LIGHT LINKING, A PAINFL JOB

LIGHTING

Similarly also supports the passage between two worlds. It is more theatrical and sharp creating more inevitable feel of hospital scenes and on the other side light brightness creating the atmospheric feel of dreamlike landscape. For the second one I used a lot of glowing effects and played around with the depth field options of the camera lense.

To achieve versatile light effects I decided to do light linking (Window- Relationship editors- Light Liking- Light- centric.) in every scene, which was absolute pain as once we assign one object to the certain light, we also need to exclude all the rest of the objects. This needs to be done right after modeling as if we bring another object into the scene at that point- that means that all the lighting needs to be re-linked. Linking also enabled me to assign fog to just certain lights (objects ) and the same with reflections in the water.

A lot of objects (lights in the hospital scenes for instance) are actually enlightened within themselves with the help of texture attributes like glow, incandescence and specular. shading, so they aren't really enlightened by separate light, which saved us rendering time. Light linking also doesn't provide any shadows, which is why everything needed to be rendered out on layers in order to drop shadows in After Effects.I also noticed that in case I use matted option when importing layers into AF, the lights get completely different as if I use " matted- premultiplied" option.

A BOMB EXPLOSION AND OTHER VFX

vFX (Bomb explosion and particle animation)

After Charlie tried many times to do it in 3D, I decided to simply do it in After Effects and it took about 10 minutes to do.

The bomb explosion made out of hands I made in After Effects, using watercolor images of hands in varied poses (I used rotoscoping to draw them). I used this as a reference texture for particle effect in AF. I used vector mask in a shape of mushroom cloud to mask out any stray particles to maintain the atomic bomb explosion look. The animation of glow was applied on top of this effect.

This same effect was used in certain parts as a transition between images, to give burnt out effect.

I also animated ripple effect on the water when character jumps over the puddle.

I also used "fast blur" effect to soften the edge of some imaginary scenes.

Ripple:

PROBLEMS WITH MAKING CRANES DOLLY SCENE

The worst scene for me to render was (still is) the hospital scene where camera dollys through a waste amount of appearing cranes. The reason for that is that Simon Butler instead of animating the cranes with one same reference which he could simply intsance to get more copies...actually duplicated the crane within reference folder several times and after that also within scene. This means that every new object has its own texture, which (beside the enormous polgon count) made scene so wast that it is constantly collapsing, even if rendered with render farm. I was trying to render it for more than a week. e also didn't stay clear with naming the objcts, which made the thing even worse for me to arrange renders and adjust glow on the objects!

Also I have to mention that all the scenes I have received from no matter whom weren't clearly named and arranged (despite my request for it in annual plan and meetings) so it was a great nightmare for myself to do anything further in them.

ANIMATING THE CAMERA MOVES

Camera animation

It took me a while to fully understand the difference between simply zooming into the scene and actually panning into it. It looks so much better (for instance: the light effects change according to camera move) to pan than zoom that I decided to actually animate camera in 3d and than find a solution to composite the 2D animation on the top.

I also learnt how to make room optically bigger than it really is with altering the camera lens options (animating the depth of the field).

I actually tried also to import 3D object (.obj file) from Maya into AF and animate the camera move there, but it slowed down the rendering time and work itself so much, that I rather decided to drop the idea and rather wait for better times of Adobe package.

VISIT TO SCIENCE MUSEUM- BIRD'S FLIGHT

Visiting a science museum I noticed a great stimulation of Bird's flight which could help us to animate the crane.

There I also saw for the first time one of the objects from Hiroshima, which melted in atomic bomb attack in 1945.

2D ANIMATION-INKING, COLORING, ROTOSCOPING, USING PHOTOSHOP TO ANIMATE, COMPOSITING IN EDITABLELAYERS

2D ANIMATION DRAWING INKING WATER COLOring

The reason I decided to do animation with ink and watercolor is not only because they are my favorite techniques, but also they express the traditional quality of japanese art. Water color infuse a subtle and very versatile quality to the general style. They are very unpredictable and each frame differs from the previous one which creates the effect of glitching movement and so more lifelike feel.

The whole peace is based on the contrast between red and blue, the traditional geisha colors of the characteristic for the time. Red means life power, blue divinity, sublime.

rotoscoping

To draw animated body sequences in some odd angles was too much even for my artistic imagination. So after photographing and filming the references, I printed some of them out and redrew them frame by frame, fitting the style to the one of the main character. This was a really hard job as character is very deformed. Some of other references I used to study the change in facial expressions and shading.

After I Drew the sequence with the pencil, I scanned it in and line tested it on college computers- until I found a better solution- animating it in photoshop. After nearly losing my mind, tracing all the animation I did with the pencil on an animation paper onto the watercolor paper with ink- I found a better solution. I scanned in all the frames, altered them in photoshop to give them more inky look , cleaned them, aligned them and printed them out on the watercolor paper. Once painted I scanned them back in and send them to the group members to cut them out and align them again.

ANIMATING IN PHOTOSHOP- CUTTING IT OUT, ALIGNING, COMPOSITING

First of all I learnt how to simulate light box when one doesn't want to spend more than £10 on it! :-)

As said before I helped myself with rotoscoping reference when animating some of very complicated perspective angles. After painting the animation by hand (the process explained in Rotoscoping folder), I scanned it in. I cleaned the white background out with the help of MASKS in Photoshop. These enabled me to simply paint back in case I wiped too much out, while using magic wand or rubber, wouldn't give an option to return once done.Once cut out- I aligned the objects together and opened the animation timeline in Photoshop. This feature was available already in CS3, but it became even more appropriate to use in CS4. It allowes quick line test and once the position and duration of frames is sorted out, can be easily exported into any postproduction software in a shape of layers.

3D ANIMATION- FIXING OTHER PEOPLE's WORK

FIXNG 3D AniMATION

I haven't been really satisfied with any animation that other members passed back to me. Simon's fish animation (by the way he duplicated fish instead instance it again! And as soon he wanted to change the curve on which the fish moves - in order to get different timing- the animation cracked- the problem was in joint orientation of the fish) and Dan's Clock trees needed minor refinement( they bent a bit too high, so the animation looked a bit odd for feathers). I changed both animations working within graph editor (changing the lengths and heights between frames, reshaping the curves, so it floated more smoothly.)