Pip Low Res

Monster Hand Dance Filming

I filmed through a few takes of the dance scene with the monsters hand and Pip, the filming wasn't all that successful. I have exported a clip of the scene of Pips dancing at half speed as it is basically impossible to perform the dance with my hand at normal pace.

This works fine however I now know I need to be very carful and try make the movements with my hand as evenly paced, flowing and not jittery as all as the jitteriness is high accentuated when the footage is speed back up to match back into the scene.

I would like to animated the hand for the dance sequence now instead of filming it so I can be a lot more specific with the movement but I don't think I will have enough time, I plan on re-shooting the hand again and seeing how it goes from there.

Although the filming was useful to see this problems arise I need to re-film anyway as I filmed my right for co-ordination (i'm right handed) however the thumb is on the wrong side as this should be the monsters left hand performing the dance.

I was running the 4 best takes along side each other to grab the best movement for each action and plan on animating a quick morph in between the shots when needed.

Monster fix ups & More Strings

After getting some advice from Jack I've fixed up and smoothed out the Monsters body animation and eyes for shot 6, its looking a lot better I'm fairly happy with it. I've also now completed the string animation for shot 5 with the exceptionof a few touch ups.

Animating the Monsters Body & More Strings

I got some more of the monsters body animated for shot 6. It still need more work but is coming along well. I like the flow of the body and I think I will put a moving hold on any stationary positions as I think it gives of a predatory feel, constantly surrounding and keeping an eye on its prey.

Also I did some more of the string animation for shot 5, I'm not sure if it needs a touch up or two, I'll come back to it to check. Doign a large batch of the string animation at once seems to be the way to go as I can get into the feel for where the strings should be and ideas for different types of movement seem to come to mind easier.

Roughing out Monster for Shot 6

The monsters form seems to be developing with shoulders helping to show weight.

Giving Pip something to stand on

I thought about getting a texture and running it back in perspective to the horizon with a gradient fade to emulate something along the lines of ground, however when I was doing the DVD covers with the spotlight on Pip I liked the look of that and gave it a try.

 I think it works well and it is also adds to the theatrical theme of the animation. The two options I have is the light coming from above out of screen or the monster hand.

Light originating from out of screen

Light originating from the monster hand

Half way through Shot 5 (strings)

More string animation, I'm just off half way through shot 5. I would have been further ahead but spent about 5 hours exploring/attempting to animated 2 seconds of one of the string actions and ending up scraping it in the end. It's annoying having spent so much time on it but oh well.

I changed my mind again about how far zoomed out shot 5 will be, taking on board Jacks input I went back to the original composition.

There's one string snap in the shot that I'm not sure about but I'll leave it settle for now and come back for a fresh look to see what I think, it happens at 0.55 seconds.

Re-Sizing Shot 4 and 5

After watching my running comp and looking back over some layout images I produced in pre-production I realise that Shot 4 looked a lot better with Pip a bit smaller and the monsters eyes bigger, it makes the monster feel more imposing/formidable.

So I made Pip smaller and extended the strings so they still lead out of the screen, I'm still deciding on the exact size but it shouldn't vary too much from what I have now. I'm glad I realised this now before I got too far into the string animation.

I want to do the same for shot 5 when the monsters hands lands next to Pip as the hand would be too large to fit into the screen at its correct size. So I think I'll do a zoom out half way through the shot, I hope this will help break up the shot a little as I dn't think I have enough varation in shot sizes through out the animation.

More string animation

Almost finished animating the strings for shot 4. I didn't complete the whole dance sequence as the camera will pan up to the monsters hand and I'm yet to film the hand footage. I'm happy with how its looking so far.
Also Jack sugested I put a shadow under Pip to ground her a bit more into the composition, its just a test with no refinment in 1 shot so far but I think it looks good and I'll fix it up a bit later, just have to concentrate on gettign the animation done for now.

Backgrounds, More Strings

I'm still trying to find out what works best for the backgrounds, color wise I prefered straight black rather than the greadient of blues i had but overall it looks a bit minimal. So now I've tried a smokey blue effect which I prefer though I'm not 100% happy with it. It's a step in the right direction though.

I've completed all the string animation for the beginning of shot 5, I think it works well enough so now I just need to concentrate on getting the rest done. The only other tricky bit R.E the strings will be animating them from the monsters hand ratehr than from Pip. I'll need to shoot some test hand footage asap so I can have a crack at that.

My running comp so far

DVD Slick & Disk Prints

These are a few of my designs for the DVD slick and disk. I went through a bunch of ideas and different color designs as the monsters color changes throughout the animation. These are just a few of the better designs I came up with. The two dots are representative of the monsters eyes.

The idea below is what I finally settled on, I think it represents what the animation is about well. I haven't decided on the straight black or gradient blue, I'm printing both to see what comes out the best (thanks sean mundy). I also changed the block of text on the left to a simpler font to make it more readable after receiving some advice in class today.

I think I like this one the best

More String Animation & Eye Animation

I started on the string animation for shot 5 instead of 4 as shot 4 has a camera move scrolling up to the monsters hand it will become a lot more complex. I wasn't sure how it would go as I hadn't attempted any of the complex and fast movements before but it turned out well i think. It still need some touching up.

I've begun animating the monsters eyes for shot 3, its takes quite a bit of fiddling around with the turbulent displacment effect but it is going pretty well. I'm still considering how many color changes (if any) i should have with the monster as this may have an effect on how I animate it.

This is my running comp so far

Animation Production Milestone #1

Work to be completed at the end of week 5

•  Send splice times of "poisonous" to Tim
• Finish edit of live action footage
• Complete keying and masking of live action footage
• Complete monsters body animation in shot 3
• Begin string animation of shot 4

Animating Monster

This is for shot 3, there will be a hand above Pip testing the strings before the monster ducks down near her. I'm fairly pleased with how it is going, I think the timing needs to be a bit quicker at the beginning of the movement. 

Hand Sizing

In hindsight I should have done this before beginning to animate the strings to get a good idea of what angle they should lead up towards when pulled tight on Pip. However after doing some tests I think I got it close enough to not have to re-do the work.

That was the first point of testing the hand sizes the other is to keep a relatively correct scale between different shots and gage what size hands look best for both shot 3 and shot 5 (when Pip and the hand are dancing in sync together). In regards to shot 5 originally I had wanted the hand to be about the same size as Pip when standing on 2 fingers but now I am going with something bigger, I think it looks better and emphasizes the scale of the monsters more and it also helps the hands looking too small in shot 3.

Lastly when doing the hand scaling it made me think about the perspective of which I am to shoot the hand footage for shot 3. If the hand was lying out flat above Pip then it should be shot from slightly below however as the hand will be a smokey silhouette I need it to be in a position with a clearly outlined shape otherwise it ends up just looking like a blob. Its good this problem has come to mind before I have gotten around to shooting the hand footage as I now know I will need to shoot it from 2 different angles to see what works best.

Shot 3

 Shot 5

Animating the Strings

This was my first attempt at animating the strings on Pip. It went really well, it wasn't quick but quicker than I expected. I'm using a combination of frame by frame and tweens in Flash. The strings look kinda crap here as the video is low res, high res it looks great. I'm really happy with it.

Rough Edit of Footage & Backgrounds

Still have a long way to go with the edit but everything is basically about where it needs to be so I can start getting into the animation. We did well for shooting on green screen especially as it was my first time, extracting the green was quick and easy and the edge on Pip looks great.

Taking Jacks advice I got the camera up nice and high for the extreme long shots, it's not overly obvious watching this edit but with the monster in their drawn in perspective should help drive it home.

The edit so far

I took a range of photos of Pip in different poses as I have an idea for the DVD case. The front cover being this pose

and the back cover being the same pose but Pip in the other costume to show the 2 sides of her character. Obviously I'll get rid of the green and do something with the background.

Green Screen Shoot

I filmed the green screen shoot over the weekend. I set up the lighting and equiptment on the Saturday with Paul and filmed on the sunday with Pip (dancer), Lucy (make-up), Paul (camer/lights) Aimz (runner). The shoot went well, I got everything nessesary filmed, it was a rushed towards the end to get it completed in time but overall I was pleased with everything. THANKS EVERYONE FOR THE HELP!

Shot 4

There where a couple of small issues whilst filming, the head peice that was stuck to Pips head would come off occasionally, some of the bulbs for the lights blew and I didn't have enough time for the planned make-up setup for the second costume (ballet costume) but going with somthing simple and quick worked fine.

Getting all the equiptment almost didn't happen, I convinced Collin to allow me to rent it as I proposed I be shown and signed off as being capable of using the equiptment by Anders before hand. I also needed to organise everything to be stored in the Holmesglen Security office as getting a car and coming to Melbourne on friday to pick up the equiptment and fit it in a car was not looking possible. So thanks also to the Holmesglen security staff for their help.

I've put the footage into a rough edit and keyed out the green roughly as well to get an idea of how everything is fitting together, it seems to be coming along pretty well. At the moment I'm just refining the edit and keying a bit and next I will export an image sequence of the edit to take into flash so I can begin staging out the monster and having a go at working out how to animate the strings from Pip to the hand.

I also took some photos on the Sunday that I might use with the DVD cover and extra's with the pack we need to make, taking photos of the shoot in progress and the set-up was a good idea to include as extras in the DVD.

Some pics from the shoot

Continuous Spinning Test

This is a test I did on the holidays to see how easy/tricky it would be to continuously loop Pip spinning on the spot. This was my first attempt and it worked out pretty well.

It is a bit jerky but considering I didn't have this test in mind or re-film multiple spins of Pip to get the best footage for the spin I'm happy with it. The jerk that is seen on the initial transition from the footage of Pip into the first part of the loop is too jerky for my liking but I plan to avoid this by changing the camera shot on the completion of the dance (which finishes in the spin loop) and cut out to a wider shot where Pip will already be in the spinning loop.

Changes, Filming & Backgrounds

Changes
Due to limited time with Pip I have cut my film down from 3 songs to 1. I wasn't keen on cutting out so much of the film but it was the only way to make it possible to film, the bonus to this is it has also cut down my work load.


Filming
I worked out the dance with Pip last sunday and I am filming it this coming sunday, I have been learning how to use all the equiptment I need it has been a fair proccess organising a crew of 4 the equiptment hire and green screen room, luckly I have managed to get it all together in a very short amount of time. I had other arrangments made before this but they had fallen through.


Chereographing the dance went well I am pretty pleased with it, I have input the footage into my running comp.

Backgrounds
As the film has been cut down to just the one song the only backgrounds I now need to make are a gradient of dark blue to black, I have created them all and they are also now in my running comp.

Notes

Just 3 more days until everything needs to be handed in, I'v still got a lot left to do but I will get it done so not stressing too much which is nice.

Getting all the documentation into a template and making sure everything looks nice has taking longer than I thought it would but at least it looks good. There are some really nice A4 display folios in office works that really suit the feel of the animation, I'd love to get them but there pretty expensive so not sure weather to get them or not.

I'm slightly behind on organizing to rent cameras from lemac over the holidays, I should have called them last week or this but I'm just concentrating on getting everything handed in first.
I'm yet to map out the dance fully with Pip, I should have taken into account her minimal availability when organizing this at the start of the year but luckily I can catch up over the holidays.

Overall I'm slightly behind where I would like to be however I think the storyboards are the only aspect of the project I have pushed out quickly sacrificing quality so I'm very relieved to be mostly happy with my work and commitment so far.

Model Sheets

Completed my model sheets and the comparison sheet.

I didn't turn the monster onto his complete side as in the animation he only turns to his side at greatest as the angle shown above.

I found doing the expression sheet a little confusing with how much body movement to include as the monsters body is basically his face as well. So although it does help to convey emotion I kept the body positions to pretty minimal. The expressions seem to be a bit lacking on paper, the still images are not as capable as the animated monster is of conveying emotion. Also another way I have found of helping convey emotion through the monster is varying the amount and speed of the turbulent displacement. Having the monster eyes flare up looks great.

 I found getting expression into the hands pretty fun and as I now have the project compositions all set up it is relatively quick to do them although getting my hand and fingers into the most easily readable positions (thinking of them in silhouette  has really helped) is a bit tricky. I can foresee myself re-filming the synchronized hand and Pip dance scene a lot to get it right.

I did a comparison sheet for the assessment though for this particular character I don't think I will find it very useful as the monster's size and shape is constantly changing.

Layout

Completed my 4 layout images, I'm very happy with how it is looking so far. Green screen footage of Pip will be replacing the girl shown here and the parts of the strings tied around her limbs will be either blue material or paint on Pip so I can key it out and replace it with the same white/green tinge as the animated strings I will be doing in flash.

Shot 10 test

Creating a shot from the film for jacks class (scene 01 shot 10). Im fairly happy with how it is going. The monsters body needs a little bit of refining but is basically there. I still need to add in his hands and I've toned down the turbulent displacment effect on his eyes so they are capable of showing emotion so I need to edit the shape of the eyes in flash and substitute that back into the after effects file. I also need to add pip and background.

Review of Project

Problem Solving when Animating the Monster

Firstly I broke him down into 3 separate elements so I could approach each element individually:

·      Body

·      Eyes

·      Hands

I attempted to plan the process of creating the smoky, non-solid form of the monster on paper only to come up with very time consuming solutions, I spent a whole day on this which was way too long.

Got help from Jack in class and he worked out a standout solution on a still image, the Turbulent Displacement (TD) effect in After Effects.

Using the TD effect I then animated a movement of the monster in flash and substituted the sequence for the previously used still image to test it. This then posed me with a new problem, any movement of an image with the TD effect applied would undesirably greatly increase the TD effect.

After attempting to find different solutions I concluded there wasn’t a way around this and as the TD was a stand out solution I was happy with it.

The process of testing each solution helped me understand the effect more and come up with a technique of animating the monster in between moving holds to reap the benefits of the impressive TD effect whilst minimising the undesired increases of it.

Darren when helping me animate the eyes created a node control for a still image of the eyes with the TD effect applied and using 3d space in After Effects I could control the eyes in depth, rotation, position and scale extremely easily. This would have been a very quick and easy solution to animating the eyes however it did make them look a bit 2d for my liking.

I tested animating the eyes in flash and substituting the animated sequence with the still image but like the body it again created the increased TD effect.

I took the TD effect of the eyes off which gave me the additional option of creating an emotion through the eyes which would have been otherwise unreadable through the TD however for the overall look I opted to remain with the TD effect applied.

Finally I settled on the option of animating the depth, rotation and position in After Effects rather than flash to avoid the increased TD effect however as animating the scale in After Effects also gave them a more 2d look when scaling (like the node control) I will do it with a flash sequence.

I explored two options when creating the monsters hands. Firstly I filmed and rotoscoped. The inconsistency of shape when rotoscoping left the hands looking a bit more blubbery rather than smoky.

The second test I painted my hands black and arms white and keyed out using luminous to great effect. I was really pleased with the result. It took away the blobby inconsistency and looked great with the TD applied. Painting my hands and keying the footage was also a lot faster than rotoscoping.  

Keeping Productivity Rolling

Looking at the project from an analytic point of view and keeping myself from becoming attached to any aspect of it other than its core has constantly helped me make time saving decisions.  Replacing the first scene with only a short sound intro was a smart decision.

Also forcing myself to a target of 80% of what I’m happy with has been hard but has kept me on schedule and stoped me from getting bogged down in detail and falling behind.

Organisation & Working with People

I found that I needed to be extremely organised when working with other people. Being clear and able to produce a vision of what I wanted has been very important.

Including no unnecessary detail when supplying other with information to work from is essential as is foreseeing scheduling issues. I missed out on getting a storyboard artist I wanted as she was booked out before I got onto her.

Providing people with a hardcopy in addition to a digital copy seemed to get people thinking and more likely to work on the project. Also in hindsight having a calendar and setting clear due dates when assigning work would have helped.

Overall though I am very happy with how it has gone, getting people to work on concept art has giving me ideas I would have otherwise not thought of and having a make-up artist and dancer are talents I am far from possessing. Having the teachers on hand and if stuck leaving a problem until class to work through it quickly has been invaluable.

Other beneficial Points

This is already way over the word limit so I’m just going to point out the other factors if this project I found to help me out the most

·      Having a Budget

·      Allocating time to tasks and keeping to schedule

·      Getting input from friends, family and teachers

·      Making the process of creating the film as fun as possible

Model Sheets Again

Got some feedback about the model sheets today from Jack and Darren. Going to add in some hands once I film again and Jack thought the evil-happy look might be better in just shades of green so I'l have a stab at that.

Model Sheets

Completing the model sheets at the moment, got these 2 done and I am about half way through the action sheet.
3/4 Model Sheet

Expression Sheet

I think the expression sheet comes across as a bit lacking, the turbulent displacement effect alters the shape of the eyes beyond being a shape capable of conveying emotion. I have tested what the monster looks like with out the effect on the eyes and it does convey a lot more emotion but overall I like the look with the effect on them better. I think when the monster is seen in motion with Pip and in specific body posses it will pull it all together.

Setback Confirmed

The repair place called back today, my hardrive data is unable to be recovered. I didn't loose anything majority important but still a fair bit of work.

Setback

My hardrive (which is 4 months old) decided it wasn't going to work anymore. Luckily I have backed up my work, unluckily my last back up was a few days ago. Took it into the shop today, I'll get it back tomorrow or friday. I've got a spare to work off in the mean time.

MakeUp Mood Boards

I have constructed a mood board for each makeup setup Pip will have, my makeup artist Lucy is in the process of completing face charts for each look.
Human Pip

Soul Pip

Possessed Pip

Animating Eyes

I've begun testing how to animating the eyes. This test was done using 3d space in After Effects, I wasn't sold on this one as the eyes come across as a bit 2D but its a good start. I'm currently creating an eye movement in flash to see how that looks.
Eye Test

Monster Color Schemes

I've refined the colors schemes for the monster a bit, there likely to be tweaked slightly but thats about it, I'm pretty happy with them. I want the Monster to have 3 emotions during the film each shown by its color.

1: Calm, Peaceful

2: Evil, Happy

3: Evil, Violent

Monster Testing

Lately I've been testing a few things with the monster . I'v worked out the most logical and economical way in creating the compositions so as to not have any unnecessary clutter and make the compositions as easy to follow and easy to edit/animate as possible.

Also as the turbulent displacement effect manipulates the eye beyond being capable of portraying an emotion, I have begun testing color schemes to represent the emotion of the character, both with the eyes and the glow of its body shape.

I have begun a thumb nailing some looks.

Also here is a test I did to see what colors I would get in the transition when animating from a diffused green/blue look to a more formidable yellow and red combination.

Animatic

Created a rough animatic using my thumbnails for scene 1,2,4, and 6 a proper animatic using storyboard images will happen soon. The run time is a bit worrying, I plan to cut it down where I can and at least the first 45 seconds has near no animation in it. It's broken up into scenes as I couldn't upload the whole file together.
Scene 01

Scene 02

Scene 04

Scene 06

2nd Hand Test

Second Hand Test

I didn't like the initial rotoscoped hand test as it turned out very jerky and had an unwanted flow on effect to the turbulent displacement so I re-filmed painting my hand black and my arm in white and luma keyed out everything but the hand, the animation is a lot smoother bar a few touch ups I will address when re-filming, just need to paint my whole arm white. I'm a lot happier with the outcome.

With the turbulent displacement and some highlighted shadows so it won't get lost when viewed directly in front of the monsters black body.

Background Test

Backgrounds
I took the concept artwork painting from Pat seen below

and put it into after effects using 3D space a camera, tint and animating the values of a ramp effect created a dusk to night sequence (thanks Darren). I really like the texture of the paint and canvas showing through into the final image as I wanted to steer clear of a wholly computer generated look.

This will be used at the start of scene 1 to portray the emotion of the film, beginning happy and changing to more sombre/slightly darker before she gets hit by the car. 

Another Monster Test

Did another monster test yesterday, his look is defiantly getting there

Monster Test

Animatic, Backgrounds and Rotoscoping

Animatic

Iv started creating an animatic from my thumbnails, as filming the rough through with Pip has been pushed back till this w.e I want to be as prepaired for it as I can be for it. The animatic has helped narrow down on shot duration/selection and just in general with getting my vision for the film clearer in my head and being able to show it to people for advice/suggestions.

Backgrounds & Car

2 mates have agreed to do some concept work for backgrounds and the car, I'm hoping to find somthing I'm happy with as it would take a load of work of me and so far I havnt been happy with my attempts to creates them anyways.

Giving people direction has helped me narrow down on the core of what I want from the backgrounds this has seen me take alot of reference from alice in wonderland (1951). I really like the use of colour, dark greens with small bright flowers.

Some Reference Images from Alice in Wonderland

Rotoscope TEST

I rotoscoped some footage of Jacks hands to be substituted in as hands for the monster, I'm not sold on the look of it as the form of the hands jerk larger to smaller back and forth. So I plan on re-filming the same action setting it up to green screen the footage instead and see how that looks.

Rotoscope Test

Also the displacment mapping that I apply in after effects needs to be toned down quite a bit as the fingers need to be visible enough so the hands actually look like hands. And i have just started to attack how to differentiate the hands from the monsters body as it is black on black.

Rotoscope Test with Displacment

Concept Art & Work Process

Concept Art

As the film will be a collaboration of styles- 2d, live action, pixilation and After Effects. Instead of trying to meld them together and attempt to have a seamless existence between them - which i saw myself failing as it is an extreamly hard thing to do- I have thought about taking a different approach, recognising that each style will create a different look/feel and exploiting this to create an overall collaboration/diverse feel to the film. With this in mind i came up with the idea of an intro sequence with a different style to the actual film, you see this alot in animation these days with 3d movies having 2d animated credit sequences, I think it looks great and is a great way to introduce some new art exploring the same ideas expressed in the film.

I really love Cassandra Rhodin's fashion art, I think it matches with what I am trying to express with Pips various costumes- beautiful, dark.



This has influenced me in the direction of fashion art as an idea for the credits sequence, these images are DEFINATLY not finished/fully developed:

Work proccess

The collaboration style is also a factor I considered with the behind the scenes work, currently I have a team of 6 friends who have all gratiously agreed to work on this project with me along with that I also have 2 bands and have obtained the rights to the Moby Gratis production music. When making this film I want it to be as fun as possible, I much rather working with people than sitting at a computer on my own and I have found that having other people on board has really kept me motivated and has also allowed me access to skills that i do not poccess myself. Win Win.