As this blog works in chronological order, please view the oldest post at the end of this blog first.
Thank you.
Thursday, 30 May 2013
Personal Reflection
This project has been really educational for me as well as a good
experience in the field of work I wish to do. The final results have turned out pretty well, one viewer of the video stated that I had good taste in the theme and setting and that my character designs have improved since the beginning of my last course although there are some areas that could do with some improvements like other designs, compositing and show more detail. I took this criticism to the point where I attempted to fix some of the film before submitting it online such as adding and altering particular elements in some of the shots.
The flow of the project has been good and deadlines have been met with good results. Of course there have been several setbacks, time management issues,
technical difficulties, among other things that have in some way affected the progress of this project. I need to work on my weaknesses a bit more such as organising assets and stages more efficiently and sticking to
a schedule; I could go on but I’d rather not overdo it. Besides that, every
stage of the project has been done in an orderly manner; everyone who has
collaborated have managed to keep up with the progress and the updates and have
done exceptionally well with their roles.
Overall, I’ve really enjoyed working on this project and I would like to
say well done to all those who collaborated on the film. Thank you for your
participation and hope to work with you again in the future.
30 Second Showreel
For an extra assessment, I have taken the liberty of producing a 30 second piece of breakdowns of several shots involved with the film. I did the breakdowns in After Effects, making transitions to several layers and elements to show how the shots were composited together and a transition from simple polygonal shapes to the textured rendered scenes.
Saturday, 25 May 2013
Sound Effects and Music
The sound effects and mixing were done by Luke Hodsdon and Stuart Trewhella. They had produced two versions of the sound track, one with sound without music and one with both sound and music.
This is a draft of the film with only the sound effects put in. The soundtrack has not been mixed nor the levels changed yet in this clip but they give an idea of how sound fits in with the visual and brings it more to life. Some of the sounds would need to be lowered in amplitude such as the bird flapping its wings and the girl's gasp when she looks down should also be fairly quiet like.
This is a draft of the film with only the sound effects put in. The soundtrack has not been mixed nor the levels changed yet in this clip but they give an idea of how sound fits in with the visual and brings it more to life. Some of the sounds would need to be lowered in amplitude such as the bird flapping its wings and the girl's gasp when she looks down should also be fairly quiet like.
This clip shows the film with the music only. Music can reflect the mood and themes that are occurring throughout the scenes.
Friday, 24 May 2013
Grading
Although I have chosen to use several different styles of tone for my film, there is some colour grading that I wanted to have done so I was recommended to ask another peer at my college, Samantha Wade into doing several versions of my film with different grading samples. once the editing was done, I arranged to meet up with Sam and give her a copy of the movie clip for her to work on for around 3 days.
The clip above shows Sam's first attempt at grading the movie. She had applied a blue tint to the environment while keeping colour to the main character. It's quite good but the main character kind of stands out too much so it needs to be toned down a bit more.
This clip is Sam's second attempt, this time having a blue tint all the way through and not enhancing the colour of the main character. This works really well so I may be using this version for the final piece.
This is Sam's third attempt, where she was going for a sepia kind of tone. This works quite nicely but it is a bit too warm to my liking.
I think Sam did an excellent job with all three versions of grading the film, very well done.
Tuesday, 21 May 2013
Editing Progress
When it came to putting all the shots together into one sequence, I used Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 for the editing stage. I set up a new project, chose the project settings
I set the Editing Mode in the project settings to Desktop as it would allow me to run the sequence/timeline in 24 frames per second. Then I made sure that the frame (screen) size was at HD 1080 (width: 1920 height: 1080) and the Pixel Aspect Ratio was left at D1/DV PAL.
I imported all the movie files that were composited and rendered in After Effects and set them in order according to the final animatic. Once all the shots were cut and fitted together, I had to render them in Adobe Premiere Pro so I would be able to keep the quality while exporting the whole sequence as a movie clip.
I did several versions of the final movie and exported more than one movie clip of the whole sequence in order to send one to my fellow collaborators to work on the music, sound effects and grading. Had to change and re-render some of the shots though when something was missing or didn't look right.
 |
| Importing the rendered files into Premiere pro. There was more than one rendered shot as I kept updating/altering any shots that needed fixing. Also I thing throughout this stage was to make sure that the files be named correctly. If a Quicktime movie clip was saved with an avi code such as "example.avi" it would not work properly and won't even import into Premiere Pro or After Effects. |
 |
| Painstakingly rendering every single frame in Premiere Pro. The longest time it took to render the full sequence was approximately 40 minutes. |
When it came to exporting the movie clip, I did it in the format of a Quicktime movie file and changed the compressor to H.264 as I had to chose a setting that would keep the quality of the original sequence. I also kept the Color Depth at "Millions of colors" and the Pixel Aspect Ratio at "Square Pixels (1.0)" as that best fits the HD 1080 format.
 |
| Export Movie Settings. |
Kept the Keyframe and Rendering Settings at default mode, the Bit Depth
was fine set at “Use Project Setting.”
 |
| Audio settings |
As for the audio, I kept the mode at uncompressed and the Sample Rate at 48000 Hz although the original music and sound effects track that was sent was at 44100 Hz but it would still work just as well.
Sunday, 19 May 2013
Compositing
With all the shots rendered, I had to composite them together in After Effects CS3. I had to use several compositions composed to several layers of rendered images, Photoshop files and other visual effects from the software, such as fractal noise to create mist/smoke to make the scenes more interesting.
Since the format for the movie is in HD 1080, I altered the composition settings for each shot, also changing the frame rate to 24 per second and the pixel aspect ratio to square pixels as that fitted better with the screen size.
To have a bird flying away at the end of the movie, I decided to do some 3D compositing and animation in After Effects to achieve this. I manipulated several photos of a robin and pigeon in Photoshop and then I imported the images into a composition and converted them into 3D layers.
I changed the anchor point for each of the wing images so that when I changed the 3D rotation, it would rotate from the pivot at the bottom of the wing. When i set the keyframes for the wings, I assigned an expression to the position and rotation controls so that the key frames would loop over and over to save me from applying keyframes throughout the entire composition. To make it look better, I enabled the Motion Blur control so that when the wings flapped quickly, they were a blur instead of looking too sharp and unrealistic.
 |
| Shot of the bird in 3D manipulation mode. Aside from changing the position of the wings, I have to use the puppet tool on the main body of the robin as well to distort it slightly so that it would look better. |
Once the robin has been animated and rendered, I put the movie clip into the composition where the little girl is supposed to watch the robin fly around her and off into the distance. Once again, I converted the file into a 3D layer and used key frames to change the position and orientation of the bird to give it a flying pattern. Had to sync it up with the amount of time it takes for the little girl to look in a certain direction.
Shot of the little girl walking down the street. Used a 3D camera asset and applied of layer of fractal noise resembling mist to make the scene more gloomier.
Shot of the little girl and the air warden. Once again, I converted the layers into 3D and used a 3D camera to alter the shot a bit more and to zoom in on the little girl at the end of the shot.
This was a difficult shot to composite because the street view of the cathedral and the buildings were in one layer and the barrage balloons shown above were in a separate layer. The barrage balloons had not been rendered with the cathedral so I had to 3D composite them in and change the position of the image every single frame to make it fit. At first it didn’t work with just several key frames so I had to set a key frame every single frame. It was time consuming and a bit hard to make everything fit but eventually I managed to get the shot to work.
After every shot was composited in After Effects, I had to pre-render each one individually. Due to the complexity of the compositions as well as the HD 1080 settings, the maximum amount of time it took to render one shot was up to 50 minutes, this was recorded due to the last shot being approximately 14 seconds long and containing up to layers.
All shots are now rendered and are ready to be edited together. If there is anything missing or a certain shot does not look quite right, then I may have to go back to After Effects, change the shot and then render it again.
Saturday, 18 May 2013
Communication
Although this is an individual project and I'm working mostly by myself, I have sought the assistance of several colleagues and friends in various assets of the project. One of the main points of this assessment is to collaborate with other people of different skills so I've managed to find someone who can do additional animation, a friend who could do modelling and texturing and a few acquaintances who can do sound effects and music for the post-production stage.
Facebook
When it came to modelling and texturing, I asked an old friend, Perri Wheeler who also took this animation course before me, over Facebook if she would be interested in assisting me with constructing a piece of the environment. She agreed and I sent her many details such as references, photos and layouts of the film.
Perri has done a good basic blockout to start with although she has stated that she may exaggerate the scene more from the photo it is based on.
The image above shows that the wrecked house is making good progress, Perri pointing out that there is a huge amount of texturing duplication and positioning to be done. Also many of the small objects produced share one texture material so I don't have to worry about checking every single one when I have to link everything up for the render farm.
So overall, Perri did a really good job with the wrecked house but unfortunately she had to drop out before it was completed due to other commitments. So she sent me the file and folders of everything she had done for me to complete, nothing like a little extra work.
Email
Animation
I have communicated with most of my collaborators through emailing, where we've shared Maya files and information. This was useful as we could inform each other of any technical difficulties or setbacks that needed to be fixed as soon as possible. With Lien animating the air warden character, I set the deadline for the 17th May for her shots to be completed.
Sound Effects
After meeting up with two acquaintances, Luke Hodsdon and Stuart Trewhella, who specialise in a sound production course, we kept in touch and exchanged information on what needed to be done and what sound effects I wanted for the film. I helped them with this by sending a copy of my final animatic clip for them to work on. Once the film is rendered and edited completely, I will send it to them so they have the more accurate version to work with.
Music
When it came to the music, the sound effects people recommended another person, David Allen, who did composing and I asked him via email if he would be interested in producing a piece for my project. When he agreed, I sent him an animatic for him to work on the length of the music and to reflect what is occurring throughout the film.
We also used a site know as We Transfer, which allowed us to send files to one another, as my movie clips had big capacities, I had to use We Transfer as my email account would only allow me to send files of up to 25MB, not really enough for this sort of project.
(The following messages start with the oldest at the bottom of this post.)
We also used a site know as We Transfer, which allowed us to send files to one another, as my movie clips had big capacities, I had to use We Transfer as my email account would only allow me to send files of up to 25MB, not really enough for this sort of project.
(The following messages start with the oldest at the bottom of this post.)
From: Michael Hines
<>
To: David Allen
<>
Sent: Thursday, 23 May
2013, 19:37
Subject: RE:
Music_for_animation
Hello Michael
I am just about to send you the soundtrack complete
with the end credit music, all the timing should sync up fine if you just start
the track from the beginning of you're project. Luke Williams may have already
done a final mix of the sound and music, but thought i would you this so you
have an independent copy.
Dave Allen
From: Michael Hines
<>
To: David Allen
<>
Sent: Thursday, 23 May
2013, 19:37
Subject: RE:
Music_for_animation
Hello Dave.
Thanks, you did do a good job with the music too,
the film fits very well with it. Yes, if you can do just a short piece for the
end credits, that would be nice. Oh, so you use Logic Pro 9, I might get that
at some point.
Thank you again for your participation into writing
music for my project, much appreciated.
Michael
Date: Thu, 23 May 2013 18:05:03 +0100
From: David Allen
Subject: Re: Music_for_animation
To:
Michael Hines
Hello Michael
so glad you like the music! Just downloading the
movie now. I use Logic pro 9 with East West instrument plug-ins, I have their
'complete composers collection', logic also notates music too.
Ps: will you want music for the end credits?
Dave
From: Michael Hines
<>
To: David Allen
<>
Sent: Thursday, 23 May
2013, 15:45
Subject: RE:
Music_for_animation
Dave.
May take a while for the film to be transferred as
it is a big file. By the way I'd like to know, what do you use to make your
music? I sometimes write music using Finale Allegro 2007, it's a great software
for making sheet music and playing them with instruments but when it comes to
exporting the music as an audio file, sometimes it doesn't have that authentic
quality sound I'm looking for. Just like to know how you do yours.
Thanks
Michael
Date: Thu, 23 May 2013 13:55:40 +0100
From: David Allen
Subject: Re: Music_for_animation
To:
Michael Hines
Hello Micheal
I have just sent you the track via We-transfer, it
is 44100 sample rate, i will send anther later at 4800. remember there is still
work to do on this track, however if there is anything you really don't think
works do let me know.
Dave
From: Michael Hines
<>
To: David Allen
<>
Sent: Thursday, 23 May
2013, 12:52
Subject: RE:
Music_for_animation
Hello Dave.
44100 would be just fine but I would like to listen
to both just in case. Please do send what you've already made.
Michael
Date: Thu, 23 May 2013 12:24:51 +0100
From: David Allen
Subject: Re: Music_for_animation
To:
Michael Hines
Hello Michael,
I can do the track in both sample rates, depends on
which you want? Im still working on the mix, a few things to sort out with the
orchestral arrangement too, but nearly there. i will send what I've done anyway
just so you can hear it.
Dave
From: Michael Hines
<>
To: David Allen
<>
Sent: Thursday, 23 May
2013, 11:36
Subject: RE:
Music_for_animation
Hello Dave.
That's great! Looking forward to hearing it, got
all the film rendered now so it looks good but I think it would be better when
the music is added in. Will you be able to do the track in a sample rate of
44100 or 48000?
Michael
Date: Wed, 22 May 2013 17:42:02 +0100
From: David Allen
Subject: Re: Music_for_animation
To:
Michael Hines
Hello Micheal
I have score for you! i still need to finish the
mix and few other things, but i thought i would let you hear it so you give me
you're feed back. what sample rate should i bounce the track as?
Dave Allen
From: Michael Hines
<>
To: David Allen
<>
Sent: Saturday, 18 May
2013, 22:29
Subject: RE:
Music_for_animation
Hi Dave.
I see, that's alright. Will be working on the
editing next week anyway. Looking forward to hearing it.
Michael
Date: Sat, 18 May 2013 17:04:34 +0100
From: David Allen
Subject: Re: Music_for_animation
To:
Michael Hines
Hi Michael
I have been working on the soundtrack for you’re
film, but I think I got a little carried away and have made it sound too epic
and American! So I’ve gone back to the drawing board, I should have something
to show you by middle of the week.
Dave Allen
From: Michael Hines
<>
To: David Allen <>
Sent: Tuesday, 14 May
2013, 21:47
Subject: RE:
Music_for_animation
That's ok, don't want you to feel rushed if you got
other projects to work on. But I look forward to hearing your finished theme
just the same.
Michael
Date: Tue, 14 May 2013 21:41:59 +0100
From: David Allen
Subject: Re: Music_for_animation
To:
Michael Hines
I will try and get the soundtrack completed
this weekend.
Dave
From: Michael Hines
<>
To: David Allen
<>
Sent: Tuesday, 14 May
2013, 21:27
Subject: RE:
Music_for_animation
The whole project has to been done just before the
30th May so I'd like to give you until next week, say next Friday at the latest
to get the final version of the music done. Yes if we can start work on it at
the weekend, that'll be just fine. Otherwise we can arrange what would be more
suited to your time.
Michael
Hines
Date: Tue, 14 May 2013 21:23:56 +0100
From: David Allen
Subject: Re: Music_for_animation
To:
Michael Hines
Okay great! do you have a deadline date? I
we'll get to work on this at the weekend.
Dave Allen
From: Michael Hines
<>
To: David Allen <>
Sent: Tuesday, 14 May
2013, 21:20
Subject: RE:
Music_for_animation
Hello
Dave. I've just seen some of your work and I must say the music is absolutely
marvelous. Thanks for commenting on my film, yes, that's the kind of style and
theme that I would like throughout the piece, darkness and innocence the way
through and a slow transition to optimism at the end. Of course the music needs
to be instrumental but yes, if you can produce that kind of theme with strings
and horn section, that would be great. Like it to sound old and yet possess the
qualities that you've mentioned.
Michael Hines
Date: Tue, 14 May 2013 21:15:46 +0100
From: Dave Allen
Subject: Re: Music_for_animation
To:
Michael Hines
Hello Michael
just watched the film a couple of times, very nice
piece of work, 1st thoughts for the music is that towards the end I get the
impression the music should hint a little optimism? as a whole I think
the music should express a little darkness, innocence and optimism?
Instrumentation; piano plus some kind of backing choir, Strings
and a horn section. These are literally just my 1st thoughts. do
you have any preconceptions of how you want the music to sound?
Dave Allen
From: Michael Hines
<>
To: David Allen
<>
Sent: Tuesday, 14 May
2013, 20:50
Subject: Music_for_animation
Hello Dave.
Stuart Trewhella mentioned that you were into
composing music and provided me with your email so I could ask you about
writing a short piece for a short animated film I'm working on for uni. The
film is titled "Post-War Child" and involves a young girl walking
through a bomb ruined street in London and encounters an air warden. Attached
is a copy of the final animatic for the film for you to look at, the piece is a
minute and a half long. Please let know what you think and I hope to have a
chat with you soon to discuss more about the subject.
Only got around 2 weeks of the project left so
looking forward to hearing from you soon. But if it's too short notice for you,
then I apologize in advance.
Thank you.
Kind Regards
Michael Hines
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