Weekly Journal - Week 12 - 30th April

After this footage was filmed I then brought it into Adobe After Effects to mess around with the different effects they have in the program, I then found these two effects called fractal noise and CC Rain which gave really cool looking effects that we could implement into our animation sequence.

I then thought about removing the bluescreen from the background, this prooved to be quite tricky as the quality of the camera was fairly poor, which meant that the colours couldn't be depicted easily so with the removal of the blue evidently it took some of the black of the pants with it. I also added in an updated look of the hand blast, as with the first attempt it looked fairly poor and unrealistic, where as now I believe it looks a lot more professional and modern.

This week I again concentrated on the Video and Audio concepts side as I was looking at removing the bluescreen footage from the background of the filming we had done, as well as putting different effects on the footage while the other members were getting the final idea of the environment done and the getting the 3D character further down the development line. This was efficient as again this allowed us to get on with what we needed to do without having to meet up too often to show the progress.

Weekly Journal - Week 11 - 23rd April

This week we got the introduction and the ending of our film completed to a standard we were happy with, for this I was acting as the main character. As a group we had decide to film in the seating area of the Priesty building which lead to me filling in a Risk assesment form of the location, as well as around the campus incase we wanted to refilm or add something that was outside of that building.. After I had finished the acting and the recording had all gone well me and Mike began the editing of this, using the portal effect he had created.

Again I was acting but this time in a bluescreen environment where I had to act as if I had just entered from the protal which had been done previously, now I was entering a 3D environment, where I was ready to fight my opponent.

The filming had gone well and I was happy with how it looked with the matching of me walking through the portal, by using the splitscreen effect we had learnt in the Video and Audio concepts challenges. This has stood us in good sted to finish the animation and special effects sequence a week early allowing us to fine tune everything and get it all rendered.

Weekly Journal - Week 10 - 16th April

This week we focused on getting the motion capture down, for this I helped with how we were going to act our scene out to get the most realistic/fighting game look to this. I also helped with the setup of the motion capture.

I also created a house that could be a potential 3D environment that we could use for the sequence, this was created in 3DS Max. To create this I did some box modeling, i created two different boxes which I then converted to editable poly and extruded where I needed, I then used a compound object called ProBoolean that allowed me to create the opening to the house and the two windows after that I creatrf the doors by using the same method then used the line tool create the shutter look effect on them then added the glassless windows in the same method as the door shutters.

 



This week we knew we had to come together and start the motion capture for the 3D character, this meant we had to decide what movements we were going to use, this lead us to do some movement research of games like Tekken, and films such as Gorgeous starring Jakie Chan. Having this research allowed us to string together a series of movements that would work.

Weekly Journal - Week 9 - 9 April

For this week I decided that it was time to create ourselves a Shooting Script, within this I exaplained what our animation storyline was, the effects that we're going to use within this and how long it woud take to constuct.

Secondly I began the creation of a hand blast for our real life character. I did this on a program called Adobe After Effects, this allowed me to create an object that I could manipulate, as well as track to the footage I was working with, the effect with the first draft looked quite average to poor.

The file continously uploads like this. I am unsure why as when I play it through Windows Media Player on my home computer it plays fine. With this blast I don't think it personally looks visually pleasing, as well as the tracking is quite poor, for the second blast attempt I think I will come at it very differently.

This week is where we came more in to our own with the other two members looking at the 3D character we are going to use and myself looking at some of the effects we could use in the sequence, all previously decided that we want something with a blast like what you see in Draon Ball Z and other films/series. This was efficient as we allowed oursleves to progress swiftly with the work.