Project 1_Will_Everett

8/25/21

Hello again!

      I am still a bit in pre-production at the moment, but nearly done with story adjustments.

    I have been whittling down potential ideas and storyboarding what remained. I also learned the basics of editing within Adobe Illustrator, which is a first for me, personally. 

    As a trial run of the program, I constructed this image. Enjoy.

   8/30/21

    As of this point, the story I wanted for all segments has finalized. I have been storyboarding the more recent segments in class. I did a bit more practice on Photoshop, but no final screenshot to show. I do have those storyboards though.

    9/1/21

    All storyboards are completed, and I am now collecting images to alter for the collage animation. Here are some of the folders I am building for Storyboard A.

    9/8/2021

    I have been using Photoshop to cutout the assets I need. There were a lot of individual images, but I will use the Footprints as an example here:

    This was the original image I referenced for the snowy footprints in the first shot.

    

    Here in Photoshop, I clipped and masked the snow out, leaving just the prints for me to edit in After Effects. I will likely do this for every image asset I need for the final product.

    As of now, I have been building the backdrop to the first shot in my Collage video. Using a whip system, I can have moving backgrounds without messing with the camera itself. This movement will remain limited, though. I have also added a particle system to make a subtle snow effect for this segment. 

    9/15/21

    After a couple long sessions over the last couple of weekends, I have a decent twenty eight seconds of footage complete.

    As for a Protagonist, I have settled on my drawing mannequin as a base. Finding humans in different static poses with good resolution proved to be too difficult for the style I want. Thus, taking pictures of my mannequin should work as a replacement. Now the opening shot is complete after studying up how the Puppet tool works in After Effects.

    

    I have constructed the second background on a more flat surface. By this point, I am getting a bit faster with the tools, but not by much. The character takes a few more steps, but stumbles upon something.

    The object itself isn't anything extraordinary. This bare snow area is also its own separate background, used only for this shot. With a bit of layer changes, the chip gets sunk in snow.

     The last bit is another standard shot, but I did learn about the Glow effect here, as a simple way to change the lighting. Overall, this section has a few more shots left to do, but they don't require as many serious background alterations.

    I originally intended to do four segments, but it appears that each segment appreciates a bit more breathing room between shots. Thus, I will certainly do two of the segments, and perhaps a shortened version of a third segment. Either way, this project is not focusing on a minimum time frame, but rather what time feels most presentable to me personally.

    

    9/22/21

    

    Another decent week for progress. This past weekend my focus was to get all the shots with the Rhombus, the source of the glow from before.

    

    In terms of dealing with backgrounds and new assets, this second half was more manageable. There were still some rough bits, but it felt more doable. The Rhombus is present for three shots total. The first was a basic parallax type of thing, and after that both it and the Protag are in the same place.

    One cool trick I got to do was with the sword. By having images of the sword inside and outside of the sheath, I was able to pull it out relatively smoothly in the shot. After the face-to-face, this project is pretty much over.

    The last shot uses a couple of animated gifs to simulate the sword swing. After a bit more black screen, this segment ends.

    Here I am encoding the Third, and likely Final, draft of this segment. This is about a full minute of footage, so it will be the bulk of what I have to show. For the next week, I will tidy up the runtime with my second mini-story, Segment B. For now, though, I am glad to have Segment A complete.

    

    9/28/21

    Alright, we are here. After way more grinding than I initially expected, I have a final draft ready for tomorrow, the due day for this project.

    In the span of this week I was able to tidy up the other half of my short, so my last post here will be going over that.

    This segment was originally called the Rectangle's Reception, but The Happiest Man might be more appropriate now. 

    Here I am collecting the snapshots I need for the short. This idea required many viewpoints for an expensive house, so I decided to actually use a Zillow offer for reference. Don't know this flies legally, but I'm not making a profit off this either way.

    Another great thing about using Zillow is that some houses have 3D Virtual Tours, which means I can get weirder angles that are not necessarily flattering. This was one for the entrance.

    After collecting everything I needed, I got to work in After Effects. Instead of the Block System from before, the timeline is more like a Staircase here. This is because there are many fade away shots in this short. To do that, I just tweaked the Opacity for the current image until it disappears, then end its existence in the timeline. It works pretty well.

    To keep up with the Collage idea, I used as little 2D as possible to make whatever is there more distinct. For this whole project, the only Toon Boom thing is The Happiest Man. I made a simple 5 second loop in Toon Boom, then took it over to After Effects with the rest of the assets.

    Amongst all the finishing touches for this piece, animating the flies will be the most obvious when you watch it. It's a simple transform tween, but having eight of them moving around might make up for the simple movements.

    After a couple more adjustments, I finished the second segment around this point.

    I then compiled both pieces together in Premiere Pro. Had to make some audio adjustments and a couple of transitions, but after that, all that was left was the Export process.

    That's pretty much it. Hopefully this report suffices for Project 1. Have a great day out there!