Advanced Animation (10) - Final Animation

This is the finished animation for this year's module. I re-used the soundtrack from my short film True Colours, so it's completely legal and I own all copyrights :)

I got an A18 for this :D very pleased!

Digital Media Practice (6) - Essay

I have finished my essay on the "Development of TV production in the internet consumption age" which will be my foundation for next year's honours and dissertation. Click here to read it. I might be able to upload my showreel, although it's not very impressive but I'll have to see about that as it's quite large.

Digital Media Practice (5) - Google TV

"Searching for the Future of Television" by Robert, D. Hof, an article on Google TV and the future of consumption of TV media on the internet.

Advanced Animation (9) - Rendering

After I had started the rendering process and realised the issues addressed in my last post I still had to render the intro scene of my animation. This turned out far darker than the main animation sequence which required me to add lights, or you wouldn't be able to see the animation at all. As I was going to fiddle about with that anyway I decided to fix the sky texture problem as well. It turns out to fix the shadow issue on a sky dome, you have to use a shader material instead of a lambert which illuminates the object by default and omits lighting form the light source (when the appropriate boxes are ticked). I then added a directional light which lit up the scene just as it was in the Maya file, as I expected it to look. This was fine for me, as I wouldn't be able to give it a nice "sunny afternoon" look anyway. Here is the result of that render:

Digital Media Practice (4) - Sketchbook/Notes

These are the notes I have taken throughout my research on the subject discribed previously.

Advanced Animation (9) - Storyboard

This is my complete storyboard. To view the images in higher resolution, click on the slideshow/image.

At this stage I am almost finished rendering the animation. Unfortunately, because I didn't want to waste my time playing with the lighting as it's not my area of expertise the characters have quite dark shadows and the sky dome is receiving and casting shadows too, which is a shame. It takes away the softness of the whole story but I think the animation is still worth while and hopefully the issue won't overshadow it (no pun intended). Tomorrow I am planning on putting it together in Final Cut, adding the music and hopefully by the end of the day submitting the whole thing. Then I can fully concentrate on Digital Media Practice and Personal Project. It's a shame that I have to finish Animaton this early, with so much time left over to tweak things, but I think if I didn't I would get too wound up in it and not have enough time for my other essays.

Advanced Animation (8) - Test Render

This is approximately what the final animation will look like when it's fully animated and rendered. Now on to lip-syncing the intro scene and then to final cut pro to put it all together!

Advanced Animation (7) - Cupid walk

This is the first fully animated scene of my animation. Cupid is walking to the edge of the tray and puts his foot on the ledge in an explorer-like pose, thrusting his fist in the air with adventurous ambition about leaving the tray to explore the wide world of blanketland. There are still some tweaks here and there that I need to make.

Persusaive Narrative (8) Treatment and Report

My Treatment and Critical Report so far. As I'm not completely finished with the documentary yet I might have to tweak them when I am done.

Critical Report

Treatment

Digital Media Practice (3) - Showreel Contribution

I edited my previous version of the Time Based Narrative Title Sequence I created in second semester of 2nd year at university to a higher standard. You can now clearly read the credits and the move-in sequences are sped up a little. The audio was recorded by myself and is only used for educational purposes.

I am going to use an excerpt of this video in my 2011 showreel.

Persuasive Narrative (7) - Text elements

In my second blog post I mentioned text popping up in screen listing what the 4th years have to do, in a comedic way: "While the 4th years talk about their project and what they have to do that list of things could pop up on screen as bullet points. To symbolise how much they have on their plate that text could eventually fill the screen and overwhelm the footage. As that's possibly only funny once I have to think of something else to incorporate in the film which work along the same lines."

I have decided to do that during Aimie's second stage interview, arranging the words like a Smilie face that turns sad when she says "Enjoy fourth year".

This way of manifesting words on the screen and giving what the person is saying more weight, seemed to also make sense for the bits during Aimie's and Rosie's presentations when they are talking and the audio is a bit weak. I have created Motion clips that type the whole words on the screen as they are saying it.

I tried keeping the style of all the on-screen graphics in style with the title screen and tommy tabs. I used the same colours and font for the script.

Persuasive Narrative (6) - Dailies second stage

I have re-evaluated my ideas. I wanted to have Rosie/Aimie talking while we watch them pitch their projects in a sped-up presentation. I realised that I didn't have enough footage of Rosie talking and too much of her presentation, which gave me the idea of separating her interview from her presentation. I used "working" footage as an overlay while she is talking and then used the presentation in a different way. I put quite a few cuts in, during her interview to pick up the pace of the documentary a little and get a feeling of urgency across. I then combined the presentation (still sped up) with a soundtrack representing the time coming to a close, stopping it every so often to pick out bits from the presentation that get her project across in a nutshell. Those little parts are snippets of her presentation in normal speed. I didn't use the entire presentation either, because it was still considerable in length even in a time-lapse. I used parts where there was a lot of moving about, adding to the comical effect created by the music.

For Aimie's part of the second stage I wanted to do something similar with music (a different song) but then thought it would seem repetitive lose its charm. Instead I am going to let Aimie talk and according to what she's saying I will cut parts of her presentation in. I have had some first reactions for this edit and they seemed to have been entertained, which is the aim of it. I would like to incorporate some music somewhere else in the documentary apart from just during Rosie's presentation (and the credits) but I am not sure as to where yet. Maybe at the end of Aimie's second interview in a similar way I finished Rosie's second stage. While the music plays out and fades out I put a shot of a pan across Whitespace in time-lapse. I might do that for the end of Aimie's second stage interview.

Digital Media Practice (2) - NAB Show 2011

NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) Show is the world’s largest digital media industry event attended by leading media, entertainment and communications professionals who share a passion for the next generation of video and audio content across multiple platforms — from television, radios and computers to phones, the big screen and beyond.

This video is a recap of the first day of the NAB show and has relevant information for my essay. Broadcasters talking about the future of TV broadcasting and how streaming websites like hulu fit into that.

Advanced Animation (6) - Blocking

I have now blocked all the main key frames for my animation. It still needs a bit of tweaking and hold frames but this is basically it. This is rendered from one camera angle only. The final animtaion will have several camera angles.

Persuasive Narrative (5) - Info bars

I had an idea of adding little subtitles or info bars at the bottom of the screen while Rosie and Aimie are talking so that you know how far along in the semester we are and how close to deadlines it is getting. I thought of using the same style tab as the one I created for the tommy tab. It's supposed to resemble the same style as the title screen.

Tommy Tab

Time Bar

Persuasive Narrative (4) - Post Production

I have started editing the existing footage. I want to keep the progression of the documentary linear. At the start of the documentary the pace is quite slow, the participants have time to talk and pause, reflecting their relatively relaxed state of mind. With the story moving along in time and submissions drawing closer, I want to build up the tension by having faster cuts, less pauses in-between sentences and also shorter parts for each person to speak i.e. the cuts between one person and the other will increase.

This is the title screen I created using a template animated font from motion. I wanted to create one of my own but stumbled across this one and it was a perfect fit. I downloaded a card shuffling sound from www.findsounds.com I am now using to give the clock turning a bit more weight.

I picked out a different one before I decided for the clock. It was more of a wire of electricity wrapped around each letter, pulsating. It looked a bit dated and 1990s.

I have, as described in previous posts, also gone with the "Vals of the Mandrake" soundtrack from Pan's Labyrinth. It fits well, as expected, and gives it that comedic, epic feeling.

Digital Media Practice (1) - Presentation

This module is directed towards research and preparation for honours year than to produce an art piece. I had to hold a presentation in front of a group of classmates a few weeks ago and this was my presentation (including notes and references):

Digital Media Practice w Notes on Prezi

Another part of this module is to research subject in a certain field of interest. my field of interest is Film and TV (Post-) Production as indicated in the presentation. For my essay I want to investigate the shift in TV production in relevance to the internet taking over most of this former mass medium. How has the internet, becoming such a widely used medium to view video content, influenced TV distribution and production. What key events/people have played a role in the change and development of TV production and what does internet becoming the new mass medium for TV/video consumption mean for the future of TV production.

So far I have looked into Google and Apple TV. I want to investigate how far back the integration of internet into TV sets and TV in PCs via TV cards goes. I also want to investigate how free internet streaming impacts TV production and what part TV boxes like Sky and TiVo play in this. I would like to tie in how audiences have changed over the decades with the technological developments of TV and internet and why that will inevitably change the way we consume TV.

This is most likely the route I am going to take: I am going to look into the rise of YouTube, How ad-driven/public service (traditional) TV operate and the culture of file sharing and commercial online TV (iPlayer, IYV Player, 4OD). I would also like to investigate the change in audience. Is the emergence of online TV a response to attitudes of consumers rejecting traditional TV? For this I will analyse decoder types (dominant, negotiated, oppositional) and structuralist encoding and decoding of TV/Online TV. Also, what new strategies do production companies develop to compete with file sharing and the rise of online TV.

Persuasive Narrative (3) - Development

At first I was filming three 4th years. Each one was from a different course, two artists (one Computer Arts, one Visual Communication) and one GDPM. I decided to film these three people because I wanted a range of male/female, artist/non-artist and  someone from an artist course I'm doing and another artist from a different course. Because the footage started to pile up I decided that trying to fit the stories of three people in one 10 minute documentary would be too much. I reduced it to the two artist as that is most relatable to me and my classmates. I still want to follow two people rather than one because I want to show a comparison of how different people handle the same situation.

I have now filmed the second stage, Rosie Henderson's and Aimie Willemse's crit presentations. The next step will be filming footage from closer to submission time to get that sense of tension and stress. I am still a bit unsure how I am going to put all this footage together in a funny, entertaining but also educational way. I don't want it to drag on, rather have some sort of edge to it.

Advanced Animation (5) - Lip-sync Test

This is the audio I will be using for my teapot character to lipsync to. I tried lip-synching the default character to it, as I don't have all my blend shapes set up yet.

Advanced Animation (4) - Lip movement studies

These are a few images of mouth movements when doing the sounds "A" [like Anatomy], "I" [like letter E], "U" [like Moon], "E" [like Elephant], "O" [like letter O], "M" [like mmmmh]