24/06/16 - Final compositing renders

Today I just finished up a few shots since the coloured animation files were ready. I just has to replace the footage, apply the layer effects to each animation and do a bit of colour correction to match them up with the rest of the shots.
I gave them to Patrick after that to put them in the final composition so everything will be done!!
I feel like I put so much into this animation, I helped out a lot with almost every aspect of it and I think it came out nicely.
First time being a director and I would love to do it again. Having creative authority over the style, the look and the mood of the animation.. it was a good experience and although it was quite difficult at times I would love to do it again. Perhaps with the next animation being only two mediums instead of three next time, incorporating live action into our animation would be the one thing that stood out the most. Maybe if the animation next time was all 3D but using 2D to do rough animations or some 2D effects would be fun to do. I would love to get more into shaders and rendering in 3D and creating nice looking characters. I would also like to practice 3D animation more.

23/06/16 - Compositing Progress

Over the past few days I have finished doing the compositing on shots 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 9-1, 14, 15, and 16. Patrick was in charge of Shot 12, 9-2, 4 and 11 and he is also doing the final compositing with sound.
I read through Phoenix's feedback notes and made some changes to the shots I worked on earlier.
We are almost finished! I am just waiting on Joseph to upload the coloured version of an animation for shot 9-1 and then I can put that into the composition tonight. Also just waiting on the finished animation for shot 10 from Raven.
There's not much left to do now, just final compositing tomorrow morning and then we are good to go!!!! YAAAAYYY!!!!!

19/06/16 - Compositing Progress

Worked on Shot 2, 3, 5 tonight adding various things to them from my notes.

On shot 2 - Just changed the background position a little, the colour on Hamish so it wasn't too saturated and masked out a shadow that was appearing on the greenscreen footage.
On shot 3 - Created the fade from the real world to the mirror world in the mirror. Had to mask out the mirror and animate the opacity of various effects added and the still frames of the backgrounds to create the effect.
I would like to know what my team mates think of it. Feedback would be great~

Shot 5 - Just replicated effects from similar shots so that it matches up.

18/06/16 - Shot 6 render with coloured animation + Shot 9 render progress

Updates Shot 6 with the coloured animation Joseph uploaded today, added glow to Elizabeth.

Worked on shot 9-1 adding same effects that I added to the other shots I worked on. 

17/06/16 - Shot 6 composition render with camera focus shift

I was playing around with the composition on shot 6 trying out some things to see what would look good and what works.
I added in the mirror frame with the newspaper to the foreground and also added the mirror erosion from my earlier tests to see how it would look, and it definitely adds good detail and depth to the mirror. After that I added some glow from the mirror world to the frame and newspaper, some colour corrections to the newspaper so that it looks lighter (before it is dark blue). I also played around with the colours in the mirror world, I duplicated the background and added a gaussian blur (24) and overlaid it.
Once I did that I thought to try out the camera focus shift effect, so I just added a gaussian blue effect to the separate layers for the animation and frame, and animated the effect.
This is what I came up with.  Any feedback and critiques would be appreciated thanks!

17/06/16 - Compositing To-Do List

Reference for group members working on compositing.

Shot 12- replace background and animation
-move Hamish, framing needs to be adjusted
-Hamish also too bright
-Add glow to mirror like previous shot I did
-colour corrections
-add newspaper falling
Shot 13- delete
Shot 14- Closeup of polaroid
Shot 15- Hamish too dark, maybe blue background
Shot 16- Add bg with photo

I think there may be other things to add but I am not sure right now.
Patrick and Phoenix are now helping out with compositing, I finished separating the shots and the files so they can be easily transferred.

16/06/16 - Compositing progress, shot 6 & 7

Worked on compositing for Shot 6 and 7 tonight.

I made some notes on what needs to be done for shot 6:
-need render of piano on the side angle because animation doesn't match up, wrong angle
-chair also needs to be placed closer to piano

Animation notes for shot 6:
-left arm/wrist disappears
-back disappears and looks weird
-looks like she has 2 left eyebrows at one point
-eyebrows too thick in one frame
-nostril keeps changing shape, fix if possible
-fingers on right hand disappear.
Someone working on animation in the team needs to fix these things when/if possible~

For shot 7 I added these things in After Effects for reference:
-Added inner glow to newspaper on mirror
-Applied "change color" effect to brighten and match colour like light is shining through
-Added glow to  mirror light effect to give more light
-Added drop shadow to Hamish but changed to light to give him a rim light from the mirror
-Slight colour correction to the bg to match up the colours.

16/06/16 - Aftershock mock up title

I will try and do as much as I can on the shots from the notes I took earlier. 

While waiting for After Effects to install I started playing aound with a possible title screen for our animation. I looked through Typekit for a nice looking font that could be suitable. I didn't want anything too fancy, just something simple and subtle I think would suit the animation. 

I played around with the framing, duplicated the font and gave it a slight blur overlaying the other one and dropped the opacity so it looks like it has a slight glow. 

I also added a vignette to the background to darken the edges, and applied some curves colour correction to make the overall background more blue tones.

Here is what I came up with:

I wanted it to be simple, and in AE we can just use a fade for the text. 

I wasn't sure whether to add more text like, "a short animation" smaller and underneath the title, but I think that would be too much.

I also think that this is a good font and we can use it for the end credits too.

16/06/16 - AE Comps

Today I am just cleaning up the files for the AE comps for better workflow, at the moment they are all in the same place and the whole thing is 80 gb... which is not easy to share amongst other team members to work on. So for each file I am cleaning them up, removing unecessary footage which is making each file load slowly, and putting them in their own separate folders. This should have been done at the start but oh well.
Once I get these separated I will hand some of the AE comps to Phoenix and she can start helping out with the changes that need to be made.

I have written down some notes on things we need to do to the shots for compositing.

Notes for compositing:
-Need to do a title "Aftershock" text on screen
-Greenscreen footage grainy, could match background to footage
-Shot 02 - There is a shadow on the couch (rotoscope it out)
-Shot 04 - Hamish too low when seated at vanity, or vanity too high (Patrick might be changing height of vanity in 3D, check with this)
-Also need newspaper article on mirror
-Shot 05- Update animation, add newspaper to mirror, extend/loop animation so it plays through the whole shot
Shot 06 - Update animation, add newspaper article to the upper right corner of screen, ***need 3D render close up of Vanity Unit frame
-Shot 09 - Background angle doens't match footage (i think Patrick is also changing this in 3D), update animation, framing, add newspaper, mirror world framing (move more to the left)
-Shot 09-2 - Move framing of mirror so it's closer otherwise Hamish should be in the shot, add quake effect to the animation, update naimation, add newspaper, extend animation if too short for the shot
-Shot 07- Add newspaper, colour correct and match to other shots, Hamish too far away
-Shot 08 - Hamish too dark, play with colour and framing
Shot 10 - Need frame of mirror in the shot, black edges? (remove them)

Overall - Add new backgrounds to all the shots and update all the animations!!!

10/06/16 - Clean up Keys

Last couple of days I finished up the clean up keys for the rest of the shots which was ravens and gabbys shots and shot 12.
Today I was working on the inbetweens for shot 12 but didnt get it finished so im giving the rest for joseph to finish.
Next week i will be able to move on from animation since I have finished all the clean up keys and I can start to focus on the final look of our animation in the composition with Patrick.

08/06/16 - More clean up keys ready for inbetweening~

Just finished up clean up keys for shot 10 and 8 tonight. Joseph might be picking up shot 8 to in between and shot 10 is free for someone else to do now. He also mentioned that he finished inbetweening shot 9 which is great. I'll take a look at it tomorrow.

I think that just leaves shot 12... and some others i cant remember right now.. that are left to key in clean ups and then inbetween. I hope we can get them done by the end of the week.

Here's some key frame screen shots from my work.

07/06/16 - Clean up Keys Shot 6 & 9

Did the clean up keys for Shot 6 and 9 and gave them to Phoenix and Joseph to inbetween and have finished by Friday. :)

For reference

-I used the second round brush size for all normal lines and the smallest for face details. 

-Use bottom Rough Animation layer for reference, and when inbetweening the keys definitely use the reference for each frame, but also need to be aware of the clean up key animation, use onion skinning and use the <,> keys to flick through the animation to make sure it looks smooth and right.

Shot 6

Shot 9

06/06/16 - Shot 09 Rough Animation finished

finished up the rough animation for shot 9, adding hands, missing body parts and face, hair animation and also clothes.
Time to move onto starting the clean up key frames

06/06/16 - Shot 6 Rough animation

Just finished up the rough animation ready for clean up key frames which i will try to do tonight.
Just need to fix up shot 9 with the hands face and hair also and then i can start clean up animation. oh yeah also shot  10 needs to be extended.
Spent quite a bit of time on this shot trying to get the hair animation to look right and I think it looks okay now.
Time to have have some cup noods for dinner and then move onto the next shot!

03/06/16 - Shot 8 revised rough animation

Added more inbetweens and tweaked hair animation, made the shot a little longer and made the hair and clothing fall down softly.

The hair piece in front  of her face doesn't quite move as i want but that can be changed with clean up keys i guess.

I have one more shot to help work on which is keying hand gestures on shot 9 and THEN I can start keying clean up animation!!

Would like to get most, if not all of the clean up animation done by friday next week and then the following week can be for rest of clean up in betweens and colouring. :)

YAY. Progress is going well, just need to put in the hours and make sure deadlines are being met.

03/06/16 - Shot 8 & 12 rough animation

Finished rough animation for shot 8 and 12, i didnt fully inbetween the clothing on shot 12 though but thats easy enough to inbetween straight into clean up anyway no need for roughs on that.
There's many things that i would still work on and fix in these like fine tuning the hair movement and the timing but i guess its kinda late and i should sleep.  We need to start clean up next week so maybe can do a little before then if i have time??

Shot 8:

SHot 12:

02/06/16 - Shot 10 rough animation finished

wow its already june... only 3 more weeks left. @_@
Just finished the rough animation for shot 10, phoenix was doing this shot and passed it to me to do hair and clothes and i added more inbetweens and changed timing. Uploading here as i go, got a couple more shots to finish tonight, need to do flowey fabric on both.