Synoptic project overview

Synoptic project overview

Once the pitches had been chosen i moved from group 2 to group 3 to join up with

a team who were made up of people all experience with VFX while in my original group

I was the only person in the class going into VFX as my specialism.

First I joined up with my new team and after an introduction,
we started the planning stages of the project first of we spent a few weeks working out
what we wanted to film and what effects we would be doing what for the project.
We started to improve and edit the narrative as we went along.
After some deciding we put together a script and made a recording plan.

For recording, we planned out and recorded by location the shots in college
we got first started with the “lab scene” Which was shot in one of the nextgen
rooms after everyone had left we were using the DSLR from media and our selves
as actors.

We also had to film the Bridges which came with its own challenges
as we had to work around people who were shopping so we had to be unobstructed
as well as trying to get as much footage as we could when no one was in the shot
we had the plan to try and remove people in the background but without a tripod to
steady the camera we found we would require a large amount of work to do so, in the end,
we just cut the footage to use what we could without people in it.

Once we had all of our footage we began planning who to delegate what to
and I ended up mostly doing matt painting for my parts. My one was the lab scene
which my first idea was to make it look like a science lab so I placed charts and graphs
onto the monitors to make it look more science like. I made an animated map to go on
screen to match the meteor strike zones to signal what was going on is worldwide.

Later on, I added microscopes using element 3d to finish off the scene I also added
artificial shadows to all of them this makes them blend into the scene more.

Also, we recorded this scene a second as the original footage was too shaky and some
problems with the light made tracking hard so we just re-recorded it to solve it.

The next parts were matt paint the bridges both the over road tunnel and the
staircase which both had 1 thing in common tracking which caused more problems
than it had any right to if I could go back in time I would tell myself to take a Tripod
and solve most of the issues.

On the stairs, I added an exit sign above a shop sign to remove it and
I added an overturned shopping trolley to signal people left in a hurry both required tracking.
The exit sign wasn’t too bad as I was overlaying it on a square sign I could track a square onto it to overlay it without much problem. The trolley took multiple attempts however I
managed to get a track via mocha working. The briefcase poster was the hardest
as the wall it was on was rigid with no high contrast points or natural markers
I could use as a tracking marker after going through almost every possibility I moved
it to a different wall which was bricks so I had many potential options and settle on that
as it kept it still.

On the Tunnel I originaly just used a keylight to put the dust cloud in however
this looked a bit opaque and didn’t seem as thick as I wanted so I masked it behind
some buildings in the background, this took quite a bit of time to do as I had to track
every mask on the scene before I added the dust I tried adding building in but I didn't
think it looked as good, however as I set the makeup on the main layer it means I can
replace what's behind the buildings quickly and easy.

Another minor scene I worked on was the scene at the bottom of the college
stairs in that I fully removed the radiator from the background to make it plainer to do
this I took the first frame without charlie into photoshop  where I removed the radiator
itself then I took the image back to after effects and used that as the background and
rotoscoped charlie out of the other footage and in front of the
radiator image to composite the scene.

By the time the MVP hit we didn’t have all the effects done but that was expected as
we had to take time to record the footage but everything was on track and ready. Currently,
we are in the final part of the project and improving some scenes based on feedback we
have received I am working on my improvements as are other group members.

The Teamwork Has Been Great overall for the entire project we have been working
together providing feedback when needed and working together on certain scenes.
This gave us a wider range of ideas.

Prepping for first synoptic hand in

We are now making Preparations for the
preliminarily hand in date we believe we have a good quality product ready
some parts aren’t 100% refined yet but we have more time to work on them it’s mostly just
improving track sturdiness for me to do. How everything is going to look in set in stone and
I just want to get everything looking like it was part of the scene when we recorded it in the first place.

We are also going over all our paperwork (timesheets, Burndowns etc…) and making sure
they are all accurate and up to date with our current progress.

The Tunnel Redesign

Redesign the tunnel due to having some tracking issues and believing I could do better with the look of the tunnel  I decided to see what improvements I made, first of all, I masked the storm behind a building this kept
the quality of the storm better than it being green screened. As I had to animate
multiple maks it took a while to do but I think the results are worth it.
I also did some colour and speed adjustments to it. To further improve the scene
I added cracks to the ground to make the building looked more ruined.
I have tracked the cracks to the screen I will need to improve one of them however as it moves
around a bit

Tracking in Moche AE and lots of waiting

I managed to get a track done in mocha and I got one of the objects in my scene tracked,however, I will need to refine this for the other objects which will take at times due to difficulties in moving files around. Also, each track in Moche takes minutes and

an hour to complete to they is a lot of waiting around involved.

For bridges Walkway scene i am having issues getting anything done with it as i can’t

really put anything behind the windows easily so i am going to try some other methods

or move the dust around a biit.

Designing the Bridges Stairs

I have started matt painting the bridges where the staircase is I have added a few signs and posters
as well as overturned shopping trolleys to the ground to make it feel like it was abandoned in a hurry.
One major issue I will need to face is tracking so far I have tried various methods
with little success, i am going to likely try out moche for my tracking as i will have better results
however, it’s awkward to use as i can’t use it in college to it incompatible footage so i need to do it at
home and at home, i lack Element 3D so i need to move around notepads with text
data to get everything together successfully

We are still able to rely on each other as a team to get the work done and we are able
to help out each other when needed.

Continuing of matt paint the bridges

Continuing of matt paint the bridges I have got the sandstorm added in
I used some stock footage and I used a mixture of keylight and masks to layer it into my scene in the background behind the windows. I also put a colour overlay on it to darken it to match the darker and red theme we are going for with the asteroids and destruction.
It's taking more time than I assumed I would I had to mask and manually track them to match tthe windows.

Matt painting the Bridges

I have footage of the bridges shopping center in Sunderland which i will begin designing digitally i have already put a light storm outside the windows and i want to add some destruction and signs of abandonment such as shopping trolleys and left bags. I'll have to set up a motion track i have already done some over at home and now i have access to college computers i can use element 3D to build up the rest of the scene. So far my tracking has been 100% accurate so i am going to attempt mocha (plugin) if i can't i'll be doing it manual which fortunately it's only 48 frames for what we used in the trailer so a manual track won't take hour's of my life to do.

We are still working effectively as a team and after our MVP we had a review of all the feedback and work that needs to be done and decided who is going to do it and what they need to do. So all of the group members have their tasks to complete. And we will be working together for some of them such as the final scene color correction.

MVP Feedback

We received our MVP feedback today and we were told what to improve most of it was what we were expecting as we all ready had a good idea of what we needed to do to get the final version of the project ready some of that includes.

Refining the timing on the intro

Minor adjustments to the fight scene

Matt paining remaining scenes

Record narration

Once we get all of them done we will be in a good position and just need minor polish to finish off the project.

More filming

Today me charlie and jake set off to mowbray park and the sunderland high street to get some more footage for the synoptic we got a few more establishing scene recorded and the fight scene which we are planning and added some extra effects to. The extra footage will help fill up the trailer. We also got some Behind the scenes footage taken and begun discussing what we wanted to to for behind the scenes which is in a direction that is more satirical over serious

After effects is completely normal

In a completely unsurprising set of events after effects crashes multiple times in a lesson then deleted my project file i was working on… Fortunately i have made plenty of backups as i know that stability isn’t a trait of after effects. After some assistance i discovered after effects doesn’t play well with external devices and i moved all my wok off my hard drive onto a internal HDD and that seems to fix all the new issue.

Once again i am thankful to have a team which all know the pains of working in after effects and between us have crashed more times than we can count so we have experience many different bugs and found our own fixes. We managed to get everything running again in the end thanks to teamwork the creative cow forms and a bit of luck.

Using element 3D and Changing the scene

The Lab scene is almost done and i have decided to abandon the reactor idea as i can’t get it look great and getting it positioned right is important and i can’t find a nice position for it to go in.I am using element 3D to add microscopes to the scene to make a science lab i have never used it before so i am leaning as i go.

I have also added flaks to the scene to touch it up i have a temporary green mat in  it to make the flask visible as it’s glass and transparent on the bright background.

Team work is going great as i have never used Element 3D before i was relying on my group and the youtube tutorials to teach me and they made sure i was able to get my work done as well as their own. Overall i am happy with the scene and with the help my group could provide.

Prepping for the MVP

It’s the final few days before we return to college and have the MVP I just have a few minor things to add then I’ll do a render of my scene to add to what we have so far to qualify for the MVP I will have further changes to make as this is the priority scene I’m working on but I believe it’s of a high standard.

To go with it we have a News report scene done by Liam which should be ready for some minor changes to improve it. Jake is also matt painting a scene outside scene which I have seen parts knowing it should be in a renderable state. And Charlie is still working on his scene and suffering through the pain of working in after effects with various issues slowing down progress. We also have the title scene to add them all too when we get back to college we can all render out our scenes and do an MVP render to gain feedback and do a major progress check.

Overall I’m happy with the progress made over easter both individuality and from the group as a whole. For the project, I’m happy we are on track as we all took the major scenes first and any minor scenes wouldn’t take as long to complete so they aren’t expect to be done right now.

Improving the reactor

I have been working on improving the reactor design as I still can’t seem to get it exactly how I want it to look I’m also considering moving it to a different scene due to having an issue making it fit into the current scene and look realistic. Unfortunately, due to having numerous issues with after effects it’s taking more time than it should due to me needed to troubleshoot issues and deal with crashes.


Communication is holding up I have been working with Jake to assist him in his work due to him having some technical issues with rotoscoping so I have been providing help to get his done. I have also been providing feedback on the scene to help improve parts of it eg colour of the grass and getting the shadows to look like they were real.

Designing a reactor

This week I managed to get the reactor designed and build using saber once I got the beam size and animation designed (flicker, brightness and speed) I found the hardest part was picking out the colour to use. As this is something which doesn’t exist in real life I didn’t have many references. I finally settled on a light blue based on feedback it was between that or an orange I felt they both had the reactor look I was looking for.

We had a group scrum this week to do a progress check and everyone is working independently on a scene each I am confident that we will have 3 scene minimum ready for the MVP and a 4th depending on how quickly my group works. We have been helping each other to build the scenes by sending screenshots and going through changes. With us not being at college I’m happy with the amount of communication we have to cooperate with each other.

Start of the Lab

The lab scene is still being worked as they are a lot to do for it to try and create a realistic lab scene. So far I have adjusted the colour to a blue to make it more like what you picture a lab as I've added graphs and charts to all the monitors one of them being animated. I might put it in the background somewhere else if I can’t find a good location in this scene. I want to try and add some 3d objects as well if I can but for that, I’ll wait until I’m back at college to access element 3D which will assist in the task. The biggest part which will take some time is creating a reactor using the Saber plugin to make an energy beam with reactor casing which will be placed into the wall somewhere. I have a few ideas on how to do this I’ll trying some designs to see what I can make.

I also have another scene where the actor is running down the stairs this one has less to add to it however so it shouldn’t take too long just a colour correction and then some other minor add-ons.

As it’s the easter my group is working more independently as we're not all together but we have communication channels established for providing assistance to each other and for a scrum when needed.

Text and transition planning

We are planning to re-record the footage either at some point today or tomorrow the goal is to
get it done before the Easter break (march 28th) so that way i have extra footage
allowing me to do some extra work over Easter. In the meantime i am continuing to
work on post production elements.

I also have starting planning out things like the text countdown
on scene transitions which will be something along the lines of “23:55 minutes remaining until impact)

To do this i chose a text font which looks like a digital clock to make it feel more like a timer.
The timer it’s self i created by using a script which counts down it made a couple of adjustments
to change the starting times which i can do for each scene when it’s needed

27th march update

At the start of the day we did our scrum and distributed our jobs among us for us to do over the
Easter break so everyone knew what they were doing i was assigned to continue working on my
footage and see if i can get the footage fixed with the tracking issue using other plugins such as mocha.
We have been collaborating every so often to see each other's work and provide feedback.
The rest of the group is all working effectively and getting everything done on the timeline that we
expect. We should have 4 completed bits of footage ready for the MVP provided we run into no issue.
It’s likely if i can’t get the footage fixed we are going to just re-record it with a tripod to make the camera
perfectly still to eliminate some barriers to what could stop us with the tracking.

The group as a whole is happy with our progress apart from the issues with the tracking which has
caused us to take longer than expected but we should still remain on track.

Starting the visual effects on the lab

Today i have started on the lab scene which i am going to matt paint and do some coloring
and masking to make some adjustments to the scene when needed.
My the first part i wanted to track an image to the scene however they is some issues with the footage
which is making tracking difficulty i have attempted to use different methods and various fixes with
no results. After speaking to my group and a lecture we have decided than the issues with the
footage are harder to solve that we expected and we are planning on rerecording the footage
with a tripod and some other changes to offset potential issues which could cause the tracking
problems.

(on the image shown the tracking lines should be more compact and within the square)

Otherwise i have been working on stuff with other members to assist until new footage is available.
As well as that i have been doing some of the other work that the project needs such as posters
and updating document


The group is all involved and make the collective decision to re-record the footage
as it would likely be faster to do so that fixing the old one would be. Having the whole group able to
provide assistance is useful as everyone is familiar with after effects and the software we use to provide
troubleshooting and then decided when it’s not worth fixing and restarting.

Beginning Production

We have produced a title sequence to go at the start of the project this has our names and a mixture of stock footage to create an opening scene this is something that we all had some creative direction on to help put it together. We wanted to have some of the text move to give it more life however in the end we decided against it as we wanted all text to be either still or moving for constancey.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33sosJ-2d-g

As a team we all have our own jobs to do but we regularly discuss and look over each others work to
see how we can improve and share creative input. Everyone is filling their roles and working well together
to provide feedback to each other to see what we can all do to improve.

Overall we are on track for the project with just a small bit of footage left to get to finish off while other
members have begun working on the visual effects already for the project.  

Synoptic project Filming Oxclose

We met up in Oxclose so we could film a lot of the outside sections of the project we got a large amount of the footage we needed done with behind the scenes as well. We had 3 of us their i was holding and using the camera while charlie and Jake were acting in some of the shots. To steady the camera we just had to use what we could as we didn't have a tripod so a mixture of balancing against a fence and a tree stump were used to steady the camera when needed. We are all confident the footage is good and we won't need to rerecord any of it at all.

We might have had a few issue with consistency of lighting but this will be fixable with some colour correcting in after effects.

Synoptic Project Filming the News

Today we have begun the first of the filming for the Before the after. We filmed the news scene which is the only part which requires a script (Prepared beforehand)  we took some time to get the tripod and camera set up to get the angle and lighting right for the shoot. We did run into the issue of having low battery and not knowing when it might ruin out meant we had to keep the camera turned off whenever it wasn't filming and had to work quickly around it. We were working with someone else who was outside the group so they had to learn the script taking up some time but after that, we were able to capture the footage. We got the footage we needed as well as some for behind the scenes.

Synoptic project progress 5th of march

We have completed preproduction and we were expecting to start recording the footage last week however due to the weather conditions we had to suspend filming which we are now hoping to get started this week.

Otherwise the group is working well and what we can do is coming together to a high standard for the planning, once we have some footage we can begin doing the proper work. We did want to start recording earlier however we can't control the snow and once it's past we should be on track.

Synoptic Project pre production

Our Current status of the synoptic project preproduction is mostly finished we just need to get the Rec done with requires use to go to all the filming locations and take photos of where we are going. All of our other PreProduction has been completed and signed off on so we can start our main production soon.



We have also Made some graphics for a Warning Alert to show on the TV news report. Other Pre visual work has been done to get an more concrete idea of what we want the style to be for the final product. The Trello has also being redesigned and organised to make it clearer and to include more. This is for the news segment to make it feel more like a real news show. To make this we got the logos for the British government, home office and ministry of defense and we added the Text in Big block capitals to make it more important looking.

We also made a graphic for the news segment to go before it before the camera goes on to produce this we got the image and used Photoshop to separate the parts and then made the circles on the image spin to make it feel like it being more active. To finish it off we added some noise to it to make it seem like it was more "TV like" as the fuzziness adds to the effect

Imagin worlds Art essay

https://docs.google.com/document/d/14FzUGzhDQvNMWNUZTNFoReL4-H5_QCyiEpbINTOIUE0/edit?usp=sharing

Word Document link

Bullet Jet motion graphic

https://vimeo.com/256306529

This is my second attempt at creating motion graphics in after effects. For this idea I wanted to do something that transforms into a jet by wings popping out for this I chose a bullet. To start the animation I needed to fire the bullet I decided it would be easier if I green screened myself and coloured me to match the rest of the art. And overall I could get better quality out of it, compared to if I drew and animated a full silhouette.

All of the art was created by me in Photoshop for the buildings however I used reference images to trace over to help build a better silhouette for them. The animation starts off with the bullet flying across building and then growing wings and becoming a jet. The animation ends with the jet flying towards the camera.

Most of the animation was done within just using key frames and movement points and adjusting them when needed. The only part which I went in knowing nothing about was 3D layers which is what made the jet move towards the camera as if it was flying above it.

This project was mostly done as practice for future graphic projects I might be working on so I could gain some more experience with it.

Before the after synoptic project preplanning

My group has completed all the preplanning for the synoptic that we can do at the moment we have got the jobs assigned which are able to be moved around freely however, should we require it. All the other parts are ready and organized we also have a trello to keep useful information and keep other updated on our current progress in the project. I am confident that we have as much prepared as we need. The group work is all fine and everyone is working together to get the preplanning done we are hoeping to start recording within the first few weeks after half term which is around Feb 19th

Motion graphic bullet planning and assets

I am planning on creating a short motion graphic with a bullet being shot across the screen i have already produced some of the art for this quickly in Photoshop

I'm also planning on using myself green screened and colored black to match the art style this will mean i don't have to draw a person and animate it saving me some work

I'm going to have the bullet shot across the sky passing building quickly

Attempting Motion Graphics in after effects

I have wanted to try and learn motion graphics in after effects for a while now and with the numbers project involving the Romanian school i decided to give it a shot. As this is only a test i just used images i found on the internet with modification i made to them for animation purposes for example i removed the slice from the pizza manually in Photoshop to allow it to be separated. I made 3 numbers all with cartoon images representing them. I am going to experiment more with this as this is my first attempt.

https://vimeo.com/253588292

Synoptic project Before the after Getting started

I moved Groups to join with a VFX team to work on their VFX project before the after which is a pre-apocalyptic short film where a meteor is going to strike earth signaling the end of the world. I have met with my new group and we have discussed the project and began putting together the preplanning such as the assert list and production schedule.

Our frist priority is too finish the script and storyboard as we need them to be able to finalize the planning so we can put the rest of preplanning together. This will give us a concreat idea of what we need to do.

Final Preparation for Synoptic project pitch

I have been finishishing up the prepration for the sysnptic project as well as getting the powerpoint ready i have been getting the playboard made as well as doing a few tests for some of the effects i might use in the project to demostraight what i will do with it.

I have also being putting together a compleate show reel of all work word to use as a portfolio for both my university application and i can use it for the end of year portfolio showcase as well.

Synoptic project pitch

My synoptic project pitch is for a news satire spoof video with i want to include segments commonly seen across the news including Technology, Politics and the weather report. The general theme is that it will start off quite serious and slow get more ridiculous as it progress.

Some of the potential ideas include The weather report, which ends up reporting the current events of a Apocalypse in action a hologram call with an astronaut , a brief political segment. Extras would be to add a sports news part. Meanwhile it would all be linked by the central studio.

I would need a team of a 2 VFX artists and 2 3D Modlers 

Hologram

This is a hologram effect i have created using adobe after effects i have used a large number of effects and tools to create it. First thing i setup and keyed out the greenscreen.

The color was made with color curves to get a purple/blue as that the color you see in most sci-fi films for projected images. i reduced the opacity and set the size to match the phone. To finish up the hologram i added a glow to make seem like it had real lighting to it.

I also added the light glowing off the the phone to fill the blank space between the phone and hologram.