Working Journal for my final year project (2018)
29th January 2018
Today I edited the live action footage that I have filmed into a short test video consisting of about 20 seconds. This is because I wanted to test how I was going to animate over the top of my footage.
With this I tested it on my original idea of Adobe After Effects, however due to the lack of an onion skin tool I was unable to see what I had drawn on previous frames. From this I tested it within Adobe Animate, this turned out to be harder than I thought it was going to be due to the fact that I was unable to import the clip. After doing some research into this I found that it would be hard to do what I intended due to my clip not being the right format. From this I loaded it into Adobe Premier and then exported it (1920 by 1080 to ensure HD quality) as JPEGs this I am hoping to load into Photoshop and draw on each test fame to and construct the animation that way.
5th February 2018
After exporting my film to JPEGs out of Adobe Premier, I proceeded to import them into Photoshop and drawing over each frame. After consulting Stan for help as to how I could use and onion skin to allow me to see what I had drawn on the previous frame.
However after spending most of the day drawing over each frame, I played the film back and realised that the framing rate was wrong and which meant that the work that I had done played back to quickly.
Goals for next time is to see if I can change the frame rate or slow the footage I had drawn.
12th February 2018
Unfortunately after watching video tutorials and reading online description of the problem I have, there is no way to either slow down or change the framerate of my footage on photoshop.
Upon realising this problem I consulted with Stan who informed me that I can use the software TV Paint to rotoscope over both images and video footage. This was helpful to know as Stan showed me how I can do this. Along with this he also showed me how to add and effect on top of my layers which adds a boil effect to images, this was useful to know as the effect that my growing mass(or characters?) is supposed to look like a flipbook effect so that the growing mass skips rather than flows smoothly.
19th February 2018
After applying the new findings that Stan had showed me the previous week, I loaded my work back into TV Paint and began to work on my fridge scene of my film. This scene is 5 seconds long, after discovering that I had drawn on every frame on my first attempt I made sure each drawing was held for 2 frames. This meant that I could draw a single frame skip across two frames and have the previous frame carry over.
26th February 2018
Arrived in university and continued with the fridge sequence and began to plan ahead for my next shot. This shot being my main cup sequence which will be the longest shot of the film lasting 24 seconds which works out 600 frames at 25fps (frames per second)
28th February 2018
Found out today that an older (cracked) copy of TV-paint given to in my first year at USW allowed me to carry work over from the newer version the university offers. This means I can finish work(Job outside of university) and continue with my animation. As a result I have continued with the fridge sequence and been able to finish it now (11pm).
1st March 2018
After the completion of the fridge sequence my attention has been fully on the longest shot now, having the assistance of Louise (girlfriend) colouring my fridge sequence while my focus is on the cup sequence is a big help.
3rd March 2018
Before heading to work Louise helped me by recording some more audio for my piece this audio will help tie the film together better.
Update (8pm)
Louise recorded her audio again (more clearer) as well edited the recordings together so they are on the same sequence in an audio file.
Continued with cup sequence.
4th March 2018
Continued with the cup sequence after finishing work. As well as this I have started to colour the first 6 frames that I have of the background.
7th March 2018
Continued with the cup sequence drawing-wise after work.
15th March 2018
Continued with my cup sequence where the growth is slowly consuming the background behind the cup.
Update
In the evening I began to colour the first few frames, reason behind this is because my logic is that if I do X amount of frames of line work I can do X amount of colouring so I can balance it out and not have to worry about colouring it at a later date.
17th March 2018
Continued with the cup sequence.
18th March 2018
Continued with the cup sequence
20th March 2018
Continued with the cup sequence
25th March 2018
Louise helped me by taking over the colouring meaning that I can focus on the drawing side of things. Meaning I draw as much as I can, then Louise will colour on a file she copies over.
27th March 2018
Today I looked at the fridge sequence again and while watching I thought the block colour of grey doesn't look good for the theme that I am going for.
So I began experimenting with what I can put on top of the grey mass, so began by colouring over the top of it but in a scribble form to give the mass some texture. Using the method of colouring on one frame and then skipping to the next this allows for the auto fill to fill the frame that I skipped.
30th March 2018
Continued to colour the fridge sequence with the same scribble effect. Managed to colour the entire fridge scene where the growth crawls up the side of the fridge. Really happy with the progress I have made and hopefully I can start working on the potion vial dripping into the cup scene soon.
2nd April 2018
Began working on potion vial to be poured into the cup in the close up scene. To start with, I started to draw it digitally however I did not like how this looked. So instead I drew the image out by hand and scanned it into my Mac computer. From here I coloured the image in Adobe Photoshop to achieve the desired colour effect and exported it as a .png file, so it was have no background and the quality would remain intact.
3rd April 2018
Continuing work on potion vial and importing it into my film. Using the .png file that I previously created, I imported the image into TVPaint to continue working with it. Moving the image along the previously created growth, but I put the vial between layers so that it would look hidden beneath the growth.
5th April 2018
I went back to the video and then discovered that I was having some problems scaling the vial down to size to make it fit in the scene. I discovered that using the transform tool would move other layers such as the foreground or background growth. This meant that the layers would start moving into positions that I did not want them to for no apparent reason. To combat this I spoke to Stan about this, he said that the reason why I was having this problem was because the transform tool was not being turned off. This allowed for a quick and easy movement of the vial.
9th - 10th April 2018
Over the weekend I have been at work so I have not had time to continue with my work. So over the past two days I have been working consistently on my film. This involved continuing with the potion vial scene. I worked on the drop from the bottle into the cup. Also I continued to colour the rest of the scenes which needed a grey colouring and a scribble on top.
12th - 13th April 2018
Continuing with colouring the scenes and working on the potion vial. Colouring the film was the most tedious part of the process, but I discovered a different method of colouring which helped immensely. It involved using the paint tool (in TVPaint) and colouring directly onto the line video track that I had previously drawn. The negatives of this was that the paint tool left lines in between the original linework and the painted edge. However this was easily removed by using the pen tool. Between Louise and myself we managed to colour over 600 frames in the past few days.
16th April 2018
Added more detail and continued to work on the potion vial dropper scene. Decided against using a ladder in the potion vial scene, which was my original plan. By this point the ladder just seems too comical for the mood that I am trying to set. By having the growth control the potion vial to tilt into the cup, I can then allow the vial to disappear back into the growth, making it more mysterious.
17th April 2018
Completed colouring on all sequences. Decided that the front growth in the cup sequence will not be scribbled as I feel like the attention might be taken away from the centre of the frame. If I need to scribble on the growth I can always do so in the next few weeks of post production.
19th April 2018
Edited a draft video which included my fridge sequence, cup sequence and potion vial sequence. This was only a short film so that I can show my lecturers next week what I have achieved so far. I will continue to edit this week in post production.
24th April - 27th April 2018
This week I was focussed on taking my work into university to get feedback from my lecturers. By doing this, if they have any feedback I still have time to complete any additional work by next week in post production. From the work that I showed them they seemed happy but also had a lot of feedback for me to work on. Mainly they wanted to see the entire piece together to understand the context of the video. They advised me to add more animated pieces and varied shot distances into the film to help enhance the context of the video. I decided to add in a tentacle scene of which was in the original storyboards but I was unsure of adding in. This shot involves the tentacles reaching out from inside of the cup. I decided to make this shot an extreme close up instead, this would add further depth and interest in my film to keep the flow going. I did the shot in TVpaint first establishing the colour for the liquid and then drawing each frame of moment. After this I thought the tendrils looked like they where almost floating in the liquid so using the circle tool in TVPaint I created ovals without a filling and repeated them to make the movements more three-dimensional.
30th April - 1st May 2018
Over the past two days I have been working on audio and audio editing. After a discussion with Nikki, Sarah and Graham last week I decided to add some more shots and audio into the film to make the context more obvious. I retook some photos of my character in different poses, screaming and uncomfortable. Also I recorded audio of myself talking and got Louise to record herself talking. These voices were then edited Sony Vegas, I did attempt to edit them in Adobe Premiere but found the process too difficult and time consuming. In Sony Vegas, I used the ‘Reverb’ and ‘Pitch Shift’ effect, which added different layers and levels to the voices. During this process, I tried to edit the voices together to sound like they were arguing with each other inside my head. This is where the reverb effect came in useful as it added an echoing tone to the voices which could be adjusted in each part. Seeing as my piece is focussed on mental health, having the voices echo and whisper added to the feeling that I am trying to achieve. Tomorrow I want to show Graham my work all together with the voices added into the piece.
3rd May 2018
After finishing work, I arrived at University at 12. I showed Graham my film for any suggestions of feedback. He provided me with a few pieces of advice which I spent the rest of the session continuing to implement. Being able to show Graham the piece of work with audio was a good start to the session, because I was able to show him the context of the piece with him being able to understand what the message of the film was.
4th May 2018
In today’s session I continued on from yesterday’s work. I showed Sarah my work so far, she showed me a piece of work called Dad’s Dead a short animated piece, created by Chris Shepherd. It was an interesting animated short that upon further research won different awards for Best Animated Short. Seeing this film, was beneficial to me because it showed how the combination of live action and animation could be blended so seamlessly and how the two coincided with each other.
8th May 2018
In University today, I showed Sarah my work for more feedback and continued to work on my film. Sarah suggested I work on lighting more. So I added a dark vignette effect around the sides of some of the shots. This added a more focussed attention to the centre of the image and also added in a dark, ominous feeling to the piece.
9th May 2018
Today I finalised my animation. Continued to edit the video in Adobe Premiere, imported audio that Louise had previously edited for me. Showed work to Sarah and Nikki for their feedback; they advised that I add a texture of my choice on top of the growth inside of the fridge in the first scene. This was quite a struggle for me as I had already spent weeks scribbling on top of the growth in a consistent pattern to show depth and texture through penwork. Stan showed me how to import an image and overlay it over my work in Adobe After Effects. I wanted to use a static texture gif, but Stan showed me a preset in After Effects which I was able to customise. Unfortunately, halfway through the process the files became corrupt and resulted in me losing the textured project file. When I went back home I spoke to Louise who showed me how to do the same effect in Sony Vegas, this process is called masking. Masking in Sony Vegas is time consuming, as it required me to go around the image and make anchor points where I wanted the static texture to go. I have completed these files and intend to add them to my final film tomorrow and hopefully I will upload my completed work tomorrow as well.
10th May 2018
Arrived into uni today with the intentions to hand in, I began working on the final edit by the adding the textured fridge sequence into areas of my film (suggested by both Sarah and NIkki and to do so). I enjoyed adding the texture over the top of my film as I think it gave it an area of depth to it which enabled it to blend into the live action sequences better, however with the time limit have set myself I was unable to do other areas, but this is something I can do after the hand in and before the show.
After speaking to Nikki and showing her the sequence I have done and explained my reasoning behind what I have done, she was happy with what I have work wise and journal wise. The one question I had to ask was what I had to export the final film out as, this is because in the past films had to be handed in as quicktime files, but recently when I have gone to export areas of my film for testing/ rendering reasons I have had playback problems. Nikki has informed my that the new export method is H.264 which enabled a higher quality export with a lower file size(something I have been having trouble with)
Reflection
At the start of this project my mental health wasn't in the best of places. However, during the time that I spent focussing on this project, not only physically but mentally I feel like I have gained my creative spark again. Just knowing that I have been able to produce a piece of work that reflects what was/still is going on at this moment in time. I really enjoyed this project once I started getting into the motion of it, it has allowed for me to gain more knowledge and understanding in softwares that I feel I neglected the first time around when I was attempting my module. Knowing that I have done my best to get my story(film) and point across and taken the feedback and implemented it in to my work. Knowing that I am a step closer to my goal and dream of finishing university not only for make myself proud for overcoming so much doubt and self punishment, but to make my family proud, and so I can prove to the people who brought me down throughout my life in both school, and within my family life and told me I wouldn't get far, and that wouldn't be able to go to university, that I have done it and much more and come out on the other end stronger. A bit mentally and emotionally scared from the ordeal but scares make for good stories in the future. Maybe my experiences can help others through tough situations as well.
Recourse videos used
How to Pan and Zoom in Premiere Pro
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo7PBo6NXlQ&t=3s
Adobe Premiere Pro CC: How to Zoom In On A Picture/Video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VE0fCF-X1Ps
How to Create a Vignette in PREMIERE PRO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_n-kr1Z3hk
Custom Shape Masking - Adobe Premiere
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIgV5tGDd5s
How to Make Glitch Video Effects in Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2017 Tutorial (VCR VHS Glitch Art Edit)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kd1SMC5j4i0
TV Glitch Masking Effect (After Effects Tutorial)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ld0Uvhj9VmA