Making of Intergrated Practice: Week 5: 23/10/18: After effects workshop: Colour workshop:

In week 5's session of Making of Integrated Practice, we took a look at colour management in After effects. In the session we were advised by our tutor Annabeth that in the module we should look outside the digital box which meant looking at other animation mediums besides digital animation such as hand rendered elements. We were shown examples of these like shadow puppet animation, sand animation and painting within animation.


This seemed to make sense as in our group projects we were looking mainly at digital animation techniques when there are many other options available to us.


To the main topic of the session we looked at colour management within a film scene. Our subject was a 3D rig from Maya in a real life office like landscape these were imported into After effects the Maya footage was made into a composition. However as we covered in the tracking session last week the film wasn't in time with the background footage or didn't stay in place. So we interpreted the footage to the frame rate of the background which was 23.976 fps.

James our technician then introduced us to an effect preset called Lumetri colour which essentially allowed us to adjust the Hue, Saturation, luminosity, shadows and highlights in the shot much like we would adjust it in Photoshop. The idea being we needed to match the Maya statue with the scene such as using the colour pick tool to try and aid the highlights in the figure or the background itself.


I felt rather confused by the exercise and found it hard to balance the colours as it was a different preset than Photoshop. However James then brought our attention to complementary colours in films. For example we learned that the complementary colours in films such as the Transformers films were orange and teal which complemented the more dramatic action sequences in the film.


I began to understand the use of colour management in bringing a film together it seemed to make me think of how different colours represent different themes be it a dark blue night scene or even a bright

orange dessert scene. It also reminded me of the tv action sequences from Disney's BOLT as the colours change to a rather turquoise green colour as they go into those scenes.


One important element was what settings to have in terms of the colour management such as RAW settings which James told us were too dark but you want to render it out in this format. This confused me a little as I was given the impression that this was a bad setting for colour management to then be told its useful. In hindsight I should've asked further questions into this matter further. This setting in Maya renders was at SKGB which was something to keep in mind.


We pre-composed our work into a composition and using the Lumetri colour effect we could mess around with the colour wheels and presets to see how they would look and I decided to see if I could duplicate the action blue type of colour in action films.

Near the end of the session we were then shown by Annabeth some of the effect features in After effects. This was on the use of shape layers and I learned some more effects such as particle systems and particle engines which did seem of interest to me as Annabeth showed us how they were used and how we could distort the lines in a shape layer to create a rippled effect animation. This In felt could be of help in my motion comic work and so I believe this will require additional research and testing later on.


The remainder of the lesson was spent with my group project discussing finalising the script and logo design. We made some adjustments to the script draft that Kieran was making last night. I was feeling that this script was one of the holds in our work as we couldn't move forward until this was completed so I felt it was imperative we get this done soon. We soon made progress on the script but more work still needed to be done.


Looking back over todays workshop I would think I've learned a few things about colour management in After effects and could see the benefits when we considered how the finished film would be coloured in terms of presentation. I also learned some more effects and simulated elements I could apply to my own work. I feel I could've asked more questions on the Lumrtri effect and about how the effects Annabeth described would be applied and perhaps ask for an example of this.


In conclusion I am satisfied with what I have learned in this workshop and hope to learn more about the program in the last week of workshops. In future I shall ask for guidance and a second opinion on the effects and colour management in After effects for future reference.