eve vfx

VFX and Motion Graphics student at the University of South Wales - first year.

[evemvfx]

Evaluation

When we were first given the brief for this project I did have a mild panic due to my lack of drawing ability and ideas however when Jason showed some video examples I could see that I could create the frames digitally instead and I did have ideas I just hadn’t thought them all through. This brought some relief to me at the time but as you can see I didn’t have time to do the frames how I wanted to and so the drawings have been used instead. I think they turned out a lot better when I added colour. Overall I’m happy with the final product. After stressing about how it would all look in the end, I think the use of colour and sound effects made the video a lot better than the original black and white frames would’ve looked. 

I chose the story of the bird crapping on my head because I thought I could over exaggerate the tension between the seagulls and the main character. I think it turned out quite well in the end especially because some parts match with the music which creates drama. I also chose this idea because I thought the frames would be simple as it’s quite a basic storyline.

I think the whole style mainly the colour scheme has definitely taken inspiration from the shows I mentioned such as the big lez show and David Firth’s Cream video from youtube but also from the films like Napoleon Dynamite. I’ve used quite soft calming colours that still contrast with each other well and make the overall aesthetic better.

What I don’t like about the storyboard is how the edges of the images are still quite rough which I found difficult to edit out in Photoshop. Also I didn’t think the music transitions were very good because they camer out of nowhere and I couldn’t figure out how to ease in and out. 

The main thing I struggled with in this project is the time management. I’ve realised I like taking the longest way around doing things. When I start doing something and realise I could’ve done it a lot quicker another way I just carry on doing the long way because I don’t want to give up on it. For example in this project I would start colouring in the background image using the brush tool but then I realised I could just use the pen tool and fill it in with colour but for some reason I just carried on using the brush tool. This is a habit I need to shake off. If I managed my time better I would have added more details to the images and make the animatic a bit more complex. I’d also want the music to flow a bit better. Although I think I set realistic expectations that would fit the deadline, I just couldn’t focus at times and didn’t commit to the work as much as I should have. This has definitely helped me completing this project because it’s made me realise I need to manage my time better. I’m really going to try and finish the projects maybe a few days before the deadline so I have time to receive feedback and improve. I’m also going to start making a timetable of when and what work I’ll be doing each day. I need this kind of organisation in order to make me more motivated because I think if it’s set out in front of me everything I need to do, it’ll be satisfying ticking things off the list.

Another problem I found is that I struggle with coming up with and deciding on an idea. So for future projects I definitely need to leave a few days free just for brainstorming ideas and testing them. The mind maps and quick storyboard sketches really helped to give me a quick idea of how I could do the storyboard ideas so I could decide which story would flow the best. I’m going to use this method for future projects. 

Through doing this project I’ve learnt that even if you are a bad drawer you can still make adjustments to the image using editing software like Photoshop and I need to plan everything I need to do before I start anything. What I like about the final product is the colours added and I think I was quite good at cleaning up the images. I feel like it was a good thing to learn this earlier on in the year because it means I could start to be able to draw frames in more detail and then add colour afterwards. However, I still want to give my original idea a go - using Photoshop to trace over images I’ve taken. I enjoyed the editing of the frames in Photoshop and think finding the music and sound effects was actually one of the funnest things to do. I’ve learnt some new skills that I will hopefully be using in future projects like editing in Premiere Pro was very new to me so this has helped build my confidence in the different types of software. Overall, I’m happy with the experience this project has given me and all the skills I’ve picked up along the way. I’m also happy with how the final project turned out despite all the mishaps that occurred along the way.

[evemvfx]

Final Flat Storyboard

The final storyboard with and without colour. This just shows the difference between before and after adding colour and how effective it is. I think it made the storyboard look a lot more pleasing to look at.

A quick analysis:

1) Establishing shot at the start sets the scene for the rest of the story. Two people sitting on a bench in a seaside setting. Zoom in on their faces to a medium shot. 

2) Pan down showing the toilet sign. 

3) Hands moving across the screen show the ice cream being passed over. This close up makes the storyline clearer. 

4) Medium shot shows me holding the two ice creams happy. 

5) Still a medium shot of me eating my ice cream. 

6) Pan up showing me looking up. 

7) Continue panning up to suggest I'm still looking up. See seagulls flying around. 

8) Medium shot. Continue eating ice cream. 

9) I spot the birds in the corner of my eye and look down. Pan across from top right to bottom left suggesting eye movement. 

10) Shot showing the seagulls staring at me and my ice creams. 

11) Slow zoom in on my nervous face. 

12) Pan from right to left showing squinting eyes. 

13) Look back down to look at seagulls. 

14) Close up of seagulls popping their heads in. 

15) Gasp SFX. Scared expression. 

 16&17) Eyes go from straight to looking down back at where the seagulls were. Still frame no camera movement here. 

18) Quick shot of the pavement where the seagulls were. No seagulls in sight. 

19) Sigh of relief SFX. Relieved seagulls have gone. 

20) Pan from left to right shows ice creams are starting to melt and drop down my hand. 

21) Pan down on the drips of ice cream to a splat (SFX) on the floor. 

22&23) Sad face. Bends over to look at puddle. 

24) Worms eye view, up shot shows me looking over the puddle. 

25) Zoom out from me looking down to reveal the bird above my head. 

26,27&28) Camera slowly pans down as the bird crap starts to fall on my head. 

29) Slow zoom in on my face like a sitcom moment. I am looking into camera. 

30) The end frame.

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The Final Animatic

For some reason the mp4 of my video won’t upload to my tumblr page so this is a link to the animatic in my dropbox.

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Royalty Free Music from Bensound for use in Videos, Youtube, films,... Only high quality royalty free music.

Another useful website that I’m going to use to find some royalty-free music for the animatic. The range is quite limited but I think there must be some styles of music that fit my style of animatic.

After having a look they did have the sort of music I wanted, I’ve chosen two types of music, one that's upbeat and fun and then another that's dramatic for when the seagulls start getting closer and closer. I'm happy with the music I've chosen because it adds some mixture to the video.

[evemvfx]

Freesound: collaborative database of creative-commons licensed sound for musicians and sound lovers. Have you freed your sound today?

Registered for an account at freesound.org, a really useful website, so I could download sound effects and add them to the sequence. 

I downloaded a lot of sound effects. I think they’re all perfect for the frames though.

[evemvfx]

Test 3

I’ve added colour to the majority of the frames so I’m starting to get closer to the final piece. Just need to finish the last few frames, slow down the tempo slightly, add less camera movement, more animation within the scene and add some music and sound effects. So not much really.

[evemvfx]

Progress!

To be honest, I’m starting to like the look of each frame after I’ve coloured them and cleaned them up a bit so I’m starting to think this idea will look possibly even better than I’d planned. I feel a style starting to develop. It’s quite a weird style which will be more personal to me because I’ve hand drawn in instead of just tracing over images in Photoshop. But from my research you can see I like things that are a bit abnormal like David Firth’s videos.

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Adding Colour

After asking for some help from Geraint because I was having troubles with the time restraints. He suggested I just scan in the draft storyboard and use that for the animatic. I didn’t really like my drawings from the start so I added colour on Photoshop by adjusting the blending mode to multiply and colouring over the images. I also combined parts from the drawings so for example in the pictures above I didn’t like the hair so I cut it from a different drawing where I did like the hair and I think it makes the drawing look a lot better.

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Test 2

This was another test before I added the colour which started to add some movement to the images by using the layers in Photoshop and importing them into Premiere Pro. I could then key frame parts of the picture.

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Test 1

This is the first very quick brief animatic I created using the drawings. What I don’t like about this is how confusing it actually is, the story isn’t very clear. Geraint suggested adding colour and sound effects to the images which I think I’ll do next. It’s also not really animatic more of a slideshow so hopefully I can improve on this.

[evemvfx]

Brief Panic

I’ve had a mild panic. Started to feel overwhelmed with how much work I had to do in the time limit. I was beating myself up about how I should’ve started earlier so that I could make the animatic look how I wanted it to. When I hit this realisation that I don’t have time to complete the storyboard I wanted, I went to ask for help from Geraint. He gave me some great advice: start something. Because I had it set in my head what I wanted to create, I didn’t think about ways that I could still present a finished product. He suggested scanning in the storyboard I've done as a draft and using that in the animatic so that I have a back up in case I don’t finish the frames how I originally wanted them. I started it straight away just to have something. I managed to finish a very quick animatic in a few hours using the draft drawings that I don’t really like the look of but still, it made me feel a lot better.

[evemvfx]

Drawing Inspiration 

The seagulls appear at 0:30.

I thought I recognised the seagulls I drew. I’ve clearly taken a lot of inspiration from this scene in the film Finding Nemo. It must have been lingering in the back of my mind whilst I was drawing the seagulls because I’m trying to capture a similar atmosphere. The seagulls are after the food. I quite like the intimidation that can be generated with the use of only one word, ‘mine’ and the fact that their expressions hardly move makes the scene more humorous because it’s so opposite to the rest of the character’s in the film.

[evemvfx]

Camera Shots Used

I’ve decided to have a more in depth look at the ways I’ve used the camera movements and shots from my research in my storyboard. I attached a link earlier in my research to a website which showed me how camera movements could be shown in storyboards but I want to compare them to mine and see how I’ve used them.

Extreme Close Ups - I used quite a few extreme close ups to help show the emotions of the character more obviously or to show an important part in the story.

Medium Shots - I used a lot of medium shots when the camera was on the main character because it meant I could show the facial expressions clearly but still have some context to the shot.

Up Shot - I also drew this very weird up shot that you can’t really tell is an up shot but there you go. This shows the bird crap falling onto the character (me)’s head. I’ve also used camera arrows to show where I want the crap to move and how.

Camera Movement

I showed some camera movement. I’ve used a pan and a few zoom in shots. I used the pan to show a close up of what was happening in the character’s hands in a more interesting way and the zoom ins I’ve mainly used for establishing shots to give the viewer some context as to where the scene is or to enhance the humour of the moment like in the bike scene in Napoleon Dynamite I mentioned earlier.

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Final Idea Storyboard - Draft

I drew up this draft storyboard for my final idea. I think I’m going to use these frames as a reference for when I’m taking the pictures for Photoshop. I found it quite hard thinking of ways to show the story line in the way I imagined it to be honest so this took me quite a long time. I think I definitely want to work on my storyboarding skills more after this project. I’m going to try and storyboard a lot of the projects we are given before I start them, it helps to give me an idea of how it will look overall.

[evemvfx]

Method Ideas - How I’m Going to Go About It

A third year VFX student uploaded this video to facebook showing the VFX breakdown of some scenes in the film Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. There’s a link below. When we were first briefed about the task I was slightly worried that my drawing skills weren’t strong enough to put my ideas across clearly. However, after seeing the director’s sketch for this scene I was reassured as it made me realise that you don’t have to be the best drawer in order to put your idea across. So I've decided to do some rough sketches before creating the final piece as it will help to plan the image in my mind of what I want to produce. For the final piece I've decided to take photographs and then draw over them adding objects in where necessary just for a better aesthetic overall.

https://youtu.be/JkqTeQHFoBY

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A quick outline of the story which will help when I’m drawing out the storyboard.

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Here’s an example of a stand off between two characters who don’t say any words but the tension is felt very blatantly which Jason said my story reminded him of. I quite like the awkward blinking and the head turns the penguin does when the camera is switching between him and Gromit which shows the relationship is already stand-offish and uncomfortable. His expression always stays the same but you can still start to feel annoyed with the penguin as the evil character even though he's just looking into the camera and moving his hands. No words are spoken but the slight sound effects help to increase the suspense throughout. I want to try and apply this to my animatic.