Final Project: Update #1

Tada! Storyboards.

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...she looks kinda drugged in the second to last panel...

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Page 5 Yay for happy endings.

This should have been posted hours ago, but I could NOT for the life of me find a scanner to use/work. (I don't own one.) Needless to say, I finally found one.

My final project is going to be a short animation about a girl and a dog constellation. Sound a little weird? Yes. Yes it is.

Basically, the story goes like this: a little shepherd girl (or something) falls asleep late at night while tending her sheep, when she is awakened by some glowing stars. Suddenly, the very constellation she was looking at only seconds before comes to life as a living dog. (It's Canis Major.) She is a little scared at first, but sees that the dog just wants to play. So she throws a rock for it to catch. Once it hits the sky, the rock turns into a shooting star, and the dog catches it. He returns it to her, but just before he can drop it into her hands, the sun begins to rise. The dog fades away, leaving the little girl very sad. Everything is enveloped in a white light, and the girl wakes up in the same position she had fallen asleep in earlier. Thinking it was just a dream, the girl seems sad, but then notices the glowing star next to her feet, where before it had been just a rock.

There are a lot of little scenes I would like to have added to my storyboards, but I know I need to limit myself so I'll get this done on time. If I do end up having time, I want to add a couple other constellations. For example, when the dog first awakens and keeps barking, I want Pisces (the fish) to awaken, swim around its head to shush him, then fade away again. Or, when the dog is chasing the shooting star, it runs into another constellation, like the bear or cat or something meanish. After being growled at, they disappear, and the dog limps away with its tail between its legs back to the girl. I know all of this would be very difficult to do in the amount of time I have, so that's why I have made it "optional."

So, to follow my storyboards, start from left and go to the right. It may seem confusing because I tend to sketch the previous positions of the characters behind the solid sketches of current positions. That way I have an idea of where I should place the pieces of the characters.

Having said that, I will be using After Effects to puppet the characters, though I'll make their pieces in Photoshop. I'm still trying to decide if I would like to use different textures on different pieces, such as fabric texture on the girl's clothes, or granite on the rocks. The hardest part will be creating the constellation. My idea right now is to outline it in white and fill it with a somewhat transparent layer of stars, just so that there is a little contrast between it and the sky around it.

Now is the time to get to work! :) In the meantime, enjoy some character sketches...

~Becca

Canis Major. The big part of the constellation is the Dog Star, Sirius.

Puppy. I was debating just making up my constellation for awhile there.

This girl was SO HARD to figure out. I knew I wanted some kind of face covering, so I had to do all sorts of research about hijabs, burqas, head scarves, you name it. It was kinda cool, actually. I felt this design was too formal.

Too ninja.

I was reeeeally close to using this one.

There she is! I settled on this design, though I tried to make her look a bit older, like the previous sketch. Hope you enjoyed!

Assignment 9: Particle Effects

Something strange is going down on Main Street...


First of all, I need to give Videocopilot.net credit for helping me make this with their wonderful tutorials. (And of course, thank you Ben for teaching me, well, everything!) Between what I learned in class and this website, I have learned a ton more about particles and how they work than had I tried everything on my own.

Here we have some kind of energy tornado thing. It doesn't make sense, but I wanted to make something look kinda cool. I noticed videocopilot.net had a tutorial on energy and decided to try it out.

There are several particle effects in this: the tornado is a 3D layer (with a camera, of course) of twirling tripolygons with a feathered mask over it, there is a circle of tripolygons being sucked into a hole underneath that, there are "trash" particles blowing all over the place (movement of that was randomized), there are layers of "small bubbles" and "large bubbles" at the base of the tornado that utilize a puff of smoke jpeg I found, and the glowing, flickering base of the tornado is made up of two circles with the wiggler added to its opacity. That's right, I used expressions! The final layer is a black mask, which I tampered with the color correction to make the original photo of Taylor, Texas' Main Street look darker and creepier. Finally, I made all the layers into a new composition and added the camera shake (wiggler). Keep in mind, I did color correction ('curves,' to be exact) on virtually all of the layers.

I'm pretty excited about what I was able to do on my first try. My only complaint is that the bubbles didn't come out quite as I had hoped. I really wanted to make this sphere of shifting energy at the base of the tornado, kind of like on the original Terminator. Other than that, I really liked how this one came out. It's kind of creepy!

~Becca

Assignment 8: Green Screen Exercise

Wingardium leviosa! A short green screen exercise. Like my oh-so-realistic feather??

WELL, what to say about this... First I used a couple garbage mattes to get rid of the exposed walls around the stage. I used Keylight 1.2 in After Effects to key out the green, soften up the edges, color correct, and a bunch of other things. I tried really hard to get those dang edges to clean up, but it just wasn't going to work. You can see a nasty gray line all along my right side - especially on my pants - and my face was super shiny that day (I guess it was hot...?) and was thus spilling green all over the place. It took me forever to make sure my face wouldn't disappear whenever I turn it. Ah, well. It was my first time. I added a light in After Effects to try and brighten my right side up a bit to match the background a little better. It wasn't till after I uploaded it that I realized that the shadows don't match between the footage and the background. :P And of course YouTube decided to cut off my disappearing act at the end. I really just need to take the time and upload everything on Vimeo!

Enjoy!

~Becca

Assignment 7 1/2? Pre-Green Screen

When we filmed last Thursday in front of a green screen, I was the first to go so I didn't really know what I was doing. Luckily we had a little Harry Potter wand so I casted a spell ("Wingardium Leviosa!") in hopes that I will be able to animate a feather or something hovering in the air. Then I casted some kind of shield of invisibility around me (or something) that I will hopefully be able to use particles when we learn those. I had a lot of fun watching everyone else's little skits, especially Ben's fight on a rooftop. I may end up animating that clip instead...

I'm still not quite sure how I would animate the feather realistically, so I may also end up doing a tracking shot like we did in class, in which I'd film something around campus, key out the sky, and put something ginormous in the background, like one of those tripod alien ships from War of the Worlds. Or maybe an oncoming tidal wave. Hmm....So many options....

Anyway, that's what I'm thinking so far! I had never really thought about how difficult it is to film in front of a green screen before last week. There are so many parameters you have to make sure are working correctly before getting a good shot. I have to say, I'm still a big fan of building your own sets, just because it gives the actors and audience something "real" to look at, but a green screen can be sooo helpful. Adios!

~Becca

Assignment 7: Text & Talladega Nights

One of my fav quotes from Talladega Nights. I know this movie is stupid, but I love it.

Made this in After Effects. I was surprised I didn't use any presets like I was planning on doing. Instead I just had fun rearranging the text around the screen. The audio clip is from The MovieWavs Page (www.moviewavs.com), which I was highly impressed with. They have a huge database of downloadable audio clips from different movies.

Anyway, I think this project actually took longer than I thought. It was a breeze at first, then I realized that many hours had actually passed... I never realized just how many words people say in such a short amount of time! I had fun doing it, and it was surprisingly easy, so hopefully I'll make more soon!

~Becca

Assignment 6: Shadow Puppets

This kid has too strong and disturbed of an imagination.

Or maybe that's just me.

Here I have made a few billboards as you saw from my last entry. The hands and sheet (background) were done in Photoshop and imported into After Effects. I used only one camera to zoom in on the shadows and one spotlight to cast them.

There are a lot of things I want to change about this, but I have run short on time to get the assignment in (my own fault), so I'll submit this and then correct it later this week to my liking. :) I've been out of town since Friday for a grad school interview/program, so, naturally, nothing got done for school this weekend! And I'd do it tomorrow before class but I just got a job (yay!) that I have to work.

But enough of excuses! For the things I would fix: SOUND EFFECTS. I have a folder full of potential sound effects that I really want to play with, like the sound of a kid laughing, dogs barking, birds squawking, and a monster laughing. And a burp. Like I said, once I get enough time I will mix them all in Logic Pro. I also really hate that little jerk the camera does at the beginning when zooming in, but it just takes so long to render out (this one took about 30 minutes, maybe a little more) that I didn't want to sit through it again. Finally, looking at it now, I would like to experiment with making the sheet a bit transparent and adding one or two low key lights behind it, just to add a little realism. Oh, and the shadows need to be darkened. I can see a bit of the edge of the left hand where I had attached it to the arm.

I really enjoyed this assignment and I'm actually pretty pleased with how mine came out. (I had been scared to death of doing something in 3D!) I gave myself nightmares creating that monster hand. It actually looks kind of like a dragon in its shadow form, but if I were to pull the camera back and let you see what the actual hand looks like when its mutated...it's just terrifying.

And for the record, I don't hate children, I promise.

~Becca

Assignment 6 1/2: Shadow Puppets

Here is my progress so far in making a short bit in AE called "Shadow Puppets." The idea is with one camera and one light I can show a kid playing with shadow puppets against the backdrop of this sheet here:
Here are some of the hands I'm using. We've got an alligator:

and a dog:
I have already set up the scene in AE, but I haven't recorded any movement yet to show you. You'll have to wait till next week for that!

All of these files were made in Photoshop using the pen, brush and paint bucket tools. I also have versions of them where the hands are actually separated from the arms so that I can animate them separately in AE. My only worry is that the files are too small and will end up pixely when animating them. I'm planning on using the puppet tool on the hands to make them bend. That way the pinky can move on the "dog" so it can bark and the "jaws" of the alligator can move. All you will see is their shadows, so it doesn't really matter how distorted they end up being.

I'm going to try and find some nice sound effects in the UT sound library once again. The dog should be easy enough, but what does an alligator sound like?

~Becca