Applied Animation: Documentary: Week One: 19th - 25th March 2018

After finishing the competition project, I quickly got excited about the documentary project. While we didn't manage to really get much done about this project for the beginning of the week, we met up after the COP hand-in to discuss the documentary. 

I am working with Andy and Nicole. We all decided early on that we wanted to do our documentary on history. In the past, Andy and I had already discussed that we would both like to make a pirate history animation. This is something that I am very passionate about as that era of history is fascinating to me. I thought a crash course video on the golden age of piracy could be fun to do. However we decided that doing a video about a specific event would be much more realistic and manageable, while also allowing us to go more in depth on that event.

I suggested that we cover the events of Blackbeard's death, and the others agreed. To gather research for this topic, we will be looking online for accounts telling of the events. I also own a book called 'The Republic of Pirates' which has a chapter dedicated to the life and death of Blackbeard.

Andy suggested styling the animation like an old 18th century illustrated book, which Nicole and I both really liked. Doing this, we then decided that making the animation 2D tweened would fit that style the most. An example I used was like the Horrible Histories animated sections.

Neither Andy or Nicole wanted to direct this project and suggested that since I am the most passionate about the idea, I should direct it. I am really excited to direct this one and make an interesting documentary on Blackbeard. Andy will be in charge of character designs and character assets, while Nicole will be working on backgrounds and background animation. I will then be doing most of the animation, though we will all be doing bits of the animation.

Applied Animation: Competition: Week Five: 12th - 18th March 2018

I finished off the cathedral, initially starting colouring and lighting it. I was really happy with how the lighting was coming together. However, it decided that we should just stick with the simple wireframe look. It was a shame that I didn't get to incorporate the fully lit render into the animation as it was supposed to show the full capabilities of Surface. We have discussed that I would be doing that many times before but now we aren't doing it, it's a shame that I wasted quite a bit of time working on the lighting and rendering. 

Shot 8 required more masking than any other shot. This was because of how he jumped in from outside the greenscreen and we needed that screen space to make the composition feel natural. This wasn't hard to do, it just took time to make sure it was a neat mask without any strange looking edges. I then worked on the anchor point for this shot. This worked very well because I simply made a line with the actual anchor point tracked to his hands, and then made another line following that to act as the visible anchor line. I'm really happy with how that shot turned out.

Some of the last parts I did was adding shadows to each full body shot. This involved drawing a black mask under Liam's feet and just keyframing it's shape to the movement of his feet/body. I then just added a blur and lowered the opacity and I am very pleased with the result. I believe it is subtle enough to just add to those shots but not something you really notice.
I also tracked Chloe's bird animation to Liam's hand and duplicated the flying loop in the next shot to spread into multiple birds. 

To finish off, I added shot 15 onto the screen in shot 16. I did this using AE Mocha to track the screen. While this was fiddly, it created a much smooth result than the inbuilt tracking in AfterEffects could do. Then all that needed doing was importing shot 15 into a pre-comp which contained the tracking data. This method also makes the footage easy to swap out for the short versions.

Overall, I am proud of the final result. I think we did work well together to create the final product dispite some communication issues when not speaking in person. There would be misunderstandings which when we met in person to discuss it, would be easily explained and solved. I believe we are all really pleased with the result. 

Applied Animation: Competition: Week Four: 5th - 11th March 2018

I sorted each shot into it's own After Effects file which was then dynamically linked into the premiere file. This created a smooth and clean workflow in which anyone can edit and add to any shot, and then it automatically get's updated back into the full edit. This system made the editing and the fact that we were all working on different shots at different rates, very efficient. All that needs doing is dropping the animation into the pre-determined after effects files and then it is done.

There was some confusion where it was thought I had gone ahead and cut every frame down so there wasn't room to work with, however this wasn't the case as I had just keyed each shot and then left the framing as we shot it. Now we can move and resize the footage within the frame to however it needs to be to make space for the animated elements as we do them.

Once I had finished keying the shots, we could start working on the accompanying animation.

My main section is the architecture art at the end. For this I was to be making a cathedral in Maya. We were originally going to have a city be built around him, but decided a cathedral would more manageable and look less cluttered. I gathered visual research of cathedrals that I could create.

As I was building it, I stayed aware of how things would be reverse engineered to be animated building themselves. Most objects could simply be lowered below the ground but some needed to be more interestingly animated. The main challenge was creating the offset in the pillars rising. I discovered that I couldn't simply copy the pillar as it's animation wouldn't come with it. Then I tried making an instance but that meant that moving the timings of the keyframes did that for EVERY copy of it, which defeated the point of making the offset. In the end, I was told to try exporting one pillar as an object and then re-import it and offset the keyframes from there. This worked to create the effect I was envisioning. I am really pleased with the result of this and once textured and dropped into the shot, I am confident it will look really interesting and appealing. 

Applied Animation: Competition: Week Three: 26th February - 4th March 2018

This week was very intense. We filmed all of the live action footage for the video. The first day of filming, we moved all tables from the studio to make space to look like a clean, white set like many Microsoft adverts. We couldn't book out the dolly or gimble because we needed tutorials with both that staff didn't have time to give us in time for submission. We worked around this by me sitting on a wheelie chair and Chloe gently pulling me backward.
This shot was tricky due to timing LiamS standing up and walking away in the correct timing as the camera moved away. I was focusing on keeping the composition looking nice and balanced while also changing the focus as we got further away. This was quite fiddly and resulted in many takes which drop out of focus. However I think we did get a good result and once it has been stabilised a bit in after effects, it should look just as we want.

The only time in the photography studio we could get was on Wednesday, and this was the only free slot for another month. However, due to snowy weather, the uni had to shut early and we didn't manage to film anything. This meant we had to use the animation studio again the next day (which was empty because of the snow). We spent a lot of time setting up the lights to be evenly lighting the green-screen as this would make keying much more accurate in post. Liam was concerned about shadows being cast on the floor, however I am confident they won't be an issue when keying. The filming process all went very well and smoothly, the only issue would be some shots had parts of Liam's body clipping over the edge of the green-screen.

Over the weekend, I sorted through all the footage to find the best takes of each shot. They are all really well lit with spot on focus (bar 1 or 2 shots which were only slightly out of focus). It took me quite a while to go through all the footage to narrow down the best. I had to also find the shots that lined up cohesively with the 2 shots before and after it.
I believe the takes I have edited together are all very good and flow with each other to tell the story.