awesomeness

@pete-ski

257 posts

Conclusion

With the last project of second year coming to an end, I can honestly say that this one has been one of the most enjoyable.

What I have loved most is the collaboration, as it has shown me how other people’s ideas and thoughts can really help to make your project look better and more interesting. I am particularly glad that I went down the illustrated ‘Whinny the Pooh’ route for the look. As it really fits with the how the poem flows and Kats illustrations really help to convey this.

Another part that really allows this piece to shine was the narration. It was great for me to work with someone on a professional level and as you can see that really helped my piece to have a lovely and engaging tone.

There are very few parts that I don’t like about this project as it’s been great seeing it grow and finally become the final product it is now. But I think one of the issues was waiting for the assets I needed, but quite often these things take time so I can understand that. Which lead me to spend my time doing other parts related to my project.

Overall a really fun and amazing project and here’s to next year!

Final render

Here is the final render, I had some more advice form Jack and he suggested to add a rotation and a more brighter colour on the hand for the hand shot. As well as adjusting the titles and backgrounds and a few extra things.

More refinements

Although the look of my piece is really coming on now, I still went and got feedback from Tom. Overall he said that what I needed to do was only minor.

One of them was making the title at the start longer because as it stands, it didn’t allow people to read it properly. He also suggested that I should increase the size of the text on the last section to make it more readable.

Another part I worked on was something suggested by Jack yesterday which was making the hand move on the 3rd shot, as this would make it look more interesting and convey the action within the theme.

Although I had Spoken with Jack about some adjustments on the last Shot I feel that these will not work with the the way I have structured the ending.

Here we have the results of these adjustments overall it’s looking great.

Further improvements

After doing the last improvements I had went and got Jacks advice and opinions on them.

He that overall it’s really coming together with what we were talking about yesterday, but said that there are other improvements I could do.

One of which was adding a much more longer fade on the ending shot as it would be a lot nicer on the eye. He mentioned that that the transition between the 1st and 2nd shots still weren’t quite right, so I sorted that out by copying over the colour correction from the second one and adding it to the first.

Another part we talked about was re adjusting the text on titles as they didn’t look right, so the part where it says the authors I made smaller. While for the last part I changed the text so that they were on separate sections based on what I had seen on movie credits.

Another part that we talked about was changing the look of the background of the start and end credits, we thought it could look better if it had the appearance of paper, so I created using a paper texture and changed the text colour to white. One of the reasons why I did this was to help the text stand out against the colour of the paper texture but I do think it stands out a little too much so I will probably change to black again.

One last area that he said I could change was adding the last lines of the poem on the last shot rather than having it fade off.

Feedback and developments

I feel my piece has now gotten up to a good stage so I went got feedback from Tom and Jack

Overall they both thought that what I had done up till now looks great, while they suggested that I improve on....

Adjust transition on the first shot as it didn’t flow that well.

Change colour of the transitions between shot 5 and 6 to black

Change the end transition colour to orange as it was felt that this didn’t fit the overall piece that well

Add light rays and make them less harsh

I decided on what I thought could work and then added in all these adjustments, there is a massive difference between the two as you can see and overall the new version looks a lot better

New

Old

Adjustments and feedback

After I had the most recent render I showed some of my Family what its looking like and although they loved it, they said that I can improve it further in a number of ways.

One of them was shorting the cut between the shot with the old man and the water

Making the text larger at the end and changing the colour of the transitions so instead of black it’s a similar colour to the image.

I applied these corrections while another part that I decided to do was add in a title screen telling you what the Poem is and who it’s by.

With all these corrections applied it showed just how much better it looked.

Adjusting and text

Since I added the partials on shot 7 I looked if there was anything else I could, but after a while I felt that it didn’t need anything else so I rendered it out and added into the pro file.

Another thing I have done is tweak the ending, as I felt that although it would look good with the camera passing through the gate to revile nothing. I thought that it could have much more of an impact with the last words of the poem appearing on screen. I wanted the text to be of the style that you see in poems. So to get a better idea of the sort of font poems use, I looked on websites and what people were suggesting would be best and I came across a font called Linden Hill which when in italics looks perfect.

The video is looking great and I will next need to source feedback from Geraint, Tom or Jack to what I need to improve.

Adding partials to shot 7

For the last shot I wanted to enhance it by adding particles rather than just adding in leaves again as I won’t each short to have a unique touch.

Originally I used particles from another project I did, but I thought they made it look a little too crowded. So I looked at particles in forests and found that often they are low in number but are much larger. So Using cc partial world I create particles that were to my liking based on the references I had found. When I first added into Nuke I discovered it was too short, so I had to lengthen it so that it fitted properly.

Although it looks a lot less noticeable compared to the first one I feel that the look of this now with the less number of particles is a lot better then the first time I tried it and along with the camera movement I am developing, it really comes together.

audio adjustments and newest rough

since getting feedback from dailies I have been adding some more of the adjustments they were talking about, I have added in the finished shot of the hand and removed the white fade transitions. I have also redone the shot with the rain as they weren't sure about it being static, I had thought to bring in a rain sequence into nuke but I for some reason it wasn’t working even after a lot of adjusting and ‘pondering’ I decided to use the rain function in after effects.

It was also suggested to me that I should use the sound of otters were it says 'when the otter whistle his mate’, when I tried this out I made it wasn’t too loud and blended in nicely.

The piece is looking great so far and will only get better

shot 7 and projection mapping start

Kat has sent me the last image I need, for this one I wanted to have a shot through grass with the idea of a tree tunnel along with the silhouette of a horse.

We looked through images of tree tunnels to get a better idea of what I was after and after a few days she came up with this.

This one is absolutely amazing, the perspective and ascetic really help to finish of the sequence really nicely.

When I was projection mapping I originally made the length of the camera movement quite long, but I found that it was too slow so I speed it up and this made it look much better.

Overall it’s looking really good, I’m thinking of adding elements like partials and maybe smoke to enhance it but we will see in due course.

hand shot

I have now been working on the shot with the hand,

Setting it up in Nuke was the same process as before although it took a little longer than before, as there were a lot more layers to work with. This meant I had to really think about the Z space of the layers making sure that they matched up perfectly.

Besides the camera move I didn’t feel there needed to be much movement in this shot as you are looking down at the ground, once rendered out and added into the main file it fitted in really nicely with the others especially as the camera movement is nice and subtle

Adjustments and changes

Following Geraint and Tom’s feedback I have been working on some of the things they suggested. One of which was the smoke. This was something they thought I could improve on and add more movement.

So I went into the file and animated the fog layer, paying attention to make it move at a slow speed, as naturally it wouldn’t be moving very quickly.

I also removed the white fade transitions in the pro file and then added in the newly rendered out sections, it really adds a lot more life to the piece and makes it seem less ‘lifeless‘. I also showed Geraint and he agreed that it looked a lot better.

Kat has also sent me a new version of the hand shot and I think it looks so much better than before; we also discussed the last shot which will be developed soon

Feedback from Geraint and Tom

I had some great feedback from Geraint and Tom during dallies.

They said that what I have got so far is looking really good they mentioned that the projection mapping of each shot works great, although they said there are lots of things I can do to make it better, one of these was the white transitions. As although they liked the idea that it resembles the colour of book pages, they thought that it looked too ‘cheap’ and suggested that I could instead use cuts as that would be better.

They also suggested that I add more motion on certain shots like the rain and smoke mist.

All of this I will defiantly utilize as it will greatly improve my piece

Recent developments

With the sound file much better, I have been rendering out some of the finished shots.

I had to do some adjustments on the 1st 2 shots as they went by too quick, I then had to do some adjustments on the 5th and 6ht shots as they were done together but given feedback from Jack he said that it would be better if I did them separately. So I created a camera move for each and then rendered them out, before adding them into the premier file. I had to scale them up slightly as they were originally done in a wider aspect ratio; this thankfully didn’t detract from the look at all and looks absolutely fine.

I also had to change the sound of the horse as well as it was brought to my attention that it was too fast compared to what the poem reads which is ‘steadily cantering through’, so I changed it to much slower one and it fitted much better

feedback

I showed Geraint some of the resent parts I have been working on, one of which was the sound track. Overall he said it was really good and worked extremely well with the voice over, although he did say that the river sound was too low quality and didn't sound right. He Showed me a much clearer recording on youtube of river water, at first I was unsure if I should be using sounds of youtube but as I said before Geraint said that would be fine.

Once added I and adjusted it sounded much better and more realistic

Audio track

As I now have all the assets I could now start creating the audio track.

Once the main speaking part was in I adjusted and added in the sounds I recorded with Katharine, I made sure to only use the parts that I thought worked and fitted in While for some parts such as walking through grass I had to make longer.

For the style and flow of the back ground sounds I took inspiration from this short piece which I had used in my research, I love how light the sound effects are and the ‘naturalness’ of the sound works well with the spoken words

Putting together the sounds was quite easy as I listened to what I thought worked well with each section of the narration. There was one sound effect that involved pouring water, but I couldn’t work out the best way to put it together as it didn’t sound right. So what I did was utilize a recording of a roaring river that I did a few weeks ago although done on my phone and sounding a little tinny. I lowered the base and adjusted a few other things and it produced an acceptable result. The same thing was done with another recording I did but was of general nature sounds. I applied the same techniques with this one as I done with the other one while making sure that it the right feel.

These really helped out and brought a lot more ‘naturalness’ to the piece, I did have to outsource the sounds of horses running as I don’t have access to real world examples but when I asked Geraint about this he said that it would be fine.

voice over

I finally got back the recording from who I had asked to do the voice over for the piece and I really love it, its very professionally done and will bring the piece together nicely.

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