final piece with sound

C4 spinning

Right, this is the 5 second piece of footage thats taken me all day to create in Maya. Spent all morning trying to figure out how to attach the spring so it looks realistic when it bends and flex, had no joy so sadly the final composition has been compromised. Once again not a single person in the building who knows what they're doing in Maya.

disappointed (again)

£3000 a year and no one knows how to use Maya.
Priceless!!!

Another final edit

Next final cut, slowed down the action at the start, added a bulging effect to the dolls head, tried to keep it subtle and put a dolls eye opening at the end. Might play around with the scale on that one before i'm through.

final edit

Messed about with the timing a bit more, think i've managed to slow it down to about the pace i want. Had a go with fading it in by altering the exposure, but didn't really worked and seem to waste a precious second or so.

final edit

Started putting the components together to try and get the timing right. Think the initial pan is still just a fraction quick, so i could either borrow more time from post explosion, or decrease the amount travelled.

head exploding

Final render of head exploding. Was at first concerned about the spinning bit that lands last, so i added a tween to the curves and darkened it down mid flight, to try and simulate the lighting in the room.

There is an anomaly in with that white patch above the second dolls head as the arm moves down which is very distracting, so i'll just mask it out.

head explodes

Picture detailing the different fragments that make up the exploding effect.

head explodes

Using the bulge tool in AE, i inflated the babies head up to breaking point. Then i exported a still psd file into photoshop and cut it up into tessellating fragments using the pen tool.

I then saved each fragment separately and imported them into AE. Then it was a simple case of animating their position, scale, opacity and rotation till they looked right.

lip sync components

Mouth positions edited using photoshop. Used the warp, liquify and free transform tools to pull the lips about a bit and then painted in the hole left behind it.

Will bring these images into AE, and keyframe different sizes to get the in-between stages and a much more fluid effect than the one below.

lip sync

Done a bit of fine tuning on the previous video, by applying masking off all but the mouth area, to eliminate any facial reflections that i've added in photoshop and also played around with the scale of the mouth so they flow a bit more realistically from one to another.

Looks a bit better but needs further adjustment.

lip sync

Quick reminder for the morning:

solved the problem with the facial shadows not working properly by masking around the face.

lip sync

First attempt at lip syncing the babies mouth to say "Fear". On first reflection i think it needs a lot of re working, not really subtle enough to fool anybody and as a result will probably just look a bit daft.

What i did was make individual layers in photoshop and played around with the mouth shape to form the word. I then used the dodge and burn tool to darken different parts of the face to try and simulate the creases. Doesn't look at all right.

re-shoot

Trying to get the timing right at the moment. Mentioned in an earlier post that the pan across the room was too quick, so when i re-shot the footage i arranged the objects a little closer together so i could zoom accross a bit slower. This version seems to start out ok, but appears to speed up halfway through.

Also i think there's a bit too much zoom on the baby girls head, and you can just make out some pixelation. What i'll have to do go for a nice smooth pan that doesn't completely stop when it reaches the baby.

re-shoot

Re shoot of the head turning. In this version the pan will be achieved in after effects, then i'll insert this movie clip.

exploding head

This is some stock footage of an actual head exploding using explosives (the old fashioned way). Gives a good idea of how the fragments will react to the explosives, how big the particles will be, which direction they fly off in and at what pace.

What i'm thinking at the moment is to cut the head up in Photoshop, stretch and skew it and then animate this on the timeline in After effects. I took a photograph of the baby doll with no head so i can overlay the footage on that frame.

From the example above it appears the head splits into 3 different sections - front and two sides. The front section which contains most of the facial features drops to the ground, and the two sides fly off in their respected directions. The only other thing to consider is the smoke plumage, which i will be able to achieve in Maya using a particle emitter.

re-shoot

Had a re-shoot today with the intention of putting right all the problems that occurred in the firs shoot. Shot them all in Camera Raw, this is a still jpeg of one of the images that i've converted to lab colour and played around with a bit.

after effects pan

Re done the initial pan using after effects instead of stop frame, the result is much much smoother which is the effect i was going for because i want the baby to seemingly spring to life. The only thing to sort out now is the timing - too much distance is being covered, i want it to slow right down, so it feels more intimate. So when i redress the set i'll have to bunch the items together a bit more.

I bought a black pvc hat from a weird shop for the set and you can make out it's reflections, but would like to increase it's intensity a touch more. Like the tennis rackets but need to add a little more depth by facing them in different directions. Also going to keep the animating of the head down to a minimum and concentrate on making the head turn more realistically.

panoramic

Two still images stuck together in photoshop. If you look clearly you can see the big line down the middle where the two images meet (at the edge of the newspaper). These differences are probably down to changes in shutter speed and aperture, something i'll have to keep constant. These shots were also taken in the jpg format, so for added clarity i'll shoot the next ones in RAW.

bouncing ball

Been playing round with Maya's dynamics engine which is a good way of animating moving objects. Instead of figuring out how an object will behave, you assign a force to it (in this case gravity) and the computer does all the rest.

What has this got to do with my composition? Well my final composition involves a spring (or helix as Maya likes to call it) swinging backwards and forwards, so i shall apply the dynamics engine in this way.

I've also learnt how to render and and batch capture the scene and also add a couple of lights - which will help the render sit realistically in the composition.