360 experience

I thought it would be interesting to share this video. I really like the idea of how the video allows the viewer to control their experience by turning the video around to see different angles. Built around GoPro Spherical 360 footage (and best watched either on the YouTube app on a mobile device, or in the Google Chrome browser), the video is a fully immersive, VR experience that lets viewers see what it's like to walk back to the limo if you're the Weeknd.  This appears to be the new wave of how some artists are shooting music videos. 

92 Years of Disney Animation in 92-Second Video

October 16, 2015 marked the 92th anniversary of Walt Disney Pictures and in order to celebrate Disney released a new video to showcase all of their movies throughout the years. The video contains clips from Disney classics such as Cinderella, The Lion King, The Little Mermaid, Tarzan, etc. just to name a few. The celebration video is set to Thomas Bergensen's "Starchild," which is a great choice because the music and video go along perfectly in sync. I personally thought the video was very well done and did a great job of showing Disney fans how Disney has progressed over the years and how many classics they really have. Disney has so many great movies and I love how this video really reminds you of all the classics and brings me back to my childhood, growing up watching Disney movies such as Mulan and The Lion King. Enjoy!

Rocking Out On a Moving Car

Today I wanted to share a video which I think I'll always remember. Nearly 6 years ago, Freddiew released the following video:

I can still remember opening YouTube one day, and seeing this video on the front page. I watched it, and was genuinely confused. Was this fake? But it looked so real! At this point Freddiew still hadn't become the massive viral success that they are today. The comment section was divided as to if it were real. After some research, I found it to be fake, but it inspired me so much. How they could trick people into legitimately thinking it was real. Since then, I followed the channel religiously - just like every other aspiring 14 year old VFX artist.

6 years later, and the team have gone through many viral hits and many changes. Freddie and Brandon (who ran the channel), have gone their separate ways to a degree, but it's been exciting to follow their journey. I'll still get immense joy to this day, going back through their old videos which gave me so much inspiration when I was younger.

And in case you were wondering, here's how they pulled off that shot:

October 21, 2015

SO, because it was October 21, 2015 yesterday, and that is the day that Doc and Marty travel to the future in Back to the Future, I thought I would share with you all the awesome, and yes cheesy, graphics and animation that they used in Back to the Future Part II. The hologram shark, the crazy futuristic flying cars, and all of the other so called future technology was so cool when I first saw this film back in the early 2000s. So maybe they are kinda cheesy and not incredibly well done, so what? They are still awesome and so is that movie.

"McFly you bozo!! Hoverboards don't work on water!!"

Inkscape: Free Graphic Design Software

I've always found it very hard to draw on photoshop, and I realized that sometimes its easier to make simpler or complex designs on a different software and then import into photoshop to retouch. I found this really cool website called Inkscape and I tried it out to make a few designs for a poster, and I found it really easy and simple to use. I was really excited to find out that it was free! It sounds too good to be true, but I'll take it.

You can check it out on the link listed below:
https://inkscape.org/en/

I found some cool tutorials on youtube just to show you how easy it is to draw characters, and or create graphics. Take a look at how you can draw Dexter from Dexter's Laboratory.

Although the purpose of Inkscape isn't to animate, you can use it for animation. Its not really animation, but more of sequences of images to create a sort of giff. Take a look:

Try it out and let me know what you think!

-Serena

Tracking in Mocha with Mary Poplin

So for my green screen project, I have a few shots where I need to use tracking in order to sell the effect that I am trying to pull off. But for some reason I've been getting very strange results when I track in Mocha. Some of the tracking ends up looking a bit jittery, which wont translate very well when trying to pull of my visual effects.

I've recently been watching videos about using mocha and how to get the best results with difficult shots. I've found that if you want to learn more about mocha tracking, a good resource is from someone who actually works for Imagineers Systems (creators of mocha): Mary Poplin.

Mary is a pro VFX artist/tracker/roto painter. I've watched 2 videos so far where she goes through how to get a good track in Mocha to get good clean results in order to roto paint onto a clip of a couple short films. I found her through the Film Riot community because she has worked with them on 2 short films both of which involve rotoscoping and painting things out of shots by using Mocha. She does go through the shots pretty quickly in her tutorials, but You can still learn a lot from her.

So now I'm going to see how I can use what I learned from her and apply it to my tracking in my green screen project and see if I can get any better results then before.

If you want to check 2 of her videos, they post right below:

Storm

Because animations are so time consuming I rarely get to make a project that tells a story. I normally only make a short animation that exemplifies some new skill or tool I learned from a tutorial. At some point in high school I saw the animation Storm based on Tim Minchin’s spoken word poem. I absolutely loved the flat animation that used textures, depth of field, and creative perspectives. This video inspired me to try my own animations. I started working in Adobe Flash as an introduction. I was never particularly good at drawing but using the adobe illustrator software made it much easier to bring shapes to life.

I watched the following time-lapse videos after viewing the Storm video and I got a better idea of how much artistry goes into designing characters for detailed animations. I really loved how this video told a story that completely matched and was consistent with the poem. This is a video that I made in high school in an attempt to emulate the Storm style. It is mainly obvious in the wineglass!

The History of Bezier's Curve

Of all the things in graphic design, I never realized how pervasive Pierre Bézier is, so I wanted to write about his history.

As it turns our the story is quite long and complicated.
it all begins with Ship building. One of the earliest uses of curves to construct something (other than greek and roman amphitheaters)

Almost every boat that has ever been designed, has had some kind of curved bottom. Not only does this give the boat support and buoyancy but it also helps to streamline the vessel. By making the bottoms of boats curved, they minimize drag and increase resistance to lateral motion allowing for faster transport.

Can you see how curves could be particularly useful in making these designs?

These boats needed to be planned out on paper, and long flexible rulers like the ones below were often used to help position a curved line to trace onto the page. These plans were often drawn or lofted in large shipbuilding attics (or lofts) where ships would be built. Think about how long the curved wood needs to be and the amount of space needed to draw usually at a 1 to 1 scale. These shipbuilding lofts were HUGE!

The weights are often referred to as Ducks due to their bill like shape. An optimally smooth, attractive, and mechanically sound curvature is guaranteed by the uniform distribution of stress throughout the long elastic spline as it tries to regain its original straightness.

As ship building designs became more common,  Ludwig Burmester standardized a set of stencils that became known as French Curves. (Yes he was german, no I don't know why they are considered french)

This set of 28 curves was used for years to draw schematics and became a practical alternative for drawing other curved surfaces due to their size (only about 6-8 inches) and versatility. This was how most curves were made for almost 400 years. With paper, pencils, and stencils.

During wartimes, security became a larger priority when it came to tactical schematics. The issue with modeling curved surfaces on paper means it becomes very difficult to securely encrypt the designs, and even harder to reproduce them if they get stolen or destroyed(bombs, rips, fire, etc...). Often times, after a design was completed, a mathematical model of it was derived by hand and those numbers were used to build the ships. By adding the extra step to the ship lofting process, it made it harder for a design to be stolen (each ship building company could store numbers in their own order) but it made ship writes more specialized (One person could interpolate the numbers and get the curve while others built it). 

With this in mind, it stands to reason that storing curves as numbers/equations would make it difficult to adjust them because of how complicated the modeling equations tended to be. 

The birth of modern Computer Aided Design (CAD) can be traced back to French automaker Citroën. At the end of the 1950s, Citroën had adopted early analog computers connected to machinery for milling the stamps and dies that repetitively press parts of the bodywork from sheet metal. But the computers only took coordinates, so lines, circles, parabolas, and other regular geometrical functions could be accurately inputted from the designer’s blueprints into the machinery, but a reliable method for freeform curves did not.

Paul de Faget de Casteljau (1930) was the one who found the link first. A curve could be repented by control points and ratios:

Here is a control polygon.

Each polygon segment is now divided in the ratio of t ( for example: t=1/2) . By doing so a next polygon level is created.

Each segment between the new points is divided in the ratio of t.

Here is the solution for the point t=1/4

A higher order curve represented in a similar way.

Unfortunately, the automaker Citroën didn't listen to De Casteljau's algorithm, and he ultimately was never published until 1970.

"The modelers were unwilling to cooperate. De Casteljaus’ theory was also met with incredulity elsewhere within Citroën. How could a mere ten lines achieve what others before him had unsuccessfully attempted in sixty pages of equations? The modelers scoffed at de Casteljau’s poles, which seemed overly intuitive, claiming that anyone could have invented them. How could this be a worthy method? If valid, it threatened to replace the black arts of auto production with cold hard computation and, in doing so, make the influential role of master modelers obsolete." (cite)

 As it turns out, Citroën's direct competitor "Renault" hired a man by the name of Pierre Bézier just about at the same time. Knowing that an algorithm had been developed but not knowing how, he derived his algorithm from his own observations about how a curve warps in 3 dimensions. In the end, he conceded with the exact same algorithm described above. and the reason why we know the curve as his is because he was allowed to publish his findings.

Pierre Bézier's original observations that lead to the same algorithm

For an animated example of algorithm: click here

sources:
http://www.alatown.com/spline-history-architecture/
http://guity-novin.blogspot.com/2013/04/chapter-66-bezier-curves-for-digital.html
http://www.researchgate.net/post/Who_first_defined_the_so-called_Bezier_curves

Shadowing at Hornet Animation

Recently I was informed that I might be able to shadow at Hornet Animation during the winter break and so I decided to do a bit of research on their work. And I was not disappointed in what I found. The company has worked on just about anything from commercials to music videos! It is clear in each project that they have carefully crafted limited color palettes, general and main shapes, as well as beautifully rendered movement. Below I have chosen just three of some of my favorites!

This is "Boy's Latin" by Panda Bear. The animation was done by Eran Hilleli. It is composed of heavily saturated living organisms that are constantly moving and swaying. Not only is it beautifully done, the amazing visuals keeps the audience interested as well as peaks our interest as to what else is to come.

"Between Bears" was also done by Eran Hilleli as their graduate piece. It is a great example of 3D movement on 2D objects. While I don't quite understand the story, the scenery, lighting, and ominous music kept me engaged the whole way through. 

"Nespresso Mobile" by Parallel, is one of the most beautifully done commercials I have ever witnessed in my entire life. And that's a fact. While this animation also deals with 3D animation of 2D objects, it completely separates itself from "Between Bears" because of it's organized chaos. Even in the thumbnail alone the cluttered city is so ornately detailed that it seems almost more organized than jumbled. 

Poster Photoshop Fails

I don't know about y'all but I really like Photoshop and I'm constantly trying to grow and get better at the program. With After Effects, you may have come into contact with Photoshop a few times, especially if animation isn't one of your strong suits (like me). But something you got to be very careful with when you are trying to Photoshop is not over Photoshopping something. The image will then become distorted and unrealistic. I was looking up Photoshop tutorials and fails and I came across this article about the 13 best movie poster photoshop fails. If you want to have a good laugh, I suggest taking a peek at the article. It also gives you good advice when it comes to Photoshopping and making sure everything lines up. Such as making sure your eye line with every character is apparent. Or making sure that the lighting in the photo makes sense. If one of your objects in the poster is very bright and everything else in the photo is dark, make sure you darken that image so it doesn't stand out in a bad way. Also make sure you don't take people's fingers or teeth out of the poster. It might be obvious advice but clearly even the professionals need to be reminded of that as shown in the article. Take a look at it, I think it's worth it. 

A drive through the uncanny valley.

So as I'm sure most of you are aware, there exists a pocket in the creation of cg elements known as the uncanny valley. The best way to describe it is through pictures so take a look at the image below and try to remember what your initial sensory response was.

It's kinda weird isn't it? It's hard to put your finger on what exactly it is about this picture that sets your senses screaming, but whatever it is it's certainly doing a good job. I'm sure others have posted about the uncanny valley before, but seeing as the new fast and furious movie had to have a CG Paul Walker inserted into many of the final film's shots I thought it might be worth it to have a gander at what the modern approach to avoiding the uncanny valley is.
Below are a few shots featuring the Faux Walker:

Fast and Furious 7 was very nearly finished with production before Paul Walker passed away. The studio had already invested too much money in the film so they hired Weta workshop to create a photorealistic CGI duplicate of Paul and use that instead of cutting major scenes. It's a little unsettling knowing that the character you're looking at is not only fake, but also modeled after someone who tragically died during filming.

You can find all of the shots with the Faux Walker in this gallery: http://imgur.com/a/EGj5r also the variety article they linked is a really interesting read if you're at all into VFX. Many of the shots look pretty true to life but there are certainly a few in there that set my uncanny senses off. Have a look and see what you think!

The Good Dinosaur - Behind The Scenes

When making The Good Dinosaur, Pixar wanted to something completely different with their landscape shots. In a normal Pixar film, there is one big "establishing shot" of the landscape in the beginning, which can take months to create. Because of the time consuming process, the rest of the film is is set inside or in a more simple location.

However, the creators of The Good Dinosaur wanted to break away from this cycle and wanted an animated film shot with the complexity of the "establishing shot." They wanted the landscape to be realistic and very detailed, but there was no way to do the number of sequences featuring big landscape shots using Pixar's traditional process. The creators simply dud not have the time to design and render that much landscape, so they had to get creative.

The creators ended up using U.S Geological Survey, which posts a huge amount of topographical date to its website, such as the height about sea level of all of the land features and lots of satellite images. So they ended up downloading a lot of that data and put into their computer and then tried to "render" the real-life landscape. And it surprisingly worked! They were actually able to point a digital "camera" anywhere in a 360-degree rotation and get an image with this data.

They ended up downloading over 65,000 square miles of USGS data. And then added more detail to the landscapes, such as trees, vegetation, and rocks. They ended up using photoreference to build these details, rather than build it from scratch. In the end, the creators made the movie very realistic, with a "painterly realism" rather than photorealism. It is still pretty realistic and very well done.

The movie also took a lot of server space, between the landscape and nature effects, The Good Dinosaur," took up 300 TB of server space, which is ten times as much as Pixars' 2013 Monsters University.

To read more click here.

Taking inspiration from video games

I've been working on my title sequence project a little bit everyday and so far I've found there are a few extracurricular sources that have really helped me in working out the finer aesthetic details. As I mentioned last week I'm going to be doing a cut out title sequence to the critically acclaimed animated miniseries "Over the Garden Wall". The greatest challenge I've faced so far, beside the laborious never ending tedium that is fiddling with the after effects interface, is combining my onscreen elements in a way that looks and feels like the real show.

In researching this I turned to one of my favorite video games of all time: Paper Mario 2:

Now if you're like me then the very mention of this game is enough to fill you to the brim with excitement and nostalgia. This game stands alone in it's excellence because it masterfully combines fun gameplay with a timeless art style and wraps the whole thing up in a unforgettable sound track. While there are so many things I love about this game, on my most recent play through I tried to focus more on it's paper aesthetics in hopes that I might me able to glean so insight for my own project.

\

Among many other elements I noticed that it was the perspective of the world that really brought it off of the page. Any time you move the background moves with you in a sort of layered paralax that really draws you in. Also the way that many of  these set pieces are shaded really adds to the illusion. Overall I'm really exited to keep working on this project and if any of you have any game or tutorial recommendations please don't hesitate to drop me a line!  

Behind the Looks: Marvel.

Have you ever wondered how special effects are done for Marvel? Well now they have a site which will soon showcase behind the scenes of the Avengers, as well as how special effects are used and shot. Isn't that incredible?

Go Behind the Special Effects of Marvel’s The Avengers

I think this is a great idea, and an interesting way to be able to see exactly how much green screens, and what the sets actually look like before Marvel creates this other world that is entirely different. 

Pistol Shrimps on YouTube

With talks of our third project, it has reminded me of some of my favourite YouTube videos. With a large viewer base, PistolShrimps have made quite a name for themselves through their "Harry Potter and the Outcasts of Hogwarts" series.

In these videos, the Pistol Shrimps duo appear alongside the cast of Harry Potter, in which they rework the meaning of many scenes. Edited together like a trailer, the two have green screened themselves into the well know films.

The first of their series

While the video above was clever, the actual placement looks alright. However in later videos, they really stepped up the quality, and quite convincingly put themselves into the world of Harry Potter.

One of their best Harry Potter videos

It seems the biggest improvement is in their lighting. I'd say they worked in a studio, and set up lights similar to what would've been used in the film. Lighting I think is one of the biggest keys to a successful chroma key, as it's extremely hard to mimic realistic shadows on a face in post. Here's a link to the full Harry Potter and the Outcasts of Hogwarts series.

Their latest video is also well worth a watch - some extremely talented compositing.

The Good Dinosaur

I read a pretty cool article about the Good Dinosaur. If you have seen a trailer or know anything about the movie, the dinosaurs in it aren't your typical looking dinosaurs that you see in the textbook. A writer for the website sat down with the director and asked him why he made them the way that he did. The director said it has all to do with the theme of "What if?". So what if the dinosaurs aren't what we actually think that they look like? Yes we can tell from the bones and such but we don't know what their coloring was or what exactly they were like. This movie questions all of that. They also made the dinosaurs hillbilly type of characters. Because the dinosaurs now live among the humans, what if they became like farm animals or something like that? If you want to read more about the article you can access it here. Also here is the link to the trailer if you want to know more about the movie:

Disney's New Cool App and Motion Capture

I stumbled upon this video and I think this is such a creative and awesome idea.

Disney has really created an amazing tool and I hope it becomes available to the public soon.

While exploring some more, I found out that using motion capture to track human motion has been mastered after years of work but the same cannot be said about animals.

Motion capture is quite literally means recording the movement of humans or objects to capture the motion.

I found an article about researchers at Bradford University who have used motion capture on animals to improve the biomechanical accuracy of animals in films and video games.

Previously, only a few markers were used on animals to capture motion; however, the researchers from Bradford University did it differently. Check out the article with the video of their work here.

In case you wanted to see what motion capture looks like with real actors, here's a fun video of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.

Why Do People Like These?!?!?!?!

It's going to seem pretty contradictory that I'm dedicating this blog to knocking down animation, but hear me out. John Lasseter, director of the Toy Story trilogy (and soon to be quadrilogy), once said:

"If you're sitting in your minivan, playing your computer animated films for your children in the back seat, is it the animation that's entertaining you as you drive and listen? No, it's the storytelling. That's why we put so much importance on story. No amount of great animation will save a bad story."

What I want to talk about in this post is that no matter how good your animation is, it's NOTHING without a great story behind it. I think that's why some of these YouTube channels are so popular.

For instance, Joe, the YouTube channel that created Dog of Wisdom and this gem of a fan film for Monster's Inc, receives millions of views. Let me say that again...THIS video got 1.2 MILLION views.

Another channel that has received such success is my new favorite channel (which may or may not be NSFW), GradeAUnderA. This guy animates like THIS...and I keep coming back for more. I don't watch this guy rant for the animation, though at times it can be quite comedic, I watch for his points and jokes.

So I guess what you should take away from this post is, sure, you can be the best animator in the world, but if your design or story are lackluster, no one will want to watch your stuff.

Honda Stop Motion Ad

This is a fantastic stop-motion ad that caught my eye. Stop-motion animation artist PES created this Honda ad, which features thousands of hand-drawn illustrations of the brand's cars and motorcycles. To produce this ad, designers had to hold pieces of paper up to the camera and constantly change the camera of the angle to create the motion. PES even received a 2013 Academy Award nomination for Best Short Film (Animated) for "Fresh Guacamole," which showed avocado dip being made with green clay and dice.

I really love this ad because of how creative and well put together it is. I like how the ad goes through many Honda models and has a different location/story for each. The sound effects also really add to the ad, it ties the whole thing together. I think more companies should make ads like this because it is unique and really catches the viewer's eye and attention.

Camera Shake with Wiggle

In an attempt to better familiarize myself with the ins-and-outs of After Effects, I've been doing my best to sit down a few times a week to play around with the program and practice different tutorials, outside of our class assignments. Last week, I was looking through some of the beginner-type tutorials offered on Video Copilot when I cam across this:

Obviously, the effect is not something terribly complex. However, at home I work as content creator for the Buffalo Bisons (Triple A Affiliate of the Blue Jays), so this caught my attention as something to apply to my own work. And because I always have endless amounts of baseball footage to play with on my drive, I thought I'd give it a go. Here is what I ended up with:

The idea of the effect is to create the perception of power. Most of my shooting I use simply a monopod in order to be most mobile when following play action. If, though, I used a tripod and got steadier footage the effect would probably do an even greater job of highlighting that impact.  I definitely think this is a cool trick to potentially enhance my work.

Prep for my Title Project

With lest than 2 months to the release of The Good Dinosaur, I want to make my Title sequence for this film. There's plenty of information avalible about the film online, but I wanted to try my hand at making a short Title sequence for the film. I wanted to share some of my ideas and give an Idea of the style I'm going for:

Firstly, the Two Trailers:

The Trailers give the most amount of information out there, specifically the story. As I blogged about last week, this pixar piece has alot of work put into the terrain and landscape. With all the focus on the Water especially, I wanted to use a mixture of fluid dynamics and 2D shapes to move around the names of the title sequence.

Basing alot of the style on the title sequence from Monsters, Inc.,

my plan is to use basic shapes of ovals and circles to show the characters, and keep the piece almost flat.
I also Want to try making some Text flow away as if it's in a stream:
and I'm pretty sure I found a Tutorial for how to make it work in Maya Here:

Below is a list of all the references I'd like to include in my Title Sequence:

• Fireflies
• Comet
• Arlo the Dinosaur
• Spot the Boy
• Raging Water
• Crystals
• rushing past Vast amounts of land and sky.

I'll keep you up to date on the rest of the project as I go.

CG is (Not) Ruining Movies

I recently saw this video by the fine folks at RocketJump Film School (or Freddie Wong as some YouTubers might know him by) about using CG elements in films. A lot of people have said (and still do) that CG in live action movies just looks bad, and how it is better to shoot things practically (as in for real, captured in camera). But is this true?

In some aspects, yes CG doesn't always look great; it may look too animated or glossy and doesn't blend well. But that doesn't mean it's bad altogether. As Freddie points out in this video, the main reason we probably see bad CG and VFX is because the movies themselves are just bad altogether. But there are several movies that use VFX very effectively and people dont even realize it being CG elements. Things like adding cars to streets in a chase scene for example, majority of the cars in the scene are not real cars. They are CG cars that were rendered and utilized correctly in order to add to the story.

I think that the main point that Freddie is trying to make is that CG is simply a tool, a tool that is used to help enhance the story that a filmmaker is trying to tell. If that story is not good, then many other elements will start to look bad as well. The effects will call attention to themselves because the audience is not engaged enough in the story.

So in the end, what matters the most is having a wonderful story to tell to an audience, once you know you have a great story, use the tools you have at your disposal effectively; use the right mix of practical and visual effects in order to help tell your story and make it more engaging and more believable for your audience.

While I do groan about Maya in class I do think it is an extremely impressive and amazing 3D modeling tool. But what could possibly make it better? How about actually building in 3D? This video is admittedly dated, but I haven't seen it before so I thought it would be worth sharing.

What I find most difficult about Maya, besides it's interface (which has gotten better), is learning to work in Z- Space, something I'm sure others struggle with as well. Using the Oculus rift as a modeling tool makes a lot of sense. This is basically playing with play-doh except it's virtual and you get all the tools literally in your hand. Could it be more efficient then working straight off the screen? I'm not sure, but I definitely think it would be a worthwhile investment for 3D animating houses.

Math and Modeling

Math for Maya: I am really interested in math and computer science and getting to work with Maya was very exciting. A lot of my math courses involved modeling and working with surfaces and shapes in 3D space. I am really intrigued by the calculations and computations it takes to get Maya to work so smoothly. I wanted to research how the program worked.

I started with looking into the mathematics of NURBS (Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines). These are parameterized curves that are mathematically represented as either exact conics or piecewise polynomial curves. I was able to read about NURBS in the AutoDesk MAYA manual.

Non-uniform surface formed from control points and control polygons.

Tool for Mathematicians:

In addition to finding that math that makes Maya happen, I found some videos of how Maya helps in mathematical visual representation. These are videos of intense and complex mathematical abstract sculptures.

Math for Artists:

It is helpful when creating graphics or models in 2D or 3D space to have a geometry memory refresh! This is an interesting tutorial about math in 3D modeling.

Maya

Here are a few videos I found that used Maya. I thought they were very interesting to watch.

Pop Up Paper Look

Hey everybody! So for my title sequence I'm thinking that I'll transform the beautiful landscapes of over the garden wall into a series of paper cut outs, and them have them move across the screen in 3d to give a cool parallax effect. Now I only really know as much photoshop as I've needed to know in order to get by here, so I was wondering if any of you out there might be able to offer me some advice.

Just so you guys can get a sense of what I'm trying to do here's a landscape that I'm halfway through paperizing.

It looks a little flat right now, and I'm thinking that I might stay from the original color scheme a bit since it's currently very hard to see the paper texture that I'm trying to put across. I also feel like it might be good to add a sort of vignette filter over the top of things to add a little extra visual intrigue. I'd love to know if you guys have any insights on how I might make this puppy pop. It's a real challenge trying to boil down these visually brilliant landscapes into their rawest form, but I'm confident that it can be done, and done it a way that doesn't make it look like a reject south park background. 

20th Anniversary of Se7en

After watching the title sequence of Se7en in class, I was very interested to learn more about the movie and what happens so I looked it up. As I was looking it up, I came across some articles mentioning that the 20th anniversary of the film is coming up. As I was reading one of the articles, there was a YouTube video explaining the pre-production of the film, how it all came about, and then how it was filmed. The YouTuber spends most of the video focusing on the last scene in the film, the "Box Scene" explaining how the editing, sound, and the cinematography all create this fantastic mood which helps with the revealing shot, aka what's in the box. If you want to find out more about the film and how the end scene was created, watch the video! I promise it's worth watching the whole 14 minutes of it. But there are a lot of spoilers in the video so if you haven't seen it yet, or don't want to know what's in the box, then don't watch it!

How To Animate a 2D Photo in 3D Space

I wanted to share this video on how to animate a photo in 3D, exactly like what we did in class.   I really like this concept of bringing a 2D photo to life using photoshop and after effects to create a 3D movement. It's very quick and effective and can be used for so many things.

More Animation Techniques

A couple of weeks ago, I did a blog post about different animation techniques. This week, I want to talk about some uses of animation that we do not necessarily recognize on first sight as well as talk about some other animation techniques.

The first animation technique I want to talk about is 'stick animation'. Stick figures are used often in storyboarding but as far as I remember, they have also been used in animation. The following is a very powerful video conveying a social message through the use of advanced stick animation.

Stick animations are often made with Adobe Flash. They are easier to draw and animate. There are also many online sites that allow you to animate stick figures frame by frame and export them in different formats. An example of this site that I tried using is:

http://www.stickpage.com/stickanimatorgameplay.shtml

I used this site to create a small 14 frame animation. I would have uploaded it here but I could not get the Adobe Flash to download in time.

Another animation technique that I found to be very interesting was paint-on-glass animation. In this style of animation, slow drying paint oils are manipulated on sheets of glass to create animation.

This is a popular animation technique however, it is considered very hard to master. The most well-known paint-on-glass animator is Russian animator Alexandr Petrov. He has used this style in numerous award winning short films.

This is a short film using paint-on-glass animation created by a college student.

I think these are two very awesome animation styles. Paint-on-glass is something that I would definitely want to give a shot.

Celebrating Toy Story

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Pixar classic, Toy Story, which shows what happens to a young boy's toys when no-one is watching. Besides being a classic, Toy Story is also duly noted for it's animation, being the first entirely computer-generated animated feature. The film-technique changed the face of animation and took off like wild-fire; since it's release, there have been more than 250 computer-animated features released since 1995.


It was an amazing feat to pull-off, and took a lot of time and hard work and effort. Catmull, the executive producer of Toy Story and the creator of the digital-animation program that made the film possible said "There was a deep understanding right to begin with this was not about technology." Catmull knew that the technology was important, but he wanted the main focus on the story, as he stated "We succeeded because we hadn't made it about technology. We made it about the story, which is what our goal had been."


Another reason for Toy Story's success was because of the producers' awareness and dedication to making the movie enjoyable for adults. They wanted both adults and kids to love the movie, so they decided to make the toys adults themselves. The plan worked perfectly, as it has captured both target audiences and has been loved by many people of all different ages.


To celebrate the big two-zero, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is having Oscar winners John Lassester (DInsey-Pixar CCO) and Ed Catmull (Disney-Pixar president) participate in a live panel discussion tonight at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. The creative duo will share behind-the-scenes stories about the challenges they faced when worked on Toy Story.

More Rotoscoping

While considering what movie to place myself in, I've watched a number of YouTube videos of examples and tutorials of others doing so. Here I've found a short tutorial by Tara Arts Entertainment--though quite corky, it is informative and effective.

The man who makes the tutorials on this channel I find to be funny, knowledgeable and easy to follow. All things that make a difference when learning an extensive program like After Effects. The video above covers everything we talked about in class including the green screen, keylight (chroma key effect), in addition to other helpful how-tos like color matching.

Also, I found this quick little video to be something of interest. Here the artist takes a video of himself, then uses rotoscoping to create the outline for his desired animation.

Music and Animation

So while I was listening to music, I came across this new artist, who is absolutely awesome. His name is Olafur Arnalds, and he is an Icelandic man who makes contemporary classical music. So while browsing through his music on YouTube, I came across this video.

I have pretty much no idea how this video was made, or what types of animation skills went in to creating this, but it is absolutely stunning. The way that the music and the movement of the dust are timed perfectly to each other is beautiful and brings out much more of the emotion in this song. I love the use of the music to evoke the movement and evoke the animations. This is something that I find really awesome and something that I am very interested in learning and creating.

While thinking of some movies and television shows to rotoscope myself into, I took some time to look for some examples and inspirations. This is Freddie Wong's spoof trailer of "Twilight: Eclipse". I found that he did a great job of fitting himself into the negative spaces of the film as well as weaving in some funny one liners between the characters conversations. Even the scene where he puts himself in the same bed as Bella and Edward, he did a pretty good job of editing himself in there. Not to say that there weren't some quirks to the video. At certain parts I could see the green screen feathering around Freddie, and at other parts you could tell that the lighting he used really put him out of place, but this is ten times better than what I will probably do.

I also watched Ellen DeGeneres' skit of the same idea. Although hers had a lot more practical effects, like rebuilding similar sets, but I think her editor did just as well! 

Synfig Studio: 2 Animation.

I came across this new free software that helps you animate in 2D. I was trying to do something cool for my name project, and as I was searching I found Synfig, and I thought it was so cool, its a really easy tool to use, and you can even export your animations into After effects to integrate it with your other projects. Below is an example of an animation that was made using Synfig.

Virtual Reality Filmmaking

I personally can't wait for Virtual Reality to take off commercially.

While I'm yet to use any virtual reality headset, it hasn't stopped me from avidly watching videos about VR, videos of people experiencing VR and hearing about VR from friends. The whole concept is just so exciting to me. I've always been very keen on immersion. I struggle to watch films with lights on, when there's background noise, even watch with certain people who talk too much.

I love sitting down on my own in a dark room, and fully experiencing films. Same goes for video games. Headphones on, nice size screen, there's nothing like it. So the idea of VR, that everything will be blocked out, you can literally look anywhere in the frame; you become the character gets me so hyped.

Something which I think will be awesome, is animated films in VR. Below is a video which discusses an upcoming VR film, Henry. Check it out, I think it's an exiting step forward for VR and animation alike.

Henry

Putting yourself in a scene, and Rotoscoping

One of our new projects for class is to insert ourselves into a movie scene using green screening. This effect was something that was actually done on my favorite YouTube Show about filmmaking: Film Riot.

Film Riot is an awesome show that teaches you "the effects and techniques that go into some of your favorite Hollywood films." So everything from pre-pro to production and post production, they cover most everything that it takes to become a filmmaker. And from time to time, they teach you how to how to do some cool VFX using After Effects. One in particular is how to insert yourself into the scene of a film, or in their case the trailer for the first Avengers movie. Its a really fun tutorial, and the technique is almost exactly what we talked about in class, which covered lighting, placement, and motion. If you need another reference for how to do this effect, this is definitely worth watching!

Also, earlier this week, I found a really great article that talks about the history of Rotoscoping. IT goes from when the technique was first invented in 1915 by Max Fleischer when he created Out of The Inkwell to what we use it for now. I love using this technique to make lightsabers and other fun laser sci fi-based effects. If you want to check out the article follow this link here: https://www.rocketstock.com/blog/rotoscoping-from-early-animation-to-blockbuster-vfx/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=post&utm_content=Rotoscoping:-From-Early-Animation-to-Blockbuster-VFX&utm_campaign=09-2015-facebook-posts