JANKI DESIGN
 
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                                                                                          Who is our films audience?

This is something I haven`t given much thought. First if all this film is being produced so me and my group members learn how to work in a studio and finding my place in a production.

But thinking about it, this film is for everyone. It`s not pg 13, it`s suitable for all viewers.

Where someone would watch our film is a different thing, the main source of broadcasting for this type of film is the internett. It has become the most valuable marketing place for everyone that whants to get something further then the local mail can bring it.

There`s probably one group that`s out of reach for now, the old generation. They grew up finding the televison fancy and inovative. While my generation and some generations before me can`t go many days without logging in to a computer and "surfing" the internett.

Channels like Youtube and Facebook is a free broadcasting network for everyone with acess to the internett (1,802,330,457). Starting the markething by spamming your friends on facebook and email you are allready reaching 400-500 people. Since we are 5 group members that`s 2500 (give or take).
If they like it they will refere it to other friends and the curve her is exponential!

Youtube is abit more of a chance, you need to get your friends to rate it good and watch it many times. The more your film is watched the more "free advertisment" you get from youtube.

Well, I`l start spamming then!

-Janki-

 
 
When we had rendered out most of our frames and starded the post production we ran into a problem. Max had rendered out the .targe files corectly. The problem ocurred when we imported the files into Adobe Premier.

It seemed the sky was missing, going trough the files in photoshop all of them had the gradient sky they were supposed to have. So the first thing I did (since my renders were the only ones whith the sky present) was panicing. Sitting there with 20 something hours to deadline and the finding out that the 30 hours of rendring was for nothing.

What I did then was a simple and quick solution to the problem. I imported the files as a sequence to Adobe Aftereffects and started working.

Seeing that the sky is pitch black it is easy to mask out, what I didn`t know is that Aftereffects does most of this for you when the background is black.
So adding a sky as a new layer I, and setting the original footage as the top layer (important) the sky places itself nicely in the background. You can easily animate the background so it moves. Or you can find the spot for your shot if you have a static camera as in the scene below.
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The end result is very pleasing, and this might be a solution in the future. Cause you can easily change out the background if it doesnt fit.
The image below is just en example, so I used a sky with a lot of contrast. This doesn`t really fit the scene with the kind of lighting that i used. So I want to use something that fits a bit better.
Delete the layer and add a new one, voilâ!
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Seeing that it would be a lot of extra work to do all this in Aftereffects and then importing the files into Premier I pulled up Preimer and found that the same thing works her.

Put the sky you want in a video layer below the org. footage and it works just the same. You put the org. footage in video 1 and the sky in video 2. You can animate the sky her aswell.

So it was a simple and quick solution to a problem for our group, might help someone else :D

-Janki-
 
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Making this film has thought me alot about group work and how one should set up a team.
(See earlier post about workflow and pipeline)

Me myself (and I) have understood more about what I need to do to make the group function better. I`m not the most structured person in this world (as mentioned more then once before).
So this is what I need to work with personaly, getting up in the morning, eating breakfast and having a cup of cofee. This makes the whole day better, you produce more and also work better.

The value of makeing a short film is a lot, you understand that to make a group work the group needs comunicate the best it can. It`s not something a group manager can shout out; "Now you all need to comunicate!". No, it`s something the group need to understand. So my suggestion is taking the first day or two of production getting to know eacother personaly and what skill level each of the members have.

I myself will probably not continue making short for my own sake, but as part of a team producing short comericals and similar things it might be interessting.

"The manager"

Now I know that a group/studio need a manager/producer that listens to you and understand your problem, but at the same time he need to say when enough is enough. If you don`t like the way the film is looking, you go to your manager and say so. He will say, nice thought, but it`s not what the "customer" whants, so do what I tell you to do.
Some one that knows what every member is working on and knows when he`s or her`s deadline is.

-Janki-
 
When we started talking about what the style of our film should be I imidetly thougt of a short animation film called "Replay" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-cFHeoXAw8)
It`s a beautifull film and I love the art direction. Rest of the group liked the style and we all agreed that we would try to make something similar to this.

I said early that I would like to be the art director of the film, with me I got Mathias as modeler and texturer.
Starting the project me and Mathias tried out the scenes with different textures and made it a bit random. Then I read an issue of 3D World and saw theire article about "color theory", this changed our texturing a whole lot.

So I retought the textures and found out we would make the enviroment warm and welcoming while the character would be cold, seeing that he wasen`t really supposed to fit in.
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So after reading alot about color theory and seeing usefull pointers like this we found our style in the film.

The picture above is a map showing complementary colors and triad colors. If you draw a straight line throug the circle (from one color to another) you get the complementary colour. This is the basic principle in most films, and they usually do the trick.

Intuitive art directors take this many steps further, and thers many different "color relationships" The new Pixare film "Up" used a triad color selection. This means they used "three" colors. They aren`t bound to only use this three colors, but the three colours are used one the things that are supposed to stand out the most.

The bird below is a good example from that film, using bright colors and maonly three colors. Yellow, red and blue. Nice peace of work.
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We started out with four or five characters to beginn with. Seeing that we wouldnt have time to create and animate all this characters we narowed it down to one.

As me and Eivind started developing the idea befor we put togheter the rest of our group we had some ideas of have the character should look like. So in the consept stage I had lot of input on hove he should look, when it came to finalising the character Frank did that and the result was pleasing.

Unfortunatly the animation didnt look as good as I had hoped, seeing that it didnt fit the character. He was supposed to be a litle kid wandring around have fun. Story boards and scripts sugested that he was skipping down the streets, right word for his intentional animation is "playfull".
So it was a bit sad to see that he ended upp walking about riggid and siff.

Texturing was a bit quick, since me and Mathias had to do that part. Usually the one creating the character does all the texturing aswell. But he ended up with a simple and innocent look.
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Some say a story is never finished and I totaly agree with them!

It doesent mather if the film is completed exactly the way the storyboard was drawn or the prewiz. Ther`s allways more ideas floating during production, unfortunaly some of them are scrapt during the prosess.
Some would fit right in and make the whole story much better, unfortunatly the studoi havent got endless time and resourcess. (Might just be a good thing ;)

For our group this is very spot on, it didn`t happen the way I described above, this is our own fault. We didn`t get the production flowing the way it should in the start and ended up cuting much of the movie. I`m afraid this maid the point a bit harder to understant, but It`s still there ;)

Seeing big studio movies like LOTR(Lord of the rings);
The idea was there, much bigger then the film. But it`s not allways necessary to implement everything to make the audience understand. J.R Tolkien wrote thousands of pages about Middl-earth and Midgard, but Peter Jackson took the key happenings and elements of the film and brought them to life.
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Seeing how our group worked in production I think we should haev planned things a bit differently. The fact that we didn`t really map out every ones skill the way I think we should.

Some of our midd way changes helped alot, but there were still people being assigned to the wrong assignments.
We categoriesd things abit, and divided people. As an example I`l use me and Mathias, we were assigned to enviroment, texturing and lighting. This worked very well, we made some base models with the primary style. Divided up the scenes we had to make and started producing. Not to good on the deadlines, since we didn`t set any at the start. Seeing it a bit later we sat deadlines for when a scene needed to be done modeled, then we sat a new one for when it needed to be done texturing.

I know the rest of the group worked in mostly the same way, but we didn`t comunicate well enough throug the different categories. Me and Mathias knew exactley what we had done and what needed to be done. What we didn`t know was what the rest of our group were doing specificly.

Writing about it now I see what a group shouldn`t do, and that`s another lesson learned. ;)

-Janki-

 
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A few words about this shot.

The reason I chose this angel for final render when our kid walks toward the church; I wanted the church to seem like the "end of the road". This is the final location he get`s to, and It`s supposed to seem like he has reaced his destination. With the church at the end of the street and in the middle, it`s where all the straight lines from the surounding houses lead to.

Modeling the church i searced trough a lot of refrence pictures trying to find a church that looked gracius. Hope I found it, my personal opinion is the church looks "grand" compared to the rest of our set, witch is what we were going for :D

Seeing the shot now I could use a slow truck in to lead the audience towards the church.










TIME

6/17/2010

0 Comments

 
How do I spend my time besides siting at school working on the animation film. Well, I have a part time jobb at a grocery store were I work about once or twice a week. Working in the registre there is`nt very inspiring. When I go to work I usually turn my brain of when I clock in and turn it back on when I clock out.

It`s all about handling unhappy customers, and I`de rather save my energy for creative work in the studio.
If you have a job that doesen`t require  you to be happy and understanding to all the shit pissed of customers complain about everyday it you might get some creative work going.

When it comes to time, it`s all about using it the best way you can. Getting up early and going to the studio after a good breakfast might be the best way to do it. I`m a "nightowl" and tend to stay up  late at night, not the smartest and most efficient way to work.

But a project should allways have the time to be completed while all group members working eight hours a day (08.00 -16.00) if thers no major settback in production. The problem is that you seem to have endless time when you start the project and don`t use the time you have in the start in a smart way.
That`s why most people end up doing all nighters the last weeks befor delivery. The group might get the same amount of time spendt on the project, but your brain doesent function aswell after 20 hours of work.

At the start of our prooject we satt upp a weekly time budget, we did a daily one aswell. Problem was that we didn`t sett and follow deadlines the way we should have.

So lesson learnd; make a detailed production plan with a time budget for every asset, and  most importantly do your studio work at the same time every day.

- Janki-
 
This days we are mostly rendering and trying to update my "Reflective Journal" to the standard it should be for me to pass this course. Not the easiest thing updating something daily when you work full time on a project.
But her I am, doing it all last minute ;)

The renders we have got so far is looking good and it should be sweet.  A bit worried about some of the animation in the film, the rig has been hard to work with but doable.  I was supposed to get a "floater" witch is the same as an independent contracter doing some of our work. But I was a bit late "hiring" him  so our group missed out in a good rigger there, my bad :/ The character was also rigged with Biped, witch is 3D studio max`s own rig. It`s a good rig with lots features. Unfortunaly they have been used to animate with, and then note been "polished"  by an animator.

Anyways, we`re on route towards the end goal, and hoping that it turns out the way we where hoping. Probably gonna sit at school all weekend babysitting the renders ;)

3D Design and Animation