cameronkorn

[cameronkorn]

Focus based research

So what do i want to do, I want to continue my exploration into VFX and with that Motion Capture, i have done some research on these in the prior years but I want to be able to put this into practice. So where did i get my insperation to look into these, i have had a want to be able to edit and create content that people would want to watch. i have also loved the content that a youtuber does really well called "TheRussianBadger" with his mix of motion capture and visual effects to show is story and gameplay is amazing and a style i would love to be able to adapt into my own.

The Link to his channel is below so you can see for yourself how some of his work is done.

[cameronkorn]

Prior Examples of composition

Throughout the first year I had used composition to place all the video pieces together which helped further teach me on what I know currently but other examples of this was when I used to create content for YouTube Creating Gaming videos for a very small audience.

The Link is below to my channel which can be used to look at some of the videos and see some of the composition effects that I had used to create the videos and make them flow well at the time.

[cameronkorn]

contextual studies research writing continued

Coming to more of the modern side of compositing is with motion capture with the increase with advancement in technology and Mocap is used. This has always been interesting as these are only a handful of the innumerable games that use this technique when making game moves or cutscenes, especially after viewing the motion capture behind the scenes for popular game titles like Call of Duty, God of War, and the last of us. Other well-known films that incorporate motion capture include The Lord of the Rings, Avatar, the Marvel movies, and especially Avengers: Endgame. When it comes to acting, motion capture is employed in a variety of contexts, including when developing CGI-based works that require human characteristics or enabling actors to act their lines and scenes with someone else who will play an entirely different character throughout the production.

[cameronkorn]

more links that i had looked at when researching on my chosen ideas

this is some links that i have found and read through when i was doing research on to what VFX is and some of the differences that they could entail. with a little history on what VFX is and why it is used so much in main media.

https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/what-is-vfx/ https://usv.edu/blog/what-is-the-difference-between-animation-and-vfx/ https://edubirdie.com/examples/the-visual-effects-used-in-the-animation/ https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/28574 - History of VFX

[cameronkorn]

Research

What is 2D and 3D VFX in animation?

3D VFX is usually made while the animation is still being produced and according to dreamfarmstudios, ‘elements such as hair, fur, fluids, cloth, morphing, and explosions usually needs to be simulated in a 3D environment’ (Arash Naghdi, 2023) this would mainly be used by being simulated in a physics engine, this could be like the unreal engine, Havok, BeamNG and the Nvidia PhysX engine. 2D VFX is mostly made in the post-production stage and consists of stuff like colour correction, composition, and even the final rendering. Some examples of 2D visual effects that can be used in 3D animations would be stuff like fire effects, rain, camera shaking, replacement of backgrounds, smoke, sparks, Lens flare and even stuff like portal effects using different effects like smoke and lighting.

[cameronkorn]

research onto VFX and Composition

so from doing my research i had found another blog that spoke more into depth about what is compositing is in video editing and it gave me some really good information on it as a whole and some of the old and different techniques that are still used today

Website to this is below:

[cameronkorn]

1/08/23

15 1 Second Animations - Inital Ideas

Want the 15 different pieces to follow a similar storyline but it is shown different in differnt ideas

I think the main story i would like to follow is someone suffering from anxiety. throughout each of them i would like to show a differnt issue that they face throughout, like being overwhelmed,overthinking, not able to process some things at all, them feeling dizzy, unable to sleep, feeling worried and kind of split them up so for a few animations it would be struggling sleeping, then another few would be feeling worried, then overthinking, and so on and so forth. https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/conditions/generalised-anxiety-disorder/overview/ (the website i used to get some better information on anxiety)

Im still unsure with some of the animation designs that i would like to presue but i could mix a bunch. some after effects and more blocky animation, could try some drawing animation and even some stop motion animation throughout.

also use this NotePad to write your thoughts and ideas as they progress throughout making these pieces and even designing the character or exploring the kind of style of animation that i would like to explore in the other brief.

For the other Brief I would more like to explore the Post production side of the animation, like the compositing and all the editing and after effects of each piece but at this moment (1/08/23) I don't actually know of any post production animators.

[cameronkorn]

Its Been A While

I know its been a while but i'm back and finally returning to uni from the issues that caused me to interupt. i'm going to be starting to place my research and design ideas for my Summer Brief for going into Year 2 with the 2023 lot.

[cameronkorn]

My adiptation of the Brief History of Motion Capture

Here is gonna be some of the research for my contextual studies on motion capture - if you think some of the information isnt correct or needs to be altered then any help would be very helpful

Motion capture in the industry predated back to the early 1900 with a short film created by the animator Max Fleischer, he used the idea to get animators to draw over each frame of a live-action recording to give the animated characters a reasonable fluid movement which also gave a photo realistic look to the short film. Another one of Fleischer's pieces that he created, Out Of The Inkwell used this method throughout.

fast forwards a few years and the famous animator Walt Disney liked what he had seen in Fleischer's work and decided to adopt the idea of using Live-action references released their first feature film using this method in 1937 was snow white and the seven dwarfs, this was animated by having the actors play the parts and have it recorded to then have the animators draw over the frames to bring the characters to life. he had also used this method of motion capture in other iconic films such as Alice In Wonderland and Sleeping Beauty.

throughout the growth of motion capture the creators of the movie Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, made the feature film and had a lot of eyes on them about if their motion captured piece would be something that would prevail or fall short and sadly the film ended up falling short and crashing in 2001 and taking 137 million dollars of the companies money with it. even though the movie crashed and burned it was a new step in motion capture and it had over 1000 live-action pieces recorded and rendered into digital animation. even the film's most mean critics had admitted that the visuals of the digital animation were amazing, but this was only the beginning. the same year the director Peter Jackson had teased the view of Gollum in the first iteration of the Lord of the Rings movie. with the teaser of this character it had shown that Jackson wasn't messing around and was taking Motion-Capture to a whole new level. by this time of Gollum's appearance Jackson was ready to make the debut of his first movie in 2002, The Movie The Two Towers was the first film to use real-time motion capture in recording the scenes so it allowed the actors that were doing the motion capture to be in the set in real-time and record with the live action actions to add to the fluidity of the recording and creation of the final piece.

With Andy Serkis's amazing performance of Gollum in The Lord Of The Rings, it caused the film to behold at such high regard all over the industry with WETA's mastery of the motion capture technique, following this, Serkis would become a pioneer of the whole motion capture process and end up co-founding his own studio and skewering the market for 'CG actors'. He later ended up coming together with Jackson again to give King Kong a good try and it was causing filmmakers to realise the increased potential of Motion Capture

[cameronkorn]

Some research i had done into Motion Capture

i had started to do some research into Motion capture and some of the brief history of the style and this was mainly because i have had an interest in motion capture ever since finding out about how they had recorded some of the cutscenes for some of the Call Of Duty games and i was just fasinated by it.

What am going to show is some of the writing im doing on the subject for a conttextual studies poster that im creating for this idea.

motion capture is used in so many different parts of the industry, expessially in the game industry and creating realistic character styles and movements for their cutscenes and movies, it is also used in some animated movies and shows that want the real expressions of the character when they are speaking a monologue or performing an action.

this stype has always been interesting to me expecially after seeing the motion capture behind the scenes for famous game titles like, Call of Duty, God Of War and The last of us, this is to only name a few of the the countless games that use this style when creating game movements or cutscenes. Some other example of motion capture being used is in movies like very well known ones like, The Lord of the rings, Avatar, Marvel films, Expesially Avergers endgame. motion capture is used in so many evenues when it comes to acting and when creating pieces that would use CGI but need human properties or to help the actors be able to act their lines and pieces with someone else their that will be a completely different character throughout the movies production.

[cameronkorn]

Photography that i took for my work

these are a couple of images that i had taken for my work basically showing off the jeans that we had just released and these was some other images that i wanted to add mainly for social media and just because they looked cool

[cameronkorn]

This is my submission of the Stop motion peice using recycled and scrap materials to make a character do a walk cycle, i know that looking at this it is a mess and the timing could of been done alot better but i was limited with what systems that i was using and the time that i had to complete the project. this was also my second attempt of making the model for the project because the other one was lost after uni had finished for the year.

i know if i had given myself more time and didn’t have different situations going on at the time that i would of been able to make a better model and a better Stop motion Piece.

[cameronkorn]

This is my attempt of doing a full composition using some assets provided by my lecturer Mario, this is using assets from his animation for the wolves football team for a tile choice animaton. it uses plain png images and a animated character that was created in Maya and rendered out.

i dont own these assets - they was provided to benefit my learning and developing my knowledge

[cameronkorn]

This was one of my first attempts of using after effects to make some letters bounce on screen, it was fun and it shows that i have a basic understanding of using after effects.

[cameronkorn]

This was learning how to use the cutting node in Toon Boom Harmony, i had enjoyed this because we was basically learning how to make a mask to cover certain parts of the drawing, i had used my character for the design because i thought it had fit with the idea of something being in a box.

[cameronkorn]

This my take of using my lecturer, Marios Maya asset from his short film - The Ticket Maker. it was fun to create and it showed my how to use a 3D modeling software in animation and all the different tools you can use. i was impressed of how fast that i understood this task to be able to do it.

I dont own the right to the assets used - i was given permission to use this for my benefit of learning.

[cameronkorn]

This was learning how to make an arm rig using Toon Boom Harmony, i fully didnt understand this because i was unsure about buttons to press to change to different layers but once i had understood it made it fairly easy to do, i am impressed with my first attempt but improvement could always be made.