Where to begin..... ok lets start of by comparing the initial idea/ animatic with the actual final finished scenes./
Way way back to when first thinking about a narrative that would involve all the groups heroes and villain. I always had this idea of the Diamond Standard running up Mark Loxtons character Geofists back and launching himself at Reactor in some sort of surprise attack (scene6). I wanted to try and give my character a pretty cool spot/ moment that would stick into peoples minds. As afterwards he just gets thrown aside like a rag doll./
Now i wasn't too serious about this idea and when i pitched the scene to the group i was expecting it to get shot down quicker than what the Diamond Standard ones. However they seemed to like it and it's been the one constant scene that hasn't really changed since the start of the project way back./
When animating this scene i did record myself running up onto some sort of decorating step thing. But i'm not going to place that video up. The reference provided enough information for the run up to which my first foot stepped up and second foot pushed of the stall. But after that where i was in the air did need exaggerating to look more epic. Things i noted was that when i started to approach the stall i slowed slightly and looking at where my feet were going. Also my arms came out a little more to keep my balance. In total i spent a good week just animating that part and thinking about how Geofist would react to someone running up his back. So when the diamond puts most of his body weight on him he buckles a little bit. But when he gets back up slightly he uses that timing to help give the Diamond Standard a little more momentum so he could travel further. See i thought about how this would be done./
The next part which needed some help was the part where Reactor throws my character to the side using his own momentum. I spent a good few hours looking and thinking how this could be done. Eventually after getting out some of my old wrestling toys i found a way that it could be done. As i wanted the Standard to exit the scene to the screen right and towards the Motel./
I would say when animating this part time was running out with the deadline. This part of the scene does happen a little fast. What is needed is more of a pause when the DS (Diamond Standard is in choke hold.) Maybe with some animating with DS trying to put up more of a struggle before being thrown aside. That's what i would do with part of the scene for next time and maybe have less close up shots of Geofist and Reactor at the start of scene 6./ That actual links nicely to part i changed from the original storyboard. In the storyboard their is a few extra scenes with Geofist including a scene in which the audience was supposed to GeoFist get down into the tackle/ramp position. This was cut. Like i said in a previous post this was due to time. I don't think it affected the story that much anyway./
Scene 1 now that we have talked about scene 6. This was my running montage that really shows of that The Diamond Standard was all about running fast. Now i have already talked about this several times in previous posts so i will just talk about a few things with it. Firstly you will notice in the storyboard there was a split screen section with two Diamond Standard Heads. This was cut for two reasons really. One it looked confusing. The reason there was two heads was so the shape of the helmet would compliment the diagonal line. But the second and most obvious reason was, that it was the only split screen in the entire animatic and there for out of place with the rest of my scenes and everybody else scenes. /
The shots on this scenes where nice to do as i could more the scenery about on a per shot bases. Which does make the desert feel bigger. I have to admit i am particularly pleased with the layout/composite of scene 1 part 4/
The final running effect was done in combustion. Which is why it is slightly different to the test i did in Premier elements in a past post. I used a similar technique of copying the DS several times and then moving each one slightly behind the last one. To create a kind of ghosting that i could control more. I think the scene1 part 4 there might of been too many layers to it. But also how the software interpret motion blur is different. Adobe added the go fast lines while combustion allowed you to get specific with shutter speeds and all sorts. I couldn't find out how to just get go fast lines so i just went with what it gave me. It still looks alright and i'm still pleased with the result. This last month has been a real lesson curve with combustion. In which every time i use it. i'm finding out easier ways of using the node based programme./
However this did mean that we ended up with loads of png images. Organisation of files was super key. I had two scenes in this project. But i split those two scenes into shots, and each shot would at least need rendering 6 times with some 9 times. You see we were still doing 3 render layers. AO, diffuse and shadow for both background, characters and in one of my shots foreground objects. Now luckily most of the time the background didn't move so you could get away with just rendering that out 3 times to create one frame/image. But it still created a large amount of images that needed rendering. I do think for this project it was worth it mind you./
All the main editing of my scenes was done in combustion. So any colour correction and contrast etc was done here. Including the running fast effect. Like lip sync to make sure that we got the best quality from Combustion we rendered out a series of PNG images. (That's more png files) From that we went into Adobe Premiere to place everybody scenes together and adding the sound./
Overall i am extremely pleased with the scenes i animated and pleased with the overall film and look. Everybody in the group worked incredibly hard and it does show. I would like to think that we were ambitious creating one scene that would have all characters interacting with each other. That would make it so everybody in the group isn't just animating there own characters. But that they would be animating at least one other person model. In a way it made the group organised and making sure that the rigging and there models not only worked and that they knew how to use them. But also make sure other member could make use them./
Since the start of the project one of our main goals was to create a universe in which all our characters could live in. Making sure styles were similar. To believable back stories to how they react to each other. to making sure everybody character gets a key moment in the film./Communication between the group has been key in creating this short 1 minute film. In which i think we a have achieved our goal./
(Don't forget to check previous posts for the on going evaluation/progress reports, Just press the superhero tag)
