E4 Estings Final Film

This was the final outcome for the E4 esting competition. We came across a lot of problems when we started making this. We originally wanted it to be entirely animated in flash. But we thought we should play to our strengths to save time and incorporate 3D into our ident .


We had planned for it to have flash but Oly had trouble exporting from flash so instead had to put the image sequence into After Effects.


We didn't plan out or timing very well as we kept exceeding the 10 second mark. We had to speed stuff up and cut stuff from the final film. I did the final scene in our E4 video, we didn't really have time to animate much due to the time constraints of the competition, we didn't realise how slow 10 seconds was. When I was drawing the final scene, with the E4 falling onto the audience, we thought it best to remove the people and make the blood a purple pink colour so not to make it too morbid.


Overall I am a little disappointed with our final piece. I liked the idea we just needed to refine it. The film itself is poorly cut and I think we needed more animated scenes such as when the audience is watching the cinema screen we should have had flicking lights rather than a static image, and for the final image we should have had the E4 fall onto the audience and chairs with the E4 moving and the blood splatter to come over it last. But due to time constraints and bad planning on our part we didn't have the time.

iDVD

I used iDVD to make my dvd. I had to borrow a mac because I use PC. I didnt manage to grab any screen shots because of this.

I really enjoyed using iDVD. If I had a mac id probably use it more, it was simple enough to use but not being a mac user i did have a little trouble and it probably took me a bit longer than it should have done because I was having so much fun with it.

I picked a theme and then changed the background so that it matched the them I used in my showreel.

 This was the main theme page I used for most of the menus and I used it in my showreel aswel. LiW6 is like my nickname that I made up a while back. Its my username for most things and will probably be my "brand" name in the future.

To add a bit of variety to my menus I drew a couple of pictures to mix it up a bit. I drew this one for my gallery so that it wasn't the same picture through out.

And this was used for contact details on my DVD. In all the pictures the background is the same and just changed the colour to keep the same theme throughout and to show off my drawing skills by drawing myself in a cartoon style.

I probably would have picked a different theme if I was to do it again seeing as the theme I picked you cant see the back buttons very well and I couldn't figure out how to change the colour of them or how to move them (if either were possible)

Final Showreel

This is the final out come of my showreel. I left out some contact details when I uploaded it to youtube as I don't want strange people ringing in the middle of the night. The contact details are on my main and final showreel.

I'm quite happy with the out come, there are probably a few things I could tweak but I spent so much time rendering that I needed to leave time to burn it all to dvd and to set it up.

Storyboards

These are the storyboards that Sarah drew up for us quickly. This gave us a basic outline of what we wanted to have in our video. The basic outline is people going to see "E4 in 3D" and as they are watching it it falls out of the screen and onto the audience.  We planned to do this all in Flash and had a CG E4 fall out of the screen.


We used the storyboard to help with our timing as we only had 10 seconds for the ident.


We talked about a colour scheme and in the end decided that we would go for mainly purple but it wouldn't just be solely shades of purple like many of the other entries had.

Lip Sync

I decided also to do another lip sync, this time not as long and using a different rig. While I liked the Moom rig I used originally, I wasn't too keen on his facial features and controls.

For my new lip sync I decided to use Max instead. He has a more human like appearance and I preferred his facial controls and the way he looks.

I had no idea what I was going to do for sound. I wanted it to be short so Id have enough time to animate it all. So as I was browsing youtube trying to find some ideas, I came across this video from SMOSH.



I chose to do the Dragon Ball Z part (1.53) because of its lame joke. Plus there was a small chance for a little bit of interaction between the two characters.

This animation took me a little longer than I first anticipated. While it took me less than a day to get the lip syncing done, the rest of the animation was reaaaaally dragging on. I have been animating on and off this for a few weeks. Its very nearly finished now, then all I have to do is, put in cameras and render it.

Here is the final video, When I was rendering I accidently forgot to render a few frames towards the end so the sound falls out of sync. I would have gone back to re render it, but Maya decided that my student licence had run out. It would not let me render so I couldnt render out the last frames.

Walk Cycle

I re did a walk cycle because I wasn't very proud of the first one I did, it was slow and didn't flow well. So I chose to redo it for the show reel.

At first I was going to use maya to do my walk cycle in. But I had recently been playing around with a little program called Miku Miku Dance. Its a free japanese animation program that has been translated (poorly I might add) for us not Japanese speaking lot.

I was quite excited to use MMD because it has a motion capture feature, all you need for the motion capture was an Xbox Kinect, which I so happened to own as well. The program can capture everything except for facial features and finger movements.

Now the kinect can be used on a computer with the correct drivers, which I spent a good few hours figuring out out how to install correctly. The official drivers are yet to be released but I thought I'd give it a go and see if I could get it running with the unofficial ones. I couldn't. Miku Miku Dance refused to find the Kinect sensor and didn't think it was installed. It was a shame because it would have been a lot of fun to much around with motion capture, jumping around my house like a mad person.

In the end I decided to just animated by hand a walk cycle. I like MMD's style of models and there are many to find aswell. This was the first full animation I did in MMD.




I had a little trouble with her feet, I don't know if thats a problem on my part or on the rig itself, overall I am happy with the walk and think it a lot better than my first one.

This walk flows a lot better then my first attempt a year ago, I got the timing a lot better on this one, I feel she could afford to be a little slower but I don't want to play around with the timing too much.

Miku Miku Dance

I have had this program for a while now, I stumbled across it whist browsing YouTube, saw that it was free for anyone and thought I'd give it a go.

It took me a while to get my head around, while it was translated into English the interface was unusual and I had no idea what any of the buttons did. I had to find the one English tutorial out there to understand how to animate and load models.

After a couple of weeks of shouting at it and learning the ropes I finally understood how to use it.

 The interface is a a lot simpler than say Maya but that meant I had to figure out where everything was. The controls for the models and camera, lights and props are at the bottom while the time line is to the side. Another thing with Miku Miku Dance is you don't really have much control over the frame rate. I can only have 60fps, 30fps or no limit. I chose 30fps as it was slow and easier to animate too as 60fps would have been too fast.

This is probably my favourite model. APPEND Rin. She's probably the best looking one I have found and I want to give credit to her modeller and rigger and what ever else they did because they did an amazing job with her.

You can customise the backgrounds as well, I think Rin looks good on a black background but I can load an image there if I want or import a scene.

Show reel

Also for this project we have to produce a show reel along side our other pieces of work.

After looking back through my previous work I felt like it wasn't good enough to put into a show reel. So I decided to redo certain pieces so that I could see how I've improved over the years.

I decided that I was definitely going to redo my walk cycle and then decided I wanted to do another lip sync piece seeing as I really enjoyed lip syncing this first time. I am going to keep and use my modelled character seeing as she was the first one I ever modelled and she turned out a lot better than I had anticipated.

I will need to see if I can get a hold of some of the work I did with my group for Digital Environments and Post Production seeing as I don't have the completed files so I can add these to my show reel aswell.

Initial Ideas

After looking through previous entries we got a few idea as to what our entry could contain.

One of our ideas involved a boy getting to the moon and trying to reach it in silly ways such as jumping or putting a ladder up to it, we liked the idea but we didn't really develop it very far because we only had 10 seconds for our entry and the moon one seemed like it would have needed more.

Another idea was to use monsters in some way, we liked the idea but quite a few previous entries had done the same and we thought it might be best to do something different.

We finally settled on a cinema screening of E4 in 3D. At first we were going to do it entirely in flash, but we then decided against it as not all of us had very much training in it, especially me, while I did look at tutorials there wasn't enough time for me to learn everything I needed with what little time we had left. So we decided to incorporate 3D into it to help.

Program Troubles

We suffered a little trouble early on in the project, Oly has Creative Suite 5 for all her Adobe programs and me and Sarah only have CS3 and CS2.


This was a problem because any work she did can not be opened by us on the lower version programs. So I needed to upgrade my programs so that we could all work on the same version of program. After a lot of searching and a few programs not working I think I finally have the CS5 versions of the programs I need. Fingers crossed they continue to work at least until the project is over.

E4 Estings

http://www.e4.com/skins/doitandwin/100eba297679504b733671e9e8abd9a0/entry-terms.e4

We decided to use E4 as out external client. We are going to enter the 2011 competition which ends on July 1st. We need to do a 10 second indent for the competition using any of the music they provide and incorporating the E4 logo. We don't have to use the music they provide but to avoid copyright laws and a long process of getting permission to use certain music it will be easier to use the tracks they provided.


We had to make sure we stick to the terms and conditions
http://www.e4.com/terms-and-conditions.html



It can be live action, it can be animated, it can be 2D, 3D, 4D. It can be hi-fi, lo-fi, big-budget or no-budget. Simply download the E4 logo and a soundbed of your choice and get going. The only rules we are cruelly forcing upon you are thusly –

(a) We can't show anything explicit or violent in the daytime, but we might be able to after the watershed as long as it’s broadcastable. So - within reason - your idea can be quite naughty / irreverent / provocative etc. Use your common sense though, anything too grim or sexually explicit won't get shown at all.




(b) It HAS to be EXACTLY 10 seconds long. If it’s not 10 seconds long IT WILL NOT BE CONSIDERED BY THE JUDGES. Sorry, but we’re feeling a bit strict this year. To make things easier we’re providing you with a choice of 10 second audio beds which you are welcome to use in your E Sting (but feel free to use something of your own if you prefer!)




(c) It HAS to have the E4 logo in it... But you probably knew that. (Preferably integratedinto the idea rather than simply slapped on top of your piece at the end)

Brief

(Taken from moodle site)

This unit builds directly on the Industry Exercises 1 and Industry Exercises 2 units, allowing students to use their portfolio of animation skills to develop finished broadcast animation pieces (in small teams) to be shown during Rave on Air, and to generate an individual show-reel to promote those skills to employers. Students also develop more advanced planning and organisational skills necessary to manage team productions.


This unit has the potential to allow inter-faculty collaboration through the use of animation to promote the work of other courses in the creation of animated advertisements for Rave on Air (product design for example). Intra-faculty collaboration is also possible through the use of other disciplines such as post production and sound design that naturally complement the animation industry. These collaborations will be negotiated on a per team basis.


Aims of the Unit

• To enable students to initiate, plan, and complete complex team projects. 
• To enable students to work to broadcast standards of quality. 
• To provide experience of establishing and developing team project schedules and tracking progress towards project completion. 
• To enable students to demonstrate and promote the range and quality of their animation skills through the production of a show-reel. 

The emphasis for this brief is upon fitness for broadcast purposes, if you read the learning outcomes and assessment criteria that follow this section then you will see that one of the main areas for your assessment is upon how well you meet technical parameters to enable your work to be broadcast.


You will be required to work in small teams, ideally, two, or three people per team.
You will be required to submit three pieces of work for assessment.

• 
  
• An individual reflective journal (Blog) 
• An individual interactive DVD showreel 
• A group film fit for broadcast 

Journal


This should focus on your plans for this project, your brief, your project schedule, and your performance as a team member. These can be supplemented by a group journal to help communication with team members, but the primary concern is your individual reflective account. These should be hosted on Blogspot, or Wordpress and the URLs submitted to your tutor.




Showreel


Your showreel will take the form of a menu driven interactive DVD where users will be able to select which of your work they view. You will be expected to assemble a reel that demonstrates the breadth of your capability, and the diversity of your style as an animator. As such, you may use work from any point in your studies, or from outside your time at college. You may also consider generating new work this term to supplement perceived gaps in your portfolio. The main drivers for assessment here are NOT the quality of the individual pieces of work, but the way in which you choose to present them and to promote yourself…




Movie


This is where the majority of your effort will be directed for this project. You will have to choose a team first of all, ideally a small one of two or three individuals. Then you will have to negotiate a brief for your project. There are three main ways that you can fulfill this part of the brief, but all will depend upon you having a real client, and it is up to YOU to get information from your client to define your brief. This information should include a list of deliverable items, and a set of deadlines.


Way 1


Work as a junior on a BA film project.


Identify the film you want to work on, agree a role, agree deliverables, and then deliver them. It will not be possible to do much in the way of concept or modeling work for these films given the advanced state of their development, but it should be possible to do large amounts of UV mapping and texturing, lighting, rigging and animating.


Way 2


Work towards Rave Live.


This will involve you either working towards doing one of the six channel idents, in which case you will have to contact the graphics students responsible, or towards generating programme content in which case you will have to contact broadcast content creation students to find out their requirements. Be aware that work will need to be ready much in advance of May 19th, so it should be viable within a reduced time frame. Remember the panic that you had at the end of last term? That is a luxury that you do not have this term. It would probably be a good idea to attend all possible meetings about Rave Live, such as the one this Friday (26th) read your email, and look for posters…


The 3rd Way


Find an external client.


You may source a client for your project beyond the confines of college. The same conditions apply, you will negotiate a brief, and whatever work you produce must be produced in a form that is technically suitable for broadcast purposes. Other than that, the subject matter or content are entirely down to you and your client. This is possibly the most challenging of the three ways you can fulfill this project…