Beyond the Boundaries: Camera Workshop 2

During our second camera workshop we had a more indepth look at the CanonC300 and the URSA, using the the lens kit of the two cameras, the matte box, and the follow focus. Using the Ronford heavy duty tripod and the TV Logic monitor.

We learnt about the two professionals cameras and how to set them up properly, and had a chance to compare and test the two cameras.

Being the Director of Photography on graduation film Debbie alongside Thomas Doukinitsas the Cinematographer on Debbie and also being in charge of the post production side you can find the comparisons of the two different cameras video on Thomas blog.

Being the grader on Debbie i am leaning more towards  the URSA due to its much sharper image quality, and will have better colour managent handle, as the ideal software I want to use to grade is Davinci.

Beyond the Boundaries: Anxiety Dance - Storyboarding

Working with the same crew members from D-eb31e  Laura and Lauren, Anxiety being Laurens and Lauras idea. To start storyboarding I got as much information from lauren about what she wants and how she wants the visual of the film to be so taking the shot list created by Lauren I created the storyboard also looking at the reference moodboards that Lauren used.

MoodBoards and Visual Set put together by Lauren Fox - Director

MoodBoards -

 Set Visual and Style -

So before I started on the storyboard I throughy anaylsed the moodboards and set visual to give myself an idea and a gist of how Lauren wanted the dance film to visually look like.

Shot List


Storyboard produced from the shot list, created digitally on photoshop.

Beyond the Boundaries: Anxiety Dance - Role (Storyboard Artist , Animation)

Anxiety (Graduation film) - A short contemporary dance film, that mixes live action with animation based around the notion of anxiety and the movements associated with it. The main focal piece will be the movements  and the animation that will consist of branches , that interact with the dancer, until they ultimately restrict the dancer's movements.

Anxiety Short Dance Film - Role

- Storyboard Artist
- Animation/ Animator

Beyound the Boundaries: D-eb31e - IndieGogo

Wednesday 4th November 2015

Dallies of D-eb31e part 1

We had G12 booked out to shoot our promo for our IndieGogo page for the films fundraise page. Then we tested and shot a few scenes for the D-eb31e trailer.

Below is the footages from the day -

Beyond the Boundaries: 13 - Modelling in Maya continued - Head

Modelling the head was even more harder then modelling both the arm and foot, due to the spherical shape of the head which is hard to do it accuratly in maya. So using Zbrush for the texturing of the body parts i will also have to remodel the head completly in Zbrush as well as.

Head process -

Rough work in progress head render.

Beyond the Boundaries: 13 - Modelling in Maya Continued - Arm

The arm was the next part I modelled, doing this part was even trickier then doing the foot because having the same problem as the foot the arm didn't match the concept.

Rough render arm

The problem I have with this the forearm is too thin and the wires are too thin. 

and the fingers trying to replicate the concept it doesn't seem to be working and looks too cartoonie in way which is not the style I am after. And would be hard to animate with the fingers this style.

So with readjustments made below is the process of the arm being made.

below are various changes I made to the arm going through trial and errors testing out different styles until I found the right style I was happy with. 

 

first readjustment made changing the forarm making it a lot thicker

along with the wires. However the fingers are too short having not included any index fingers so would have been hard to animate.

 

readjustment 2 made tried extending the fingers but realised it still would have been hard to animate.

So after consideration and thought I took the render into Photoshop and painted on extra index fingers to see if this style would work,  to which it does I then took the concept backk into maya and made these readjustments. To which the final arm render is below and looks and works a lot better.

 

Beyond the Boundaries: '13' - Modelling in Maya - Foot

Having done coloured sketches and annotated sketches, these acting as visual aides so it will be that easier to model and rig in both maya and Zbrush. Having watched online youtube tutorials and using Lynda.com in how to use maya and Zbrush, seeing as i never took 3D in 2nd year.

Below is my first attempt in using Maya to which after watching a few tutorials I am quite happy with the result. But still have a long way to go to get it looking like what i actually want in terms of aesthetics and animation  and how I want the overall final outcome to be a dark, grungey cinematic hollyood look / feel to it.

13 - Foot model.

Rough render

When looking back on the rough render the toes especially looked weird and for some reason didn't match or look anything like the concept i had intially coloured. This would have been  looked weird once rigged, and looks out of proportion. So I decided to change the style of the toes -  below is the  process of the toes being changed.

Below is the Final render of the foot. With the readjustment  made.

With the readjustment made on the foot, it looks a lot better and a lot more reasonable and has a distinct look to it.

Beyond the Boundaries: 13 - Visual references

For references for '13' I looked into various films and games and even previous works created from 2nd year.

References that I have looked at below and the aspects that I took from each films and games
Mood Board -

taking in consideration the critical context of this this project aswell qouted under the bibliography section.

Beyond the Boundaries: Storyboarding Josh Documentary

Josh needing a storyboard for his documentary, whilst at the same doing the storyboard for D-eb31e and Anxeity I agreed to help Josh and sketched up his storyboard for him. Treating him as a client treating this as an professsional job, Josh passed his shot list over to me and gaining as much detail as I can from him about the enviromnent and general gist of his documentary I asked Josh to make his shot list as descriptive as possible so that it would be easier for me to draw up.

Below is the shotlist


Below is the storyboard to which josh was pleased with.


Produced with an syntex graphic tablet.

Beyond the Boundaries: D-eb31e - Storyboarding

With every new project it gives me a chance to develop and further my skills, so using a graphic tablet to digitally create the storyboard for D-eb31e.

Rough Storyboard

Narrowing the shotlist down to 52 from 152, these 52 shots being the trickiest shots highlighted by Lucy and a few by myself. However after drawing these up using a graphic tablet I personally wasn't happy with this version that I sketched up. So leaving it for a few days whislt continuing with other projects I came back to D-eb31e and re - drew the storyboard to a better level adding as much detail as possible to inject life into them.

Final D-eb31e Storyboard on next post

Beyond the Boundaries: D-eb31e - Shot List

From the scipt Lucy had created a shot list and passed that on to me to start storyboarding.


I had my work cut out for me on this I have to admit because in total there are 152 shots to draw up. However D-eb31e being set in one location reading through the shot list most of the shots were conversation based and could be explained through texts. So I had asked Lucy to highlight the more difficult shots instead, myself highlighting a few extra shots.