Abegayle Elmes

So over the course of this project we have had our own discord server where we have all been able to message through out. I thought it would be nice to screenshot all the conversations and make a visual reference for all the conversations weve had through out the 10 weeks. A visual representation of the journey weve made together.

This has definitely been my favourite project so far just because I loved getting to know everyone better from this course and others. I think it’s so important to be in contact with people who are also on the same path as I am. It’s very different from Term 1 but I think that even though they are both crucial for learning that I have enjoyed getting to know people on my course. Tina and Mariana are lovely, skilled designers and I am so happy they were as excited about this project as I was. So easy to work with, and they never slacked and did their work so I am super grateful. It can be hard working with people you don’t know initially but they were brilliant and I am super proud of us and what we’ve made.

Kenneth is also an absolute gem. Such a nice guy. He made this track from scratch never having made techno styled music but because he was so open to learning a collaborating with my tastes he made something cool. I am happy to have learnt so much from him.

I made a test export just to see what sort of issues I would have so that when we export for the final it was all okay. Also a back up never hurt. Just in case my laptop had issues it was good to have some sort of final export. I noticed that there were some glitches in the renders but at this point there isn’t much I can do as it would take too long to render and I already had too many issues. I think there is room to add in some more zoetropes in the second half of the animations. I had reuse some of my old shots and changed them round, flipped them, reversed them as I had already made 14 shots and 4 mins is a long time in animation. I think when I collate the three animations together I will consider adding more zoetropes if I have time.

Kenneth is still busy finishing off making the crowd sounds so I used some I found on Youtube just incase he couldn’t finish in time. Its better to be prepared. Also, his main role was to create the track for Stitch which came out great. So, I think the crowd sounds was just an extra plus.

While we are waiting on Kenneth, Mariana has sent over her final export so I can add them all together in After Effects. I have added in an introduction and exit part to the video to make it kind of feel like a completed video.

I couldn’t quite figure out how to fix this problem so I went back to watching the recorded lecture where Luke talks about how to overlay zoetropes onto your exported animation in After Effects. It was so much easier. I figured out very quickly and there was no fuss. I was happy because I really wanted to include zoetropes as this stage is a great excuse to test them out and see what you can come up with.

This was my first Zoetrope I use, a sort of entrance flame to Stitch arriving. I added in sound effects I found on Youtube for what it sounds like when there is a flame jet. I was pretty impressed how well that it works once I got the timing right.

I added in blue lighting as another effect as I wanted to make it in Maya from the tutorial I found but it didn’t seem to work so this was a great easy solution for some fun effects. Also, it worked out nicely that it was the same colour as Stitch and the Booth.

I found that when the camera were moving it was really hard to include zoetropes as they didn’t look as believable. However, when the cameras were still, it made the shot much more interesting and realistic. For example here, the camera cranes along the crowd, pauses and then zooms into Stitch. I added the flames coming out of the booth while the camera had paused making that shot look so perfectly times and not too static.

Here I used the blue lighting again but made it so it looks as though it was part of the digital screens including the booth. This added to the illusion that they are digital screens so was just a nice little touch while this shot was stationary.

This was the finale shot or the overall scene. I wanted to litterally go with a bang like they do at festivals. So i used theses explosions as though they were fireworks and added the sound of a firework I downloaded from Youtube

This is our final week before our hand in on Thursday. So we had made a plan to finish all the blocking and camera work by today. We were now going to complete lighting. Mariana had sent us a useful link which explains how the different lighting worked. This was great because I had only ever used a skydome for lighting but that when cameras are being used, each shot needs to be visable and well lit using the correct sorts of lighting.

Lighting Screens:
The screen behind Stitch isn’t showing up very well because of the stages top covering the sky dome lighting. So I need to add in lighting which will make sure the boxes are illuminated as through it is a digital screen. Having read the webpage above, I deciphered that directional light would work as all screens were pointing the same direction and it didn’t matter where the directions lighting was it would give an even amount of light. This was successful as when I tried to change the material by adding a glow etc, not too much was changing.

Lighting Stitch:
So I originally tried to use a spot light but didn’t make too much sense as you couldn’t really see it with the sky dome over powering. So I used an area light just so that he was all over lit very clearly and was the main focal point on the very large stage.

Special Effect Lighting:
I wanted to include some exciting lighting as on a festival stage the bigger and brighter the better the performance. I looked online to see what sort of ideas I could do. I did a test with coloured spotlights on type to see how it would look.

I really liked how these had come out. Although I was a little worried it wouldn’t work because there was a sky dome so I guess I could dim the sky dome as though it was early evening and crank the spotlights up so it was visible.

I watched a video on youtube about making lightening in maya. This looked really cool and would work with the booth style. I wanted to try and add it in. This video also showed me that on the dynamic maya interface there are other effects like fireworks I noticed. I might look into this to see if it’s something I could use because I am still having issues with resolving the zoetrope issues.

Grid Gobo lighting technique could also be another special effect light to use. I found this on another youtube video. Gobo lighting was first introduced to me in KK’s lighting lessons. It’s the absence of light casting a shadow with a shape. This obstruction leave an interesting pattern of light. This reminds me of how disco lights are making interesting shapes on the dance floor. I was to try and create this effect of set design.

Had a meeting with Tina and Marianna to talk about lighting and how we were each going to do it before rendering. I was currently having VMware issues so could show them what lighting I had used. But I made a little diagram to show them what it looked like.

Mariana had mentioned to use a sphere in the scene to test render like we had done with KKs tutorials. Also that it was important to check render using the arnold viewer. Mariana explained to me and Tine was IPR rendering was – Interactive Progressive Render. This would be a up to date representation of the scene. We agreed that my initial way of duplicating grass makes the scene far too big. Tina showed us how she textured and added in grass roughness to the scene. We were skeptical it wouldn’t look so realistic but considering it was going to be night time it didn’t matter too much.

The length of our videos were spoken about. Marianas was 34 seconds and Tina’s was 1 min 30 but mine is a lot longer. However they had to do a lot more animation because of the dancing and movements of their characters. Stitch doesn’t move too much, and it was important to me that I didn’t chop Kenneth’s track as this was his appreciated contribution to this project. I believe we all did a similar amount of work, but in different ways which I think was the point of the project.

We discussed what sort of sky dome light we wanted to use. We landed on making it a starry night but that if we wanted to change that then it wouldn’t be too much of an issue. The acts can play over the course of a day. I was using directional light but I realised that meant the crowd was also being lite from behind so I changed this and used an area light over the screens to make them look digital.

As you can see, without any light source near the back of the stage, the screens get lost. So I made a area light that matched the size of the screen for an even amount of light. I also realised I needed to crank the numbers up on intensity settings for anything to really happen. This worked better than directional as I think it was too bright before hand.

I was testing the light intensity of the skydome to try and make the sky look more like a starry night. I got some ok results but for some reason when I rendered it looked more like afternoon and evening. I was kind of worried about time so I didn’t try and fix this issue as I wanted to start rendering today whilst having internet problems.

I tried to use the different HMRIs that me, Tina and Marianna chose but the stars didn’t seem to be coming out as well as I thought. In retrospect I would have liked to make it night time and have the scene lighted better. I made the speaks grey and they probably should have been a more metallic texture or black. They just look as though they are missing a texture which they are not. However this is just pre vis so this would be discussed further down the pipeline in a really film studio.

The sky dome light was really effecting my character in the shot where he enters the stage. So I decided to cranks it up which I think is why it looks over exposed in the render. I should have found an alternative solution.

Nevertheless, Stitch looked great in the booth when rendered. He matched the screen and the booth colours like I wanted. It was quite intense but as a Disney character those colours are used in the film branding. Also, to me I visually liked it. It was intense like the music and the character. I wanted there to a lot of light and for him to still stand out. I used a spotlight and an area light on him. I also used an area light on the front of the decks to make it look like it was a digital screen too. I wanted to make the lighting effect as I found earlier but couldn’t seem to figure it out, so I will use blue lighting zoetropes when I have rendered to After Effects.

Previously, Kenneth and I had spoken about adding to the existing techno track which was a different sort of genre i.e. funky house music. I said that I thought it was good for Kenneth to try and show range as this is his work and he enjoys making all sorts of music. The techno song initially was very intense which was good as it drummed up a dancing vibe but I really like the edits he has made to the end of the track as it compliments the intensity with funky music. This means the set ends in a different tone which I think is important as telling a story through music is just as important as with dialog.

He has uploaded it to his sound cloud account for me to download. This means I will have to update my animation and make sure it fits to the new and extended ending

So this was a catch up to see how far we each have gotten with out blocking animation. This was nice to see Tina and Marianas work. SO GOOD! They both had me laughing as it was really comical seeing animations impersonate famous artists such as Icons like Michael Jackson and Beyonce.

We decided that we would make sure all the blocking and camera sequence was complete by Monday so we could complete the lighting before rendering on Tuesday. We had also discussed with Kenneth to meet on Tuesday or Wednesday to add in the sound and sound effects.

This was good to have goals so that we were all ready for our collaboration project hand in next week.

I am in the stage of testing the cameras of where I have placed them. I haven’t used camera sequence before but Luke had given me a little refresher and Mariana also broke it down for me and shared her screen to show me how it worked. This was really nice that she could share skills on what she knew when I could do other things like the branding. Once I understood how to make the first shot. The others were much more easier as I had wrapped my head around it.

Having worked on the scene now I have rearranged the shots I had previously decided on my plan. This was because I think it just worked out better in practice. I have listed the different shots to show my camera sequence.

Shot 1 – Frame 0 – 120
This is the entrance shot. I had animated walking onto the stage all the way to the decks. However due to his little legs, it takes a very long time which is tedious and not as important. So I have included just the beginning of the walk cycle just to inform viewers that stitch as now entered the stage.

Shot 2 – Frame 120 – 150
This is to set the scene of the viewers who are watching the set from the front of the stage. I have made this shot stationary.

Shot 3 – Frame 151 – 250
This shot pans across the booth on a circle motion path as Stitch speaks. I looked online for recordings of Stitch speaking as I think it was a nice way for his set to begin as there isn’t much dancing through out.

Shot 4 – Frame 251 – 300
Shot from the back of the crowd

Shot 5 – Frame 301 – 482.
Pan of Stitch starting to play music and bopping his head. Similar to shot 3.

Shot 7 – Frame 482 – 640
Crane pan of the crowd from the back to the left front of the stage.

Shot 8 – Frame 641 – 1006
Zoom of shot 5 towards the DJ

Shot 9 – Frame 1007 – 1263
Crane birds eye-view from back of crowd to the looking down on top of stitch

Shot 10 – Frame 1264 – 1530
Stationary close up to stitches face. It was initially from frame 1264 – 2300 but the shot was too long and felt a bit boring. Also this would have been longer than any other shot I had done through out so seemed disjointed.

Shot 11 – 1531 – 1800
Same as shot 4. This was to break up the shot before which worked well.

Shot 12 – Frame 1801 – 2139
Back to the stationary close up from shot 11.

Shot 13 – Frame 2140 – 2300
Close up of the decks and stitches hand movements. (inspired from DJ Honey Dijon

Shot 14 – Frame 2301 – 2550
Crowd shot, same as shot 2.

Shot 15 – Frame 2551 – 2810
New shot from behind stitches head looking out to the crowd while he fist punches sky.