “neo noir art house feature”. In the movie the character almost never speaks and communicates mostly non verbally. The non verbal demeanor of the character softens him a bit, makes him a vulnerable person, a character that you can relate to more.
This is all just research and considerations that we can include in our own animation.
Brainstorming Idea’s
So we started the project today, brainstorming a few ideas based on our script we had read over the weekend;
Okay, so in regards to the ideas and interpretations of the script, we all chipped in quite equally so our ideas were quite jointed and communal. We had discussed an idea that involved a split screen narrative. Two characters with different roles in the robbery of this military store displayed on screen side by side.
“The driver pulls up to the curb just outside the store, the headlights turn off and his compadre steps out of the car and makes a bolt for the store. He breaks into the store through the front door and barges in. All the while the driver sits anxiously and impatiently in the car watching out for any sign of law enforcement, tapping his fingers concernedly on the steering wheel. His partner in crime returns to the car and he drives him home. The driver continues home while his friend walks into his small apartment, where he turns on the radio that broadcasts the script we were given informing that the men who robbed the store touched radioactive paint scrapings, that could result in damage to their body’s in later life without immediate medical attention.”
We also humoured the idea that we could create a sort of “infomercial” that would play the audio of the script we were given throughout the animation, that animated the effects and dangers of coming in contact with radioactive material, as well as educating the viewer however, maybe its too boring? Jordan and Cassie had mentioned a fallout 4 radioactive fallout warning video (below) It has a certain style to it, that if we recreated correctly could replicate our 1960’s theme.
We had also talked about an idea that closely resembled our story above but that incorporated a police chase scene after the robbery on the way to the house, a story that focuses only on the driver of the car. We stay in the car with him whilst his partner in crime goes off to rob the Military Store. Cassie had mentioned that she had looked at movies like Drive, Bullitt and The Transporter Trilogy, movies that centre around the protagonist of the story, the getaway driver. Whether the character has a silent eerie mysteriousness to him or a comical Delboy Trotter kinda persona, we can just exaggerate his personality and to give you a real sense of our character, how he interacts with the car, how he waits for his partner to finish the job etc.
I looked deeper into the film Drive, a neo-noir crime film based on the 2005 novel, A film that conveys so many ideas and emotions through images rather than words.
I watched this video on the lighting in the movie just to get a better analysis of why the certain hues, colours and moods are used. Something we could incorporate in ours because we like the whole ambiance of the film, the purple, blue and orange hues. The artificial light from the street lamps, headlights and bokeh of the distant lights, all really nice elements that could take our animation quite beautifully, to the next level.
The group mentioned a car chase scene that could occur after the store is robbed on the way to dropping his friend and partner in crime home. They again had looked at the car chase scenes in Steve McQueens action role from Bullitt as well as a video that Jordan had shown us of 2 ford focuses doing “chase laps” around the docks. As well to humour the idea I decided to throw in one of my fav car chase scenes; the mini cooper scene from Bourne Identity.
however we thought that this would consist of more work for us to have to do as a group. More to model, more to animate, more to light, and personally I think… unnecessary, I feel we can create something as good or better even, with something that required less effort than a car chase scene, that wasn’t mentioned in the story as well I may add. So as a group we quickly disregarded the notion, as fun as it would be.
Still riding the brainstorm wave of “infomercials” and educational vids, we looked at the interpretation of taking a character and explaining the danger that he has put himself in by touching radioactive paint scrapings. While interacting with the character we take him on an emotional and informative journey of “Why you shouldn’t touch Radioactive Materials kids!” You will most certainly not acquire superpowers.
I had remembered Troy Maclure; and YOU may remember him from such self-help videos as “Smoke Yourself Thin” and “Get Some Confidence, Stupid!”
He is a Simpsons character who often does infomercials or interactive self help videos
We all had similar idea’s but at the end of the discussion a lot of it was still a little open ended. Alec had mentioned to us about Indiana Jones and the Hanger 51; the huge ware house in the 4th movie. But I thought that resembled a warehouse too much rather than a Military store, ya know? Regardless, he was just giving us a bit of fuel for the fire. Another possible idea he mentioned was the lighthearted “Delboy and Rodeny” depiction the story could use, which I think we thought was a good idea, it is the BBC after all.
I too had also trifled with the idea that would resemble something similar to the venom suit that consumes Peter Parker in the very poor, Spider-man 3 movie. The idea that after he touches the radioactive material it slowly and with the right camera shots “comedically” consumes him and he slowly transforms into a green radioactive Alien. At the end of the short animation when the script reads that they have to wash them selves immediately, we see the protagonist standing in front of the mirror as a gross alien and as he bends down out of camera to splash his face with water, he returns as normal. However the group were less enthused about this idea and fairly quickly disregarded the challenging idea and proceeded with an idea that best suited the research we had immersed our time in the past week, understandably.
duckinthesobriety 