Synoptic Project : Team Performance and Overall Evaluation

With the synoptic project finally at an end, I thought that I would make a blog post to talk about the overall experience. This blog post will be addressing all aspects of the project from teamwork, to my own personal development.

Teamwork & Communication
It goes without saying that teamwork and communication is key in any project, no matter what industry you’re in. For our project, I’d say that we worked and communicated well as a team for the most part. From the get go, it was going to be a somewhat difficult task to communicate with two members of our team, considering that they were both in a different class and were timetabled into college on different days; this was overcome almost immediately and we figured a way around this by creating a timetable for our group. However as we got further into the project, teamwork and communication dropped slightly. This was mainly due to team members not turning up on time to sessions, or simply just not turning up at all; whether this being due to personal issues or even just not bothering to contribute to the project and when they did, the work was rushed and broken. This is mainly directed at one team member.

On the other hand, another team member would not take into account feedback or suggestions from myself or other members of the team to help improve their work and if improvements were made they were unnoticeable, which to say the least was irritating. This resulted in constant misunderstandings and therefore lack of good communication between this individual and the rest of the team. As well as this the work ethic for these team members were appalling and their priorities were certainly in the wrong place. Hopefully these team members know who they are. Due to these individuals, the teamwork and communication dropped within our team resulting in only 3 out of 5 us actually communicating properly and managing to work together. Despite the two team members who I spoke about previously, I’d say that the rest of us did quite well with working together on trying to get the project done on time. If I’m completely honest, I think that we could’ve done better if the team was made of solid members throughout instead of just having 2 who didn’t have a clue what they were doing half of the time. If you exclude these members and their complete incompetence however, we did well to communicate and work together.

My ContributionFor this section I’m simply going to be listing my contribution throughout the production stages:

• Storyboard Draft
• Concept Art (Character wardrobe and Mirror scene)
• Compiling Storyboard images to create final storyboard
  

  

  

  

  

  

  
• Refined story
• Photoshop concept tests
  

  

  

  

  

  
• The Script
• TV VFX test

• Scene correction Grain Removal
• Team Production Logo
• Clock Model
• Clock implementation

• Screen assets (later placed on computer screen)

• Mirror scene re-done

• Adding assets (news scene)

• Marketing Posters x3
  

  

  
• Rough/Submission Edit
• Final Edit Assist (With Jacob)

Documentation:

• Scrum Summary
• Script
• Short Film Inspirations sheet
• Weekly Jobs List
• Risk Assessment Part A and Part B

 

Personal developmentIf I’m completely honest, I think I’ve definitely improved since the beginning of the project. In some areas I do believe I could’ve done better. Time management was one thing that I kind of struggled with at first, but I think now I’m more confident in using my time as evenly as I can. I also think that more to the end of the project my management skills have improved as well. I say this because near the beginning of the project I was more lenient towards my team mates which isn’t really ideal when having the role as project lead; so I believe that with me cracking down on team mates really helped me develop my team management skills and act more like a project lead.

Not only have I improved in these areas as a leader, but I have also improved in different programs as well, these being ones I’m familiar with already: After Effects, Premier Pro and Maya. I believe that in after effects my skills have improved even more than before using a variety of different effects to help blend objects into a scene, such as my clock model. In premier I believe that my edits have improved drastically as well, with me making more refined edits in footage in order to set up scenes correctly and etc. Finally, my skills in Maya have improved in the sense that I’ve managed to create nicer looking models and rendering them out to a high standard, using 3 point lighting and so on.
ConclusionIf I were to sum the project up as a whole, it’s definitely been a notable experience for everyone. We’ve experienced the difficulty of recruiting actors and even working together as a team. I believe that if we had a smaller team with more enthusiastic teammates then I think that the overall production process would’ve turned out a lot better, this is because closer to the end of the project, only a couple of us were actually determined to finish the project off to a high standard. Overall though the project has definitely been a roller-coaster of an experience.

Synoptic Project : Marketing Material

A key part of selling any movie, game or animation is marketing. This can be anything from mugs, badges, key-ring’s and much more. So as my role as team lead and to also prepare us for the final show, one task that I set for everyone leading up to the final show, was to produce a poster for the short film. Personally I created 3 posters. So now I’m going to go over each one and my design choices for each poster.

First up we have the simplest poster of all the posters I’ve created. The poster simply says ‘Remember : A Visuals Short’.This poster was done last since it was the easiest to do. I would personally class this as a teaser poster due to it just being the title of the short film. This leaves the audience to wonder what the film could be about and what kind of tone the film has to it, leaving them to guess away at the title alone.

Next we have the first poster I created.This, out of all the posters, was the one I spent the most time on. This is the what I would class as the ‘main movie poster’ which tells you everything you need to know on it. On the poster it tells you the cast of the film, the title of the film itself and even the film credits such as VFX Artists and etc. However the main focus for this poster was to show off the main character and how he looks once transformed into the murderous, villainous psychopath. Also I thought that darkening certain parts of the face and changing the colour scheme to black and white really helped the eye stand out and help draw the audiences attention to the poster even more.

Last but not least we have the second poster I created; this one I decided to go with a minimalist sort of style, only using certain colours and outlines to define different parts of the character.After the last poster, I wanted to change the style up a bit.Instead of having the poster more detailed, I wanted to make the poster less detailed and more stylised. So I thought to myself, why not go for a minimalist/ simplistic sort of style instead. Surprisingly the style worked quite well and looked really nice as a result. The characters silhouette in front of a white grunge background alongside the ‘Remember : A Visuals Short’ text with a dark grunge texture on it, really made the poster stand out in my opinion.

Overall I’m really satisfied with my marketing work and how well the posters turned out, despite the differing styles I went for with each one.

Ralph McQuarries Influence on the Star Wars Saga

I think it’s safe to say that art is definitely a key part of creating any IP, whether it’s a game or even a movie.  To fully visualise anything in pre-production really helps in the long run, therefore shaping the overall look of the final product. Thanks to his inspiration conceptual pieces, Ralph McQuarrie helped to shape the overall look of the Star Wars Saga and the Star Wars Universe; the result of those pieces being the lush environments of alien planets such as Tattooine and Endor and even iconic characters such as Darth Vader, Chewbacca; even C-3PO and R2D2.So you’re probably wondering, who is Ralph McQuarrie? Ralph McQuarrie was an American concept artist, designer and illustrator. His most notable artistic contribution being for the original Star Wars trilogy, however McQuarrie also created pieces for E.T – The Extra Terrestrial and Cocoon. However in this post I’ll just be covering his work on the original Star Wars Trilogy.One thing that many people don’t know about Ralph McQuarrie is that he started off in a dentistry firm drawing both teeth and equipment. Soon after his job at the dentistry firm, McQuarrie went on to work as a Preliminary Design Illustrator for the Boeing Company. Here he drew diagrams for manuals on constructing the 747 Jumbo Jet.

It wasn’t until 1975 when director and filmmaker George Lucas, was mesmerised with his work and met up with McQuarrie to talk about Lucas’ plans for a ‘space-fantasy film’; it was then when Lucas commissioned McQuarrie to illustrate scenes from the film based on the script.

Ralph McQuarrie with George Lucas

Not only is McQuarrie responsible for the look of iconic characters such s C-3PO, Darth Vader and Chewbacca, but he is also responsible for the iconic looks of such planets and locations like Tatooine, the Mos Eisley cantina, the Death Star and even Yavin 4.Ralphs work was so important and valued by the franchise that George Lucas made sure that the shots in the movie replicated his paintings exactly. This is why his Star Wars portfolio is so vital to the overall aesthetic of the original trilogy. There are also many examples of where some of Ralph McQuarries art work has been re-used to aid other parts of the Star Universe, outside of the original trilogy. One of many noticeable examples of this is the design of Zeb Orrelios from the Star Wars Rebels animated TV series. With this side by side comparison, you can clearly see that Zeb’s character design is heavily based off of the original concepts of everyone’s favourite walking carpet, Chewbacca.

(Left) Original Chewbacca Concept and Zeb Orrelios from Star Wars Rebels (Right)

Even the Storm trooper training gear seen very early on in the Rebels TV series looks similar in design compared to McQuarries earlier Storm trooper concepts.

Storm Trooper Training Gear (Star Wars Rebels)

Early Storm Trooper Concept Art

As well as this there are other examples of McQuarries influence later on in the saga: twice! These examples are present in 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The first being the architecture in Rey’s Village on Jakku. The visual style looks almost identical to McQuarries original concept piece of the outside of Jabba’s Palace in the original trilogy.

Jabba’s Palace Concept Art

Rey’s Village in The Force Awakens

Another example is the design of the X-Wings in this film. As you can see the Design is completely different to the original X-Wings in Episodes 4, 5 and 6.

X-Wing design in A New Hope

X-Wing design in The Force Awakens

The new design looks like the original concepts done by Ralph McQuarrie of this X-Wing dog fighting in space with this TIE Fighter. The similarities between this X-Wing and the X-Wing class from the Force Awakens being that they both share the same engine design: this being semi-circular.But if I’m honest one of my favourite pieces done by Ralph has got to be the piece which appears to be set on Cloud City, where we see lightsabre wielding Storm troopers for the first time; maybe this could’ve been inspiration for the Storm trooper TR-8R in the Force Awakens, who knows.Every artist has their inspiration no matter if it’s a specific movement or artist; Ralph McQuarrie is no exception. From all of the production paintings McQuarrie produced, it was the concept of R2-D2 and C-3PO wandering the desert that was completed first.If you analyse the painting very closely, it’s quite apparent that Art Deco movement may have heavily inspired McQuarries piece. What do I mean by this? Well if you compare C-3P0 to the Art Deco robot, Mashinenmensch from Fritz Lang’s film from 1927, Metropolis, then you’ll notice that the resemblance is uncanny.Not only did this painting start the design of C-3PO off, but it also had an impact on the actor who would later play him, Anthony Daniels.Daniels even said himself that the figure of McQuarries design had ‘a rather wistful’, ‘yearning’ and ‘rather bereft quality’ which Daniels ‘found very appealing’. Thanks to McQuarries painting, Daniels accepted the role as C-3PO.

Soon after the first film, McQuarrie went on to create other pre-visualisation concept art for the following films: Empire Strikes Back and The Return of The Jedi.Despite not working on the prequel trilogy and experiencing creative fatigue, it’s safe to say that Ralph McQuarries work has definitely inspired the Star Wars Universe as a whole. He may not still be around today but thanks to his influence, he has truly left his mark on the world of cinema with his work on Star Wars.

 

 

Synoptic Project: Concept Piece

Due to the absence of our creative lead, I have had to step in and have quite a lot of creative input throughout the project. Whether it be critiquing my colleagues’ work or coming up with new ideas, I do believe I have been of some help. However just before we started creating effects for the short film, we came to a halt. This was due to us not knowing what we wanted the mirror scene in our short to look like as we already had a brief idea of what we wanted every other scene with effects to look like. For those of you unaware of what I’m talking about, the scene is basically the main character seeing a dark reflection of himself in the mirror (this dark reflection being the psychopath).So with this in mind I created an entire concept piece from scratch in Photoshop, trying to illustrate how I thought the scene should look. The piece took me roughly 5-6 hours to really get right. It may not be the best piece produced for the project but its noticeably one of my best pieces that I’ve produced all year. Here’s part of a time-lapse of me drawing the piece and below that the final piece itself…

Overall I’m very happy with how this piece turned out and I think that it’s definitely improved my digital art skills.

Synoptic Project: Filming, Dailies & Behind The Scenes

From mid April, myself and the team have been gathering footage to work with for our short film. However due to the set backs with actors and so on (mentioned in a previous post), we’ve had to act out the short film ourselves. This blog post will be focused around how I think the team communicated throughout filming and how well we managed to plan shots and capture footage.
Originally we had planned to film quarter of the way through March once the actors had been recruited; of course this ended up not being the case and we had to scrap the idea of filming with actors entirely. This led us to star in the film ourselves: the cast being members of the group and classmates who were kind enough to act for us in between working on their projects (thanks guys!). So now we had myself playing the main character: James Jones, Dan (from our team) as James Jones’ work colleague, Andrew as Mr Johansen, Allan as the Psychopath/ evil reflection and Daniel as the Thug. Obviously to fit the script around the cast we had to make some minor and some major changes to the script: minor changes such as the thug beating the character up with his fists instead of stabbing him with a knife and some changes as big as taking an entire act out due to time limitations and the submission build deadline, this being the 23rd of May.

Overall I believe that filming went quite well and to be honest there were only slight issues we had during filming. Most of the time it was audio issues such as us filming on the green screen whilst a class was underway or even if it was just the audio that was being captured by the camera was bad. Sometimes issues came up in post with footage that we had to work around in post but I will talk about that in a moment.

However throughout the whole of the filming process, Jacob had captured a tonne of footage that he created a BTS for every filming day. He then compiled all of them together to create a 20 minute long documentary which you can view down below. As well as the considerable amount of paperwork that has been completed, this also contributes to our documentation. In the video you can see how we went about filming and there’s even a QnA segment with myself, discussing certain aspects of the filming process and more. Big thanks to Jacob on this documentary and be sure to check it out below.

With filming out of the way, it was time to review the footage. Despite the filming process being long we did have a lot of takes to choose from, so when it was time for editing the clips together we could have a better understanding of what we should use and what we should leave out. For instance we would discard takes of us laughing or just simply not doing actions correctly. 
But going over the footage, we did manage to capture some pretty good shots and the majority of our footage looked pretty nice and I think with this my directing of the shot supervisor and rest of the crew, in some instances, really helped to give some shots a unique and satisfying look to them. For instance this scene where the main character is walking along the bridge.But we did in fact encounter some issues. These were mainly issues in post. For example some scenes looked incredibly grainy due to the lighting being low and the ISO on the camera being cranked up as a result, therefore causing the grainy look; we even encountered some issues where some shots were the polar opposite and were over exposed, sometimes causing light to over power the subject or camera in terms of lighting. Another issue was that there was too much motion blur in some pieces of footage, this was an issue for tracking mainly as sometimes the tracker would be thrown off position in After Effects whilst tracking an object or person. This was due to the shutter speed being slow which as a result created more motion blur when the subject or camera was moving.Reflecting back on the filming dates, I think that there is definitely room for improvement if we were to do a project like this again. For instance, I’d make sure that the shot supervisor was fully aware of what they were doing before starting and were fully educated on the basics of cameras, ISO and shutter speed, therefore giving shots a more polished look and making thinks easier to track in post. I would also make sure that we had the right equipment. What i mean by this is perhaps a microphone for better audio quality and different types of tape for markers so that the actors knew where they were going to be in the next scene and so on.

Despite our issues, we did manage to pull off some pretty nice looking shots and the filming days were certainly a good experience and I think the team handled themselves well and we all communicated great: especially with our fellow classmates/ actors. Now time to put everything together and make some VFX!

Synoptic Project : Problems, Problems, Problems

Problems. Oh so many problems.

With the submission deadline drawing closer and closer and hardly footage captured or any VFX done so far, I think that its safe to say that we’ve struggled quite a bit so far. So with that I will be discussing some of these problems.
In my original pitch, I said that we would recruit actors from the drama department to star in the short film and students from the music department to produce music for the short film. In terms of recruiting the actors we did run into some major problems. At first when approaching the students to see who would want to act in the short, we initially got an overwhelming response with almost an entire class wanting to take part, therefore exceeding the number of actors we actually needed. We arranged several meetings with the actors to talk about the script and if they were comfortable with doing acting in front of a green screen and doing audio work if need be.Well in our first meeting, we were shocked to discover that out of the many actors that put their name down to take part, only 3 of them turned up. Meeting after meeting, week after week, the less the actors turned up; at one point no one turned up at all. This was unacceptable and wouldn’t be tolerated in the industry and with that being said, this had to be our mindset during this time. So with this we got rid of the actors, since all we really got from them was test footage.

As well as this, we did experience some team related problems; our creative lead not turning up to be more specific. Without proper creative input from our creative lead we are struggling quite a bit. Also this is resulting in work being put to one side and the rest of the team having to pick up the pieces. This will be resolved soon enough.

However despite all of the problems, we are in talks with a music student at the moment who has produced an amazing music sample for us.

Due to the actors setting us back, we will have to star in the short film ourselves; the acting may not be as good but at least then we will have at least some footage to work with.

Now we need to focus on gathering footage and creating some solid VFX.

Synoptic Project : Pre-Vis

Well a few weeks have past and the team and we have eventually finished the Pre-Vis for our project. So with that in mind, this blog post is going to be about the Pre-Vis process and different techniques we used for our Pre-Vis in particular.

For those of you who don’t know what a Pre-Vis is, it is a function to visualise complex scenes in a movie before filming, which is why the storyboard was completed last time so that we had an idea what different shots would look like and what angles the shots would be taken at. Obviously this part of the project is essential for us when it comes to filming, so it had to be done. So if you’ve ever seen a pre-vis before, then you’ll know that they’re not very detailed model wise, however detailed enough so that its clear whats happening and what the environment is. What we decided to do was use the default Mudbox human body model and export that and take in into Maya. To distinguish the difference between characters we placed different coloured textures onto the characters. For instance in act 4 the main character encounters 3 hooded figures that drag him off and stab him. In the scene I textured the character blue and he looked like this…I also did the same to the hooded figures however instead of blue, I textured them red…Pretty simple right? Before I animated however there was one last thing that needed adding to the pre-vis; the scene its self. For the scene I added 3 cubes to represent houses and buildings and I created a lamppost and duplicated it a few times. Giving me this result…Then to make the scene a bit smoother (for personal preference), I clicked a few settings on such as anti-aliasing and motion blur to make the scene look better…Then I animated the scene. The video below contains all of our pre-vis’ compiled into one video for easy viewing.

I’m really happy that we completed the pre-vis for the short film as this means we’re closer to getting started on capturing footage, which I am looking forward to. So I think my next move will be to talk with the team in our next scrum (which I have been tracking in a word document) about recruiting actors and musicians who want to participate in the project.

Portfolio Modelling Task – Part 4

Last time in my portfolio model blog, I talked about how I got the upper half of my character completed (Portfolio Modelling Task – Part 3). Well since my last blog, I’ve made a lot of progress on my portfolio model. I’ve completed the rest of the characters body and even prepared the model for Mudbox work by UV unwrapping the model. In this post I’ll be going over the progress I’ve made over the past few weeks.

As I mentioned previously, the last time I talked about this model, the top half of it was done. Well since then I’ve managed to model the bottom part of my character as well as the characters hands. The bottom half of the character was pretty simple to do, the legs being the easiest and the feet being the more complex to do. To model the legs, it was just the case of extruding and manipulating verts until I was satisfied with the overall shape and size. When it came to modelling the feet I simply extruded down to create the base of the foot. From there I extruded from the from the front face of the base to form the shape of the foot. After a lot of extruding and experimenting with vert and face positions, I had got the result shown below (wireframe shown underneath)…Honestly I was very happy with how the foot had turned out. Then I went on to create the characters hands. This was a tricky part for me. For this part, I extruded from the wrist to create the palm, from there I created many edge loops; this was so that I could create room for the fingers and in between the fingers too, kind of planning it out before I started modelling in the fingers. Soon after, I started to model the fingers. To create the thumb, I extruded out from the side of the hand and then shaped the thumb until it looked right. Also I decided to give my character 3 fingers and a thumb, mainly because thats what you usually see on TV with cartoon characters and some animated ones too and that was the kind of look I wanted to go for. The result of the hand is shown below…Now that the hands had been made, my model was complete and overall the model looked pretty good. Obviously this is the low poly version so it doesn’t look very detailed yet but I’m ambitious that in the end it will look very nice. The full model is shown below (wireframe shown underneath)…Now it was time for me to do the UV’s for the model. As I created the UV’s, I moved them to one side and in the end looked like so, In this image the UV’s for the left part of the model are on the top and the UV’s for the right part of the model are on the bottom, with the UV’s for the head and chest area being placed way over to the right…Then I had to layout my UV’s and with that I laid the UV’s out like so…Just to make sure that everything was in order, I added a checker texture to the model to see how the UV’s turned out…Honestly I think that they may need a bit tweaking here and there but I’m happy with how they turned out so far.

Overall, I’m really happy with how my model has progressed since last time. I think that my next steps will be to tweak some aspects of my UV’s and take my model into Mudbox to add more detail.

Synoptic Project : Storyboard, VFX Tests and More

Yet again, myself and the team have been very busy over the past few weeks. In this blog post I’m going to be going over what my team and I have produced, from VFX tests to Photoshop tests and even finalising our storyboard.So over the course of our Wednesday and Thursday sessions in college, myself and the team decided to take some reference and on location photos (known as reckies) to create our storyboard, as apposed to drawing out the storyboard instead. We agreed on doing this because it would help save some time so that we could recruit actors and make a start on filming. This also meant that we could experiment with some of the images we took and take them into Photoshop so that maybe they could inspire our work in After Effects later on in production. A behind the scenes video about the reckies will be posted some time soon to go into more detail. What i ended up doing as team leader, was setting each member of the team a photoshop piece to complete to contribute to the storyboard and designs of certain assets, mainly the eye effect. The slideshow below shows some of my individual work that I produced for the story board…

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Once we had edited all the images, we went on to put to put all the images together to create the final storyboard shown in the slideshow below…

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As well as some of these well put together Photoshop designs, we all decided to create a VFX test each as a team; in fact that was what I set the team on before and in between taking photos for the storyboard.

To decide what VFX tests needed doing, I flicked through the refined version of the story that I created last time and noted down as many VFX elements I could so that we could crack on with creating them. These ranged from the eye effect all the way to giving off the effect that a news broadcast was on a TV. Along with these tests, the team and I had pretty much no difficulties while working on our designated tests and completing them within a good time frame. Plus testing the effects out before hand would give us a huge advantage so that if we couldn’t create something so well to start with, then creating a VFX test would give us good practice; also with me being team leader, this gave me an idea of who to choose to work on specific assets for the final product. Some of the VFX tests we’ve made so far are compiled together in a short video below…

Now for update time! Since now that the storyboard is done, I felt that now it was time for us to move on to the closing stages of Pre-Production; creating the previs. So with that said I set everyone an act in the short film to previs in Maya; the film being split up into five acts: Prologue, Act 1, Act 2, Act 3 and Act 4. So I set everyone the following:

• Myself – Act 4
• Jacob – Prologue
• Daniel – Act 3
• Tom – Act 1
• Beth – Act 2

I’m hoping that within a few weeks time we can get the previs done and then move on to actually recruiting actors so that we can then go on to make a start on filming the short film.

 

Disneyland Paris

This week, myself and many other students visited Disneyland Paris for a couple of days to soak in the spectacular scenery and experience some amazing rides!So I thought that in this blog post I’d talk about the trip briefly and how the atmosphere in Disneyland was incredibly inspiring!So after about a 14 hour coach trip followed by 7 hours sleep, myself and my friends decided to begin exploring the parks, starting with the Disneyland park and the Walt Disney Studios park the following day.In short, the rides were amazing and each section of the parks felt unique in their own way. When I wasn’t on the rides I took in the unbelievable scenery and the close attention to detail Disney had included inside of the park.From Thunder Mountain to Main Street USA, the environments never failed to impress me and with me being very creative person, the environments Disneyland had to offer for me were inspiring; especially with the unbelievable amount of effort put into the presentation of the parks. But hey, what do you expect from Disney?Another thing I really found interesting about the parks were the sense of immersion each ride/ area had. For instance the Tower of Terror genuinely creeped me out just by the exterior and interior design alone!Paintings glaring at you to the wall crumbling to pieces, it was very creepy and unnerving yet at the same time unbelievably clever, cool and creative; to top it off the build up to the ride felt worth it and definitely delivered.Another good example would be the Rock ‘n’ Rollercoaster, before you entered the ride it felt like you were entering backstage at an Aerosmith concert due to tonnes of music memorabilia and posters being placed all over the place; not to mention the ride was awesome!The light shows were also another highlight from the Disneyland visit, mainly because of how they were presented: they were presented through high quality, pixel perfect projections and looked amazing. Below is a clip of some footage I recorded of the Star Wars light show I went to on the Thursday evening…

I also thought that the addition of the characters was amazing as well, as I got to see all of my favourite Star Wars characters on stage which was honestly so cool!

Overall the experience that I had gained from Disneyland was absolutely amazing! I have been heavily inspired by my trip to Disneyland from a creative stand point due to the surrounding environments in the parks, not only that but I also got to have a great time and go in some amazing rides!