Making of Intergrated Practice: Week 10: 27/11/18: Camera angles, rendering and bee flight animation tests.
In week 10's session of Making of Integrated practice, our groups continued work on our animation projects. In our group we continued doing work on the production bible and looking at possible camera angles in Stephan's 3D park environment so that I could start animating the bee.
I felt an urgency to finish the production bible as Annabeth, our tutor informed us we would need it completed by the end of the week which meant I needed to introduce Kieran's thumbnails and story board. Using the drive I found his PDF's converted them to JPEGS and made them more presentable using Photoshop before introducing them to the InDesign document. I felt the production bible was nearly complete it just needed the addition of props and Stephan's 3D background renders. In terms of the cover we still didn't have an idea for it so I decided to add one of the style frames from the concept art.
I had taken inspiration from the art of books I have at home and some of them use a style frame from the book itself as the cover. Stephan advised me on a few things such as not having the Bee live bee symbol on the cover itself just the text and have the logo on the next page.
In terms of the blank pages before the contents page we needed to find a place filler. Though we couldn't use bee themed patterns I suggested the hexagon pattern from my bee design sheets. I could sense Stephan still wasn't keen on the idea but he allowed me to use it. I created a new pattern using Clip Studio Paint and we looked at different colours using the pattern until we eventually decided on a yellow orange like colour so that the logo and text would stand out.
We had an issue debating the turnarounds taking up two pages as I couldn't shrink down the turn around to one page as Stephan said it would affect the pixels. For the moment we had the final bee designs take up a small corner of the pages and would consider the layout later. Annabeth seemed to like the way our production bible was looking at this stage.
Our attention then turned to Stephan's 3D environment he had nearly finished the park environment and worked on deciding the camera angles for particular points in the film. Last week we had decided to use a wide shot to introduce the short as the bee flies by. Stephan introduced a small black circle into the animation as this would be what I would use for my 2D animated bee using tracking methods in After Effects. I did think perhaps some angles needed some improvement such as an angle near the pond when the bee would avoid some jumping fish.
It seemed it was going below the waters surface. Stephan didn't think so but when we looked at the preview render it showed the bee was too close to the water. This was soon corrected. I felt our animation was starting to make some progress and that I could soon start animating the bee.
Whilst Stephan and Kieran discussed the spider animation I set to work on doing the mirror animation for the fun house. Yesterday I experimented with the distortion effects in After Effects to see which ones would be of use in the bee mirror animation.
However Stephan's feedback didn't seem to like the use of these elements and advised me to use a simple squash and stretch. To do the mirror piece I decided to do an animation of the bee flying on a side angle. The reason being is that its the angle the bee would be in the mirror and it would help with the squash and stretch effect if the bee was animated separately rather than cause a confused mess in the same frame.
One thing I knew was needed was to see how a bee would fly and so I found some footage of a bee flying in slow motion. This told me the bees wings flap at the exact same time much like a bird.
Using this information I translated it into After effects and using the link feature I linked the wings to the body and the head and tail to the body as well. This would show movement in the bee's body as it flew.
My first version didn't seem to show much speed in the wings flapping when I mapped out the key poses of the wings, or any signs of motion blur. In my second attempt I added some blur effect to the wings called box blur which did show some speed in motion. However the problem I felt was the wings wouldn't stay on the body so it needed the position keys altered to keep the wings in place.
I showed my finished version to Stephan and he suggested that I should try to avoid any blur in the wings and have them moving in a more arcing movement.
I couldn't see it at first but I soon had an idea of what he was referring too.
Looking back on todays session I would think we have made some progress in terms of the production bible and the decided camera angles in our animation. Kieran did have some concerns about his spider animation being introduced to the Maya piece in its current state. However the projects preview deadline was drawing near and we needed to consider the time we had left.
In hindsight I possibly should've looked more at the motion blur in the wing movements and key frames, and I feel the use of one wing on a side on view would be better given how the wings move at the same time. I should've also consulted with Annabeth about what else was needed on the production bible so I knew if I was finished or not.
In conclusion however our camera angles were being established and we would soon be getting close to animating the bee and introducing it to the 3D rendered background.
In future I shall try and take the feedback and suggestions of my group leader into account and do research on my chosen animation subject before moving to animate it.
I felt an urgency to finish the production bible as Annabeth, our tutor informed us we would need it completed by the end of the week which meant I needed to introduce Kieran's thumbnails and story board. Using the drive I found his PDF's converted them to JPEGS and made them more presentable using Photoshop before introducing them to the InDesign document. I felt the production bible was nearly complete it just needed the addition of props and Stephan's 3D background renders. In terms of the cover we still didn't have an idea for it so I decided to add one of the style frames from the concept art.
I had taken inspiration from the art of books I have at home and some of them use a style frame from the book itself as the cover. Stephan advised me on a few things such as not having the Bee live bee symbol on the cover itself just the text and have the logo on the next page.
In terms of the blank pages before the contents page we needed to find a place filler. Though we couldn't use bee themed patterns I suggested the hexagon pattern from my bee design sheets. I could sense Stephan still wasn't keen on the idea but he allowed me to use it. I created a new pattern using Clip Studio Paint and we looked at different colours using the pattern until we eventually decided on a yellow orange like colour so that the logo and text would stand out.
We had an issue debating the turnarounds taking up two pages as I couldn't shrink down the turn around to one page as Stephan said it would affect the pixels. For the moment we had the final bee designs take up a small corner of the pages and would consider the layout later. Annabeth seemed to like the way our production bible was looking at this stage.
Our attention then turned to Stephan's 3D environment he had nearly finished the park environment and worked on deciding the camera angles for particular points in the film. Last week we had decided to use a wide shot to introduce the short as the bee flies by. Stephan introduced a small black circle into the animation as this would be what I would use for my 2D animated bee using tracking methods in After Effects. I did think perhaps some angles needed some improvement such as an angle near the pond when the bee would avoid some jumping fish.
It seemed it was going below the waters surface. Stephan didn't think so but when we looked at the preview render it showed the bee was too close to the water. This was soon corrected. I felt our animation was starting to make some progress and that I could soon start animating the bee.
Whilst Stephan and Kieran discussed the spider animation I set to work on doing the mirror animation for the fun house. Yesterday I experimented with the distortion effects in After Effects to see which ones would be of use in the bee mirror animation.
One thing I knew was needed was to see how a bee would fly and so I found some footage of a bee flying in slow motion. This told me the bees wings flap at the exact same time much like a bird.
Using this information I translated it into After effects and using the link feature I linked the wings to the body and the head and tail to the body as well. This would show movement in the bee's body as it flew.
My first version didn't seem to show much speed in the wings flapping when I mapped out the key poses of the wings, or any signs of motion blur. In my second attempt I added some blur effect to the wings called box blur which did show some speed in motion. However the problem I felt was the wings wouldn't stay on the body so it needed the position keys altered to keep the wings in place.
I showed my finished version to Stephan and he suggested that I should try to avoid any blur in the wings and have them moving in a more arcing movement.
I couldn't see it at first but I soon had an idea of what he was referring too.
Looking back on todays session I would think we have made some progress in terms of the production bible and the decided camera angles in our animation. Kieran did have some concerns about his spider animation being introduced to the Maya piece in its current state. However the projects preview deadline was drawing near and we needed to consider the time we had left.
In hindsight I possibly should've looked more at the motion blur in the wing movements and key frames, and I feel the use of one wing on a side on view would be better given how the wings move at the same time. I should've also consulted with Annabeth about what else was needed on the production bible so I knew if I was finished or not.
In conclusion however our camera angles were being established and we would soon be getting close to animating the bee and introducing it to the 3D rendered background.
In future I shall try and take the feedback and suggestions of my group leader into account and do research on my chosen animation subject before moving to animate it.
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