Say Cheese

Today I captured the pictures I needed. I was going to use my little mju mini but I realised that it probably wouldn’t be high enough quality. So Mark let me use his Digital SLR meaning I could take lots of high resolution images. I had to make sure i chose somewhere with lighting that would ensure the whole face was illuminated. I attempted to use Mark’s lamps to light a scene but realised it was much too harsh and caused sever shadows. In the end I opted for using natural light taking them just outside room 106 by the window. There was still some shadowing but it was much softer and gave it a bit more depth. In the end I took about 120 images of about 15 different people too make sure I had plenty of facial expressions to choose from. Obviously not all of them are suitable some people turned their heads too far to the side and some just didn’t look right. Overall I’m really pleased with how it went having now got that done I need to look into how I’m going to chop the faces up.

May 30th, 2008 - Posted in Double Project | | 0 Comments

Frame Scene

Going into this one I thought it would be a simple case of having a plane in front of the frame with a compositing tag but quickly realised that this wasn’t going to be the only aspect i would need to change.

The first attempt I didn’t the plain in that the character runs from behind just because I was trying to align the animation to the window sill so he didn’t come off of it. I realised that because of the angle he ends up running over the sofa meaning I was going to need to put a cube there to ensure that he runs behind the sofa instead of over it.

I found putting in the plain for the frame was a much easier task than the two previous scenes as I now felt much more comfortable in what i was doing. This meant that the character emerged nicely from behind the photo frame giving the illusion that he was hiding behind all along. I ended up using a cube with hypernurbs and a compositing tag to represent the sofa allowing him to run behind rather than on. Right near the end he still slightly steps on the sofa which is something that I can either alter in photoshop or it will be hidden in Final Cut Pro by using clever cuts.
I tried to add a reflection to the window sill because we can obviously see it is a highly reflective surface, however I couldn’t seem to be able to get the reflection to work even at 100%. I think it has something to do with the lighting of the scene but I’m not going to change it now because i think that the shadow of the character is more important than the reflection. The shadow on it’s own is going to do more towards deceiving the viewer into believing the character should be part of the scene than reflection on its own.

May 28th, 2008 - Posted in SFX | | 0 Comments

Monoface

OK the proof is in the blog I had thought up this idea before seeing this but 3 days later guess what pops up on KCDA. Only a site that used the same concept i wanted to do for my double project for their company christmas card.

Looking at this has made me think about all the elements i need to keep in mind for mine. The quality of the pictures is going to be the main thing. If i am going to have the piece projected they are going to need to be high quality so the quality doesn’t deteriorate at all. One of the other things I noticed was that every person they cut out was white making it much easier to blend each face in together. Where as I will be using lots of different ethnicity’s which is going to make the blending option quite a bit harder. I need to think if there is maybe an alternative way I can approach this which will seperate it from the monoface site.

May 25th, 2008 - Posted in Double Project | | 0 Comments

Cut up a face instead of a Body

Right was giving my whole cut up body idea some thought and am thinking it might be slightly more difficult than i originally thought. Bodies come in such a diverse assortment of shapes and sizes it would potentially be quite difficult to get all the images to flow together nicely. I started thinking that maybe instead of doing the whole body I could concentrate on just the face instead. Having the eyes, nose, mouth and possibly the hair change out with each keypress. The most important thing is getting the pictures done as soon as possible because I’m going to need as much time as possible to perfect the processing sketch. Also I am going to guess that it will be pretty time consuming cutting out all the facial features from the original images.

May 23rd, 2008 - Posted in Double Project | | 0 Comments

Body Cut Up

While thinking up my idea for MMA i recalled the old kids game i used to play where one person drew a head then folded the paper over then the next drew the body and folded the paper over again and so on. Until when you eventually unfold the paper you end up with something weird and wonderful. I was thinking i could bring that basic principle and use it within processing. Taking images of lots of different people then having certain sections of the body change using keypresses. I would have to look into how i would achieve that using processing but i don’t think it would be too difficult. So far the processing site has been my friend so hopefully i will be able to find the answer on there.

May 21st, 2008 - Posted in Double Project | | 0 Comments

Working but not Working?

Right I had great fun last night trying to remember how Mark had set up his Arduino board when he was demonstrating and I finally managed it however when i played the script it threw up an error. After what seemed like forever I finally managed to figure out the problem and once I sorted it out I was finally able to get the script to play. When it finally played it didn’t do what I expected it to do it did something but I’m not really sure what or why. I think that what with the time aspect I am going to have to give up with this now and come up with another idea. I haven’t got the skill base yet to be able to go into this idea any further at the time.

May 20th, 2008 - Posted in Double Project | | 0 Comments

Back to the Drawing Board Again!

OK beginning to think now that I’m really not winning after changing from my original idea I need to start thinking up another idea that is going to be quick and relatively easy giving the severe lack of time. I think i need to think simplistic rather than thinking too big which has been my problem in the past. Watch this space people hopefully very shortly I will have another idea ready and raring to go!!

May 20th, 2008 - Posted in Double Project | | 0 Comments

Lace Scene

As I am doing/did with the other scene I am going to add the progressive images to one post to make it easier to view the changes.

After having done the sofa part I was feeling much more confident in my compositing skills and felt i would be able to finish this scene quicker than the other. This first attempt I had almost got the shadows right straight away but found that the cube above wasn’t at the right angle resulting in a distinct line halfway back in the shadows. I need to go back and alter the positioning of the cube. Also the lace is incredibly thin meaning that it looks like its gliding above the flooring because the shadow is barely perceptible.

After having gone back in and altering the cube position I’ve now realised I altered it too far the opposite direction resulting in the lace being in shadow for longer than it should. I also forgot to increase the size in the Y axis.

I finally managed to get the shadow in the correct position and the lace emerges nicely from the shadows. When i render out the scene i need to remember to move the lace to the left a bit as it intersects with the wire slightly. Also I think i need to make the lace even thicker as the shadow still doesn’t show up enough giving the lace a gliding effect.

May 20th, 2008 - Posted in SFX | | 0 Comments

Stop Motion Wall Painting

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

I just found this video on a blog and OMG was blown away. The time, effort and skill that must have gone into this piece is unbelievable. I can’t quite get over how he managed to do it and get away with grafitting so many walls. It’s quite long but completely worth it.

May 17th, 2008 - Posted in Random | | 0 Comments

Arduino Script

I knew that Arduino board I found in the common room would come in handy Mark told me about an Arduino script today that enabled multiple keypresses. I’ve never used Arduino before but I was more than willing to try as I really liked my idea and didn’t want to have to come up with another one. Thankfully the site came with detailed instructions on how to hook the Arduino board up to the computer so I set to work to see what I could do.

May 16th, 2008 - Posted in Double Project | | 0 Comments