13 Name Change to 'Exquisite Corpse 13' / Colour Grade

The name change is stated in 'Exquisite Corps 13' full production pack.

Using the colour grade I made for Debbie I applied the same grade on to '13' as you can see below:

 Making sure the colours are legal and accurate from the histograms

appling the blue grade made for Debbie laying it ontop of '13' which adds a little kick and brings the piece out a little more making body parts look cinematicish in my opinion.

D-eb31e - Colour Grade Continued further

Below is a still of Debbie showing the differrent colour process I went to to achieve the film's final look.

The top being the first layer applied using an yellowish grade then gradually fading and softing the image to achieve the final blue noir look you are seeing at the bottom.

D-eb31e - Colour Grading continued

I made two colour grades for Debbie a yellow grade and a blue grade to see which correction would suit the film better above is the different grades i created the bottom being the original the top being the final grade with a little tweak. Colour references and styles below that helped me achieve the final grade for Debbie

References/styles

 Requiem for a Dream

 Legend

 Terminator for its blue colour reference

D-eb31e - Colour Grading

For previous projects I have used avid to color grade but for Debbie I wanted to use another softwar Da Vinci Resolve similar to avid having similar features but decided to use Resolve as i wanted to try something different out with Debbie and implement a three colour scheme for the film. The three colours being Yellow, Blue and Brown as the film is set to near inspired by 1970s films such as trainspotting, This is England. below is a an reference of a three colour scheme already used within films.

Film - DRIVE using 3 colour schemes of red,blue and yellow to which this has inspired my colour technique for Debbie you can see in each scenes in DRIVE the three colours being used in almost every scene creating a much vibrant and richer film.

 

Debbie Grade

 DaVinci Resolve Interface 

using the graphs and histograms at the bottom of the interface checking to make sure that the colours I am implenting are not illegal and that they are legal for broadcasting standards.

Anxiety - Animation

To start the animation I drew a sketch of  branches that would best represent the the dance piece. i wanted the branch to represent anxiety in terms of suiting the tone and mood of this experimental short video.

I took the branches in to after effects and i got Tom to set the branch sketch up in after effects. So Tom set the branch as puppets so it would be easy to animate. After Tom had set up the animation i was ready to start. However before this process the individual greenscreen shots had tobe masked out this would have taken forever to do so Laura and i tagged teamed and spilt the mask she would mask half the shots and i would masked the other together we got masked out the shots in no time and got the process done quicker. Below are screenshots of the animation

 having keyed out the background it automatically makes it white to which i had to add minor adjustments levels afterwards to make it black and white.

 Removing the greenscreen through the keylight key as you can see on the left of the screen

13 - Texturing process Hand

After completed the modelling stage I proceded to the texturing phase then took it into unity  a gaming software, which we previously used last year with luke. I took it into unity to set the lighting for the hand to create a more realistc and vibrant animation.

Hand Texturing process below:

13 - Textuing process Head

Same process applied to the head, however the head was the trickiest part to model due to the ergonomical and style and having difficulties modelling the head in maya due to the head shape. To which I had to take it into Zbrush and completly remodel then took it back into maya for the texturing.

13 - Texturing process Foot

Same with the hand, the same process has been applied to the Foot below:

D-eb31e - Storyboards Final

Having drawn up previous shots for Debbie Lucy had done an updated shot list to which she wanted me to draw up.

Updatestoryboard below: if you scroll right down to the bottom you will see recent updated frames that I have drawn up.

Additional Work - Film production Graduation film SPILT MILK - Storyboarding

Below is a partial shot list from the film with more shots that need to be drawn up. This is going to take some time doing but will be done. As apart from my grad film D-eb31e these films are the most and longest storyboards I have worked and will expand my portfolio further.

Spilt Milk- Director James Dunstan
Spilt Milk partial shot list: If you scroll down the highlighted shots is what I have drawn up sp far

Partial storyboards - Hand Drawn

Rough


Final Shots - Hand Drawn

13 - Part 1 - Animationn tests

From the concepts that have been drawn up below are tests of some of the animated body parts. Produced in Maya. The notes and step by step process of how this was produced will be on another post.

Rough Foot animation version one:

This version being too fast and the movement didn't seem to work . Due to it being to restricted. 
 


Foot animation version Two:

Amended foot design having different movement giving it a loose and experimental feel.



Hand animation:

Need to amend the thumb movement on the hand. As it isn't accurate when the hand clenches the thumb goes outwards which I need to amend to make it seem more realistic and accurate.

D-eb31e - Indiegogo shoot

Shootool - Camera Slider

Indiegogo shoot part 2

Before we shot the trailer for D-eb31e myself and Tom had an Induction into Shootool Slider which acts as an great tool for capturing good stablelized footage. To which Tom and I had tested out a few tests shots. You can find these test fooatges on Thomas Doukinatsas blog.

Stills from the Slider tests

D-eb31e 

To promote our graduation film D-eb31e we had created an indiegogo page to help fundraise our film as well promote our trailer through this as well. With lucy explaining the films concept and why we needed the budget.

 The first attempt of lucy's talk was shot in the photography room with a DSLR, however due to some complications with the Audio we decided to reshoot it on the same day we would be shooting the trailer, using the URSA to better show off our production values.

The URSA was a pleasure to work with, however the battery only lasts about 1,5 hours and the card can record 25 minutes, and takes about 40 to unload. It was good that we figured this out on the test day as i believe now Laura has added in the rental of a CFast card in the budget to be more efficient

This was also an opportunity to test out the actual workflow that we will use in the final film. The footage was offloaded on to a hard drive using ShotPutPro, a file transfer software aimed at digital imaging technicians which also verifies that the copy was successful without any errors by comparing both sets of files.

The trailer shoot itself was a really nice opportunity to test out the high speed feature of the URSA, filming up to 120fps for a full hd shot. We managed to get some really nice results and hopefully the trailer will be compelling to watch and instructive for us as a crew.


Here is the Trailer:

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.