Finalising the Film

The film is nearing its completeion as all the scenes have been animated and polishing has begun..

Below, I have taken several screenshots from the film to show my progress. I have started considering the sound design, all the foley etc needs to be carefully considered, especially for the forest. I will use various soundtracks from 'Fantastic Mr. Fox'.

The film so far:



Here Zoe walks across a street of Croydon. The buildings have been created out of my own images I photographed in and around Farnham.

The smoke here has been rotoscoped from a Youtube video.

The camera cuts to a tracking shot of Zoe's upper body as she continues to walk. A billboard is present which reveals a favourite phrase from Zoe.

A lorry drives past revealing a huge fox printed onto the side. This reveals the love of foxes Zoe has. The lorry leaves behind a huge dust cloud which I rotoscoped from various smokey videos.

The bus then drives past advertising 'The Lion King' This bus acts as a wipe transition as....

..... a close up of Zoe is revealed. Foliage begins to become present and a sign pointing  to 'Croydon forest' is revealed.  Zoe walks towards the foliage, greenery and branches.

As she enters a flash of light is created as the contrasting transition is formed. Using various 3D layers branches and leaves are able to brush past the camera with ease.

 She exits the bush revealing  a whole new magical, green forest. Light rays burst down onto Zoe as she walks along merrily.

 The whole scene fades to orange as autumn arrives. Animated autumnal leaves fall. Zoe throws leaves above her head.

Scene cuts to wider shot of Zoe. Light fades fast to night. Here she stope walking for the first time. She looks up towards the tree canopy....

... The camera pans up, branches rustle as the camera glides through the canopy revealing a starry moon lit night sky.

The word Zoe is then formed around the moon.


Fin



The film is now pretty much complete. The backgrounds have worked really well as well as the 3D layers, though the character animation and walk cycle may need some refining and polishing. A few tweaks with the lighting and shading are need too.

Nearly time to do the all important final render.

With the DVD case complete I must now create a DVD menu which i will create using photoshop.

Update _ Forest

The overall film seems to be coming along nicely and should be finished within the next few days! The forest scenes have taken several days to complete due to all the different 3D layers and lighting effects.

One version of the forest scene took over 45 mins to render and is composited of over 100 layers... 

(Below) Compositing the forest. Each tree has to be treated within a 3D atmosphere as the several z axis are manipulated back and forth to create depth. Motion blur etc has to be added to create the illusion of depth spacing and movement. 

I find myself getting rather lost within this jumble of layers and arrows, though, I think I'm slowly getting into a routine and suitable workflow. 

The lighting for the forest scene is paramount for its success. The idea of the film is to contrast the dark and grubby streets of Croydon with the bright and striking colours of the natural forest.


One imporatnt scene in the film is when autumnal leaves begin to fall from the tree canopy as the whole scene fades to orange.

After much head scratching I cut out several autumnal leafs using photoshop.

Once composed onto a new composition I could play around with the 3D space and motion paths.

The organic floating nature of a leaf was hard to acheive though with the help of the rotation and scale tool  I was able to achieve this piece of animation - by no means perfect but should work well upon my forest composition.

The animated autumnal leaves were then composited onto the forest scene and tweaked to fit in.

The scene is coming along nicely - still lots of adjustments to do, though.

Camera Track 01

I have managed to create the illusion of a camera tracking from right to left along a busy/polluted Croydon street. Th camera runs parallel to Zoe as she walks down the street!

To create this illusion I have attached the background onto a motion path running from left the right. This created a so called 'conveyor belt' effect as everything on screen moved to the left along a straight parallel path.

By keeping the Zoe puppet stationary the illusion of a camera tracking alongside her was achieved!




This scene took a long time as all the layers had to be composited into a 3D atmosphere.

This enabled the illusion of depth to be created.

During this scene Zoe walks past a billboard advertisement saying 'Zoe says yeah yeah!'
This is Zoe's favourite phrase - assessment criteria.

Rotosocoped smoke added atmosphere, though the final bus and lorry designs still need adding!

^^ A lorry approaches in After Effects!

Vehicles _ Croydon

I have now completed the two vehicles which will drive by during the Croydon scenes. 

Both the bus and the lorry incorporate the various themes of 'Zoe'. 

On the side of the bus 'The Lion King' is advertised and on side of the lorry a fox is present. 

Although subtle these images I created on photoshop will portray the world of Zoe!

If you look really closely you will be able to see 'Zoe' printed onto the lorry cab and the front of the bus.
The number 13 is present on the bus as this is Zoe's favourite number?!

I'm really pleased with the outcome of the designs, all the images were taken off Google. These will only be on screen for a split second (bus acts as a wipe transition)

The bus and lorry will drive by after the first cut. After the establishing shot a close up of Zoe walking along the street will follow.

The shot will be shown as the camera tracks along a street of Croydon with Zoe.

As the camera pans and tracks parallel to Zoe various buses and lorries will travel by advertising Foxes etc.

I have started to build the camera tracking scene from various photographs I took of Farnham:

1st Attempt - Forest

I have decided to experiment with the proposed forest scene. After Zoe has walked down a busy street of Croydon she walks into a 'mystical' shrub which acts as contrasting transitional point. As the bush passes a whole new peaceful world arrives on screen.

Shrubs and tree trunks replace the urban concrete jungle and as Zoe enters deeper into the forest the whole scene becomes more mystical as autumn arrives and then night.

This scene is going to take a lot of time and rendering power. This is because all the individual tree trunks and plant life must be cut out and seperated onto layers. Therefore the illusion of depth and 3D can be produced.

The forest test below:

(Sorry for bad quality)

I am relatively pleased. The 3D layers have worked pretty well. However, perhaps more shrubbery needs to be present in the foreground. Also the depth of field could possibly exaggerated a bit more. The background could do with being a bit more blurred.

The Zoe puppet will of course be animated!

To create the dust particles I composited the animation preset: 'cc snow'. I then set the speed of the snow to
-0.03. This negative value caused the snow to slowly rise upwards.

Next I want to try and create some light rays and 'funky' lighting effects - it all possibly needs to be a bit brighter and vivid.

Below: The 'magical' bush which acts as a transitional wipe between Croydon and the forest is coming along nicely.

Case Design

I have now printed a DVD case for my digital skills film. The design incorporates all the main themes of my short film.
These themes include Croydon, night, forest, autumn etc...

The design took a few days to create on Photoshop. (Over 30 layers were used to make up this design). The Zoe 'logo'/typography has been used which I really feel gives my film a unique 'trademark'.

I am pretty pleased with the results. However, when slotted into the case the Zoe title seems a little off centre. This is not a huge issue considering I still have a film to create! Therefore I will alter this if I have time at the end!

Scene02

Been very busy with the essay the past few days but I've started work on the next scene for the Digital film. After the Croydon opening scene the camera will track along a street of Croydon as Zoe continues to walk.

To do this I have created a panorama composition of a street in Croydon. This way when composited onto After Effects I can key frame the background to move to the right. The Zoe puppet will stay stationary (head bounce etc) but the movement of the background will give the illusion of her walking.

The scene seems to be coming along nicely so far. Next I've got to composite on to After Effects!

DVD Labelling

With Christmas fast approaching I have decided to print my DVD labels before heading back north.

I designed the label on photoshop and got some printed off at 'DiskKing' earlier today.

I though it would take them quite a few days to process but they printed it off within 5 minutes!! Very impressed with the service.

I decided to print another spare copy off, just in case I mess up when rendering over the holidays!!

^ A fresh batch of shiny Zoe DVD's! :)

I also started experimenting the the DVD case.

Still needs a lot of work, but this shows how it may possibly appear:

Have to make the film now......

DVD

One of the assessment requirements is for the DVD to have a printed label.

Using the DVD template off 'MyUCA" I used Photoshop to create my design.

It consists of the Zoe typography in front of a night sky gradient.

I thought I would get this out of the way before Christmas, so I'm off to 'DisKing' tomorrow to get it printed.

(Below) Almost complete, my name needs adding!

Scene 01 - Initial Walk Cycle

I have now added the Zoe walk cycle puppet onto my earlier composition of Croydon. The scene seems to be working well as Zoe walks from right to left.

I'm not amazingly pleased with the walk cycle, I found it really tough manipulating the individual layers whilst parenting/rotating etc.. However, I feel the whole overall effect of this scene is looking good - not perfect but a good start. I feel the puppet needs more of a head bounce.

Thankfully this is the only walk cycle I have to animate for this film, the rest is framed from the waist up. Due to time ticking by and Christmas fast approaching, I will get on with the next scenes. I'm sure these will test and challenge my knowledge of After Effect too - so I'm looking forward to it!

The first scene below:

I created a mask and dropped the opacity. This mask acted as a subtle shadow beneath Zoe as I parented it to the puppets motion path.

A little more compositing...

I'v been busy working further on the first scene of my digital skills film.

The compositing seems to be coming along nicely. All thats left for this scene is to animate the puppet(walk cycle).

I have added some ambient sound effects as well some of the Fantastic Mr.Fox soundtrack - which Zoe likes. This enables me to really see and hear how these Croydon scenes will turn out.

The rotoscoped smoke works well, as does the little train.

The puppet is out of focus and inanimate at the moment, these will be worked on tomorrow creating the first scene!

I am pretty pleased with the results so far.