SHAIHEIM'S UCA YEAR 3 BLOG

 I prefer to render on campus as I am aware my laptop will struggle with renders and Monday is bank holiday so Uni will be closed. I have pre-made the files on my Google Drive to be rendered on campus.

I was thinking to show her whole body to make her more focused in the scene but the lack of animation with the legs makes them feel a separate part to the body entirely, which is not an intention that's purposeful. The boxed guides help better to hide the legs, not as a mask, but to ensure what the camera will actually see. I feel like the character is more important here also as they take up more screen space.  

 I sent an email about feedback towards Natalie and Kim on a draft of my project, and the main highlighted areas were the LG skipping, LG being excited about the toy, and LG picking up the toy. Some of these camera movements are shaky, so I will reanimate them at home to be rendered at University.

  My story had run for 7 minutes, which is too long, so I shortened it to 5 minutes by using the time stretch feature in After Effects. I cut up the video and the audio for more breathing room in the words. I then wanted to add music, but thought I had to export the video and then play background music that was low which, is a really convoluted process. The video below helped me to search for my music from YouTube's audio library as they are copyright free and very versatile: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6qYg1jpaWg I made the music -20db and the lines from the script 0db so that the music would not drown out the words as in audio -db (decibels which are measurements of sound) is less sound than +db.

 Originally I would just have the audio and play everyone until I found the exact line I was going for, but that became tedious and inconvenient as time went on, so I decided to change them to their actual lines, so I could spend my energy on more significant areas.

  As my Minor Art Of was already completed, I could just copy and paste the files into a new file, and then wait to finish my Major Art Of before doing the same for that document also.

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rmkx-bSx9pI When compiling my first draft, some scenes audio was a bit hard to detect so I just Googled it. This video was very helpful.

  Sometimes when I want more motions, I use the keys in After Effects, I find it quite helpful.

  While doing this process I noticed a little bit of 'the spark' has gone, I may need to re-remind myself through the tough times.

  Looking at my previous Art Of reminded me how far I have come, especially in times of inconsistency.

  This scene is comprised of the ending, and for the rest of the sequences, it makes sense for them to be done nearly individually, but to conclude, knowing that is covered and knowing there are large chunks of silence, it made sens to merge them together. 

 Though I had a 'RULE' that every scene should equate to at least '10' seconds mainly because I want to prevent the scene from going too fast that it is not clear what actually happened. I changed that to benefit the scene and audio without doing separate After Effect files so that the transition would already be made and the anticipation made the words smoother.    This original scene was planned to be the Boy and the Parents for 10 seconds but the script and the voice acting specifically said 'I hate THIS toy'. The audience gets lost if I say 'THIS' and don't specify what the focus is. In the story, the toy is important, but still, that was not obvious by the wording so I further implied it.

 I've already done work on my main Major Art Of, but I need to download the one from my Minor and ass to it for my second Art Of, I feel like I could do work on that by this weekend, but don't plant to complete it just yet. However for now I will continue pairing the audio and visuals.

This is what I decided to do on this still scene, using the transform to zoom out of the stairs so the words ease the viewers into what's happening and when it is zoomed out the frame is fully realized.  Once I make the video I insert it into Youtube to make it a lighter file so that it can be shown on Blogger and overall have more storage space. This is what Youtube compression does, it converts the exported QuickTime from After Effects into a lighter file.    This is the scene, I left breaks in the audio so that the conversation feels more natural than overlapping or immediately following the other person, so the words can be digested and more impactful.

  This scene already had some appropriate sound of a shriek so I included it, but going forward, I will just limit my audio to the recordings provided by the voice actor.

  I Whattsapped the person and got the files for my characters, I will now import these in After Effects to use with my visuals.

Change is Always Bad Script (Major and Minor Project) by shaiheim Henry-Ovid on Scribd  This script was , made to direct my voice actor clearly instead of using vagueness which will not aid in the delivery of the lines.

 Though i don't feel comfortable with doing my own voices, voices would help, as you would never know who the Mum and Dad are. I could have a title card like 'as Mum', but the voices fill in' many of the scenes, so I will search for some help in that department. Alternatively, I could find high-quality sound equipment resources like a microphone and a dictaphone, mainly because I am not keen on a cast list at the end of the film. I don't want to lose focus on the intention of this which is an adaptation from real life, not a commercial endeavour.

Having voices in my previz was not the most successful thing, so I think music will give the film a more professional look.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmjJtQUNOAk    I watched this new tutorial for my scene, and it was helpful, but going forward, I want to stick with the previous tutorials, as I prefer the results more. It works with the strong colours in this scene, so I will keep it.

  (original) In the scene above, the Boy has thrown his toy in the air and then it is coming back down. In my edited version I had decided to zoom in when the toy had ascended and keep the zoom out of its downfall the same as the first shot would have already established what he objects further, so it did not feel like the same images just reversed for this sequence. The scene below is the edited version: (edited)

  (original) (scaled scene) This is the process that I commenced for this scene. Sometimes I duplicate the animation file, but I felt like relying on the adjustment layers here. Here it gets more in focus the closer the camera gets o the 'for sale' sign.

 I just wanted to show evidence that I recreated the toning I did to the original scene. (original)  (recreated scene)

  I have done a lot o scenes over this half term, so I am going to summarize in my Art Of.

 I forgot to save a file, so my progress got lost. Fortunately, I followed a tutorial exactly, so I can accurately retrace my steps.

 I wanted to further push how my renders could look, as the previous tutorial was not always delivering the same quality per scene. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TsSGXO3-c4    (before)  (after) Going forward, I will use a mixture of this and the previous After Effects tutorial:  https://shenryblogucayr3.blogspot.com/2023/04/major-learning-after-effects-unblurring.html  to polish my scenes.

I really wanted to re-record my audio because I had to stretch them out to match the images. I got to a point where looping 25% of the animations meant they were not glitchy/laggy and that the general point of the animation was still met. Beloe I will show two examples. (stretching animation) (looping 25% of animation)   Going forward I will use the looping technique for more appealing animation and audio.

 This scene is only 7 seconds, and although in regards of rendering, it's a few frames, these 7 seconds match the length of this shot in the previz, and it did not read well as it went by too fast, so I doubled the time so what was happening would be more evident to the audience and myself. This scene is double the length, using the same audio but more chopped and spaced out so it does not feel stretched or on a non-break loop. This scene has more time, so it can be understood what is happening.  

My Image dimensions were  width: 1200px, and height: 675px, which  meant even when I cropped to fit, that my gifs would be blurry.  (blurry)  I tried to figure it out by watching this video below, but it was confusing because it was for stills and real life. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZEQtJ4EVtg This was my result from that video: (sharpened) This looks a bit better, but I wanted something that catered towards cartoons so I search again. This is the video that helped me:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H_Or2MONFQk  (more sharpened) This is much better I feel, even though this is a different scene, the image just looks cleaner and pops out more.

 This is the building process of my After Effects work. I used the previz to match the renders with the audio, but realized, some had to be cut as the audio was faster than some animations.

 I am now at the point to edit and adjust my rendered files.

The Boy is really against his parents in this scene so I have blurred his parents. When the Boy embraced his parents, they are in full focus showing the boy is focusing positive energy to them as opposed to before. This may not be super evident, or might be forgotten as I go on, so I wanted to ensure it's documented here.

   This scene consisted of 258 frames, which was too much for the editing software I was using, especially as I needed to add the lips and blend in some clipping mesh, it was not te safest for my device.  Instead I decided to 'cartoonize' this scene (below is a similar example) It removes the accepted design of the character to elevate the scene's intensity. Following something similar to this example, where he is textured with blue patterns like the car, representing his desire  drive back to his 'real home'. The inverted makes the audience read dramatic displeasure with the character.

 This scene follows the LG skipping scene, there is a delay on some of the end frames to ease in the audience to this unnatural pace of frames, increasing the intensity of the scene's atmosphere by communicating the importance of what she is looking at/ what's caught her attention.

In this scene, the start is smoother, but the ender frames get a bit choppy, this is done to  allude/foreshadow not everything is going to plan, which is true as she eventually gets distracted by the Boy,  

 This original scene shows the trousers/waist extruding out of the torso which looks really unnatural and actually looks like it could delay movement, which is not the intention of this scene which is meant to be skipping.  This scene is more zoomed in, as the sight of the legs is not essential in this scene. It includes the eyelashes and the lips, , in fact, hinting at the legs but not showing it makes the bounce of this scene which is meant to be skipping, more believable.  

 (15fps) (25fps) I prefer the 15fps, not because it is faster, but as I've been using Maya more, the speed of the movement follows a spline tangent with ease in and ease out making the motion more smoother and easier to digest. In the 25fps everything is the same pace, so certain mouth shapes and extensions of the jaw lose importance due to being equal with the remaining frames. The 15fps is not just 15fps, I added some 3's, 5's, 7's, a mix of other smaller numbers to make a faster swing on some frames.  

When editing some scenes were named 1 when they were meant to be the last part of a sequence. This was done because I'm not just going to place the scenes together, I will carefully examine them and making this purposeful mistake ensures the editing is more measured, especially as I may adjust scenes to match audio anyways.  

 I am not quite yet at the stage to complete my scenes, but I have noticed some scenes take major movements, so slicing them may be better. Below are examples of my point. (whole scene) (part 1) (part 2)

  In this image, you can see the shirt and trousers kind of clipping each other. This was done on purpose actually, as changing it would ruin the flow of the animation, and I was fully aware I would rely on the blur tool for most of my post-production stage anyways. In this image from the post-production stage, I have blurred the red into the grey to hide it for the scene, which was my intention originally.

  This is a section out of my art of, bu it highlights my art of and journey of this scene, so it s very useful for this post.  The previz also has two toys, but due to rendering the first toy, it's quality was enough for me to stick with one instead, especially as it was purple, a recurring colour in my story and the other was blue, so an outlier.  https://shenryblogucayr3.blogspot.com/2023/03/major-testing-out-after-effects.html I liked the composition in the previz which is the top left image. In the bottom left image I was rendering, I noticed there was too much space so I brought the camera closer. In the top right image I wanted to add stronger lighting as the Boy was getting lost to me. In the bottom right I stayed consistent and gave him lips. I understand the images on the right look similar, so I've separately enlarged them to make the difference clearer. The only difference is the lips.  (top right) (bottom right)