drew-mga2022mi5018

[drew-mga2022mi5018]

Execution | The 27 Club

Without further ado, this is my final outcome for this project; The 27 Club. To summarise, the story revolves around our MC opening a mysterious portal and being thrust into a strange and unfamiliar place, full of nameless and faceless people watching the beginning of a concert of epic proportions.

Throughout this project, I made many additions to the film, but I also made key subtractions. Well into the process of production, the realisation hit that sometimes VFX didn't mean crowding the entire scene with effects that would distract the viewer, and that compositing was more of a precise art form than I realised. I especially enjoyed the process of compositing for my animation, taking it from subpar to something that looked really good on screen. I feel that as a creative, this film allowed me to cross boundaries and freely express myself in a way I couldn't. It also rekindled the love I had for animation and art in actually being able to achieve what I wanted to. With this newfound passion in hand, I feel ready to tackle the future however it comes!

[drew-mga2022mi5018]

Development | Finishing Touches

To properly transition between scenes, I needed to create a glitch effect to pair with the zoom. This is because I drew my characters with varying levels of detail for each scene. I began by creating a solid and adding Turbulent Noise, Directional Blur and CC Scale wipe. From here, I played with the values and created keyframes randomly to create a glitch transition.

I precomposed my glitch solid and duplicated my footage, using the solid as a Luma Matte. Then, to the primary footage, I added a Displacement Map and Brightness and Contrast Effect. Finally, to the duplicated footage I removed the Brightness and Contrast effect and used a Tritone to map the colours of the glitch.

To the end of the animation, I also added this title card denoting the name of the film, hence why in the earlier picture, I changed the colour of my tritone towards the end, to make the transition match this. I used another solid as a Luma Matte for the text and added a Fractal Noise to make it look more interesting. Off screen, I also gave it the CRT effect that I created. Finally, off screen I added smaller changes to the final film that made the project feel more cohesive, and put together.

[drew-mga2022mi5018]

Development | Animating and Compositing Smoke

As the final piece of the puzzle, I needed to make a quick stage smoke animation. I began first by duplicating the first keyframe and moving it to the end of my animation as I wanted the smoke to loop. Then, I followed a mixed procedure of Pose to Pose and Straight Ahead animation.

After that, I coloured in my smoke using a neutral grey. I wanted to get rid of my line art, however I liked the texture it gave the edges of the smoke, so I opted to use a clipping mask and fill it in with the same colour as the smoke. After that, I compiled my footage in Premiere Pro as an image sequence and exported it as a .mov file to allow for transparency.

Bringing it into After Effects, I precomposed my smoke layer and duplicated it. I repositioned and flipped one layer such that it looked like the smoke was being emitted from the centre of the stage. Then, to both I added a Gaussian Blur and Levels effect to add a blur and resharpen the smoke, which added an interesting texture.

Finally, to make the smoke look more realistic, I created a gradient map using a solid layer, by adding a Gradient Ramp and Tritone effect. I then used this as a Luma Matte for my smoke effect. After adding a filmic glow, this was the final result;

With this, that means now all the main compositing is done. All that's left to do is fine tune, compile, add transitions and a title card!

[drew-mga2022mi5018]

Development | Final Compositing for Second Shot

To complete the second shot, I needed more people involved in the scene. So, I drew out several miscellaneous, faceless characters. They wouldn't be moving, but I didn't want to draw too much attention to them anyways, they're more like background pieces that make the viewer curious as to where the MC has been transported to.

Then, I added them into my scene and slightly tweaked that layer's exposure and contrast. I also added a subtle inner shadow to the characters, which would change over time as the lighting gradually strengthens.

For the foremost crowd member (Question Mark Kid), I masked out that particular layer and precomposed it so I could add two types of Inner Shadows; one indicative of the stage lighting and one indicative of the portal itself. I also thought the ledge that the MC was standing behind was too bright, so I tweaked the tint and curves such that it looked more realistic while still being visible. Finally, I added a Posterize Time effect to make the portal choppier and added a filmic glow in Premiere.

[drew-mga2022mi5018]

Development | Compositing Portal Particles

I didn't do much to the particles themselves, I only knew that I wanted them to read as extremely bright. So, I added a Glow effect, and a Gaussian Blur to make them look more like streaks of light as opposed to drawn objects. I know I could have created these in After Effects using the Shape tool and animated its path, but I found much more enjoyment creating these in Krita. Then, I opted for a tinge of tasteful chromatic aberration, not enough that you'd immediately notice it, but just so that one could see a subtle RB split at the ends of the particles. Finally, I added a bit of noise to the particles to keep it cohesive with everything on screen. Then, I added a subtle scale in and a filmic glow to the video on Premiere Pro, and this is how it turned out;

[drew-mga2022mi5018]

Development | Portal Particle FX

Using the rough guideline I created for my animatic, I created a cleaner version of some particles flying out of the portal. After this, I went in and added basic solid colours which I could play around with in After Effects.

[drew-mga2022mi5018]

Development | Compositing the Second Shot

I decided to go ahead and add in what I have for this shot as well. The only thing I'm really missing here is the remainder of the crowd, which I'll get to. I tried colour grading this scene as well, but it's not convincing enough as a night scene without it getting insanely dark, so I just played with the curves and some of the values and left it as is. In order to better make it look like MC was standing behind the broken wall, I duplicated my footage and masked it out.

After this, I added keys for the inner shadow of my characters in order to change its colour and opacity with the lighting. I paid more attention to the Paper Bag Man, the character closest to the stage and furthest from the portal. I also added in more fake lighting using a Shape Layer, a Gaussian Blur and a Light Burst effect, this time toning the opacity to around 5% to convey the distance between the stage and the characters. I didn't render this scene out yet, since I'm not really done with it, but I will once I have all the elements in place, and when I figure out how to light the background.

[drew-mga2022mi5018]

Development | Compositing the Intro Shot

Once I brought my portal into After Effects, I compiled all the footage and assets I had for the first scene, following the same Colour Grade procedure that I did for the other night time scenes. I even managed to fiddle with the curves enough to the point that I could get rid of all the harsher lights. I added inner shadows to the main character and keyed its opacity and colour going from before to after the portal appears. Finally, I added some Chromatic Aberration to the portal, which I felt made it look more interesting.

Then, in order to make the scene more interesting, I decided to create effects that would flash on screen after the portal appeared in different styles, sort of like an interdimensional glitch. I began first by creating a Pre Composition and duplicating the portals. Then, on the first layer I created acdesaturated cutout effect by using a Hue/Saturation effect, setting the Master Saturation to 0 and masking out the background of the clip. Later, I added a Drop Shadow as well. Similarly, I made a halftone and rainbow echo effect to pair with it as well and reduced each layer's duration to around two frames.

Once that was done, I adjusted the background a bit more. Since it was night time, I added a little bit of noise to the background, the drawn environments and the character and I feel that it added a nice subtle touch of personality that the scene needed.

Finally, just like before, I created keys for the Colour and Opacity of my inner shadows depending on which glitch was appearing. After this, I rendered the animation out and brought it into Premiere Pro, where I added a filmic glow effect and a dip to white. This was what I ended up with;

This scene is still missing one element, the particles coming out of the portal itself. I'll be creating that and adding it in along with the remaining 2D assets, those being the smoke and the remaining crowd members in scene 2.

[drew-mga2022mi5018]

Development | The Final Portal

After much debate on how I could make this portal, I finally found a solution. The portal was similar to what I had created in my concept art, with a few twists. I began by adding a circle in Blender and reducing its vertices to 5. Then, I UV unwrapped it for texturing by creating a seam at the very top of the mesh.

The base set up was this. I used a UV Map node and plugged that into a Separate XYZ, the Y value of which was plugged into a Color Ramp that I modified to create a gradient in the middle. Then, I mixed a Transparent BSDF and an Emission shader to get this, and used the output of the Color Ramp as the factor for the Mix Shader.

I modified the emission by using a Math Power node and connected that to another Color Ramp, which I set to B-Spline. This was used as the new Fac for the Mix Shader.

To end off setting up the Shader, I used another UV Map node and connected that to two Vector Math nodes, set to Add and Multiply respectively. This was plugged into the vector input of a 4D Noise Texture, which I merged with the original Node Tree by using a Mix Color with its factor set all the way up. Then, I animated the W property of the Noise Texture and the Z value of the Vector Math Add.

After this, I used Geometry nodes to create an Array of my mesh and to randomly animate its rotation using a Random Value node. The sequential minimizing array was actually quite difficult for me to get down, but I found out that using an Index node, a Set position and some Math nodes, I could get it to behave the way I wanted it to.

Finally, I duplicated the portal and changed its colour to create two layers. Then, I inverted its rotation by reversing the values I used on the Random Value node. After that, I animated the portal opening by keying its scale property and fiddled with the Graph Editor so that when it did open, the larger section "bounced." This was the result!

Finally, I'm satisfied with a portal that I created. Hooray! Next, I'll be moving on to adding this into my first scene.

[drew-mga2022mi5018]

Development | Scene V Sky Colour Grade

I added the same effects to my final scene as well, which worked out well for me. I didn't like the initial brightness of the wall, so I reduced the exposure by -.5. This appealed to me much more, and compositionally made more sense. Additionally, it could show the subtle passage of time from the early to later in the night, so I went with that.

[drew-mga2022mi5018]

Development | Scene IV Sky Colour Grade

After receiving some feedback, I decided to take a crack at recolouring the background for the band scenes. I slightly adjusted the curves of the original grade, then created an adjustment layer with another curves effect meant to darken the sky. Then, I duplicated my original footage and Pre Composed it above the Sky layer. I also set the Sky Layer to Luma Matte the new Pre Composition. In this new composition, I created another adjustment layer and added a Colorama to it in order to separate the pure blacks and whites. Then, I created a solid and masked out the areas that I wanted to be visible.

After that, I added a tint and glow effect to the sky layer, which seemed to make the mask more cohesive. This was the final result;

I'm a much bigger fan of this look, since it actually showcases the environment a bit better.

[drew-mga2022mi5018]

Development | Final Scene Fixes

Since the beginning of the final scene was pretty static and uninteresting, I added blur and zoom out to the scene using an Adjustment Layer, a Gaussian Blur and Transform effect. I left the beginning slightly stationary and had the actual zoom out happen during the middle of the stagnant movement. This is because I plan on adding a static/glitch transition between the previous scene and this scene. Additionally, I also added in members of the crowd to make the scene a bit more lively. This was the result;

[drew-mga2022mi5018]

Development | Adding In The Crowd and Other Effects

Based on the previous roughs of the crowd I did, I created interesting looking silhouettes of humanoid creatures wearing masks. Some of these appeared in the animation itself, like Paper Bag Man seen on the far right, and some have appeared in other projects I did, like the person with the star shaped head, who is based on a character in my MI5019 project. The vast majority, however, are just beings straight from my imagination.

After that, I coloured in the silhouettes of these characters with pure black and brought them into After Effects, where I keyframed their Y positions slightly and had each Keyframe hold until the next one, since I didn't want to draw too much attention to the crowd. Here, I added an inner shadow to insinuate highlights and lowered the opacity of each element shadow based on the position of it in relation to the position of the lights. The closest to the light, the drums and characters, had their opacities unchanged, but the stage's shadow was reduced to about 80% and the crowd's shadow was set to around 60%. After that, to replicate a camera focusing on an object, I created an Adjustment layer and added a slight Gaussian Blur to it. Then, I masked the middle out and feathered the mask, such that the blur fades in towards the middle.

After that, I wanted to make the beginning of this animation a bit more interesting, so I decided to add a slight zoom and have the camera go from focused to unfocused, as some recordings do. To do this, I used another Adjustment Layer and added a Gaussian Blur and a Transform effect to it to adjust the Blur and Scale respectively. I placed this below my text because I wanted that and the Record symbol to remain unaffected. After that, I made a few adjustments to the light and stage, et voila!

I'm quite happy with how it looks, the only thing this scene is missing is the 2D FX, which won't be too arduous a task.

[drew-mga2022mi5018]

Development | Compositing the Band Scenes

I wanted to tackle the compositing for the remainder of the "recorded" scenes, so I brought in my effects from the earlier scene I did and tweaked the values slightly. I also added two more "fake spotlights" to the corners of the stage so that the lighting would actually make sense.

Since the band would be rising from between the instruments and the beginning of the stage, I duplicated my stage layer and masked out the instruments. This resulted in a new layer with a new Inner Shadow that would allow me to trick the viewer into thinking the band is rising from below the stage and not in front of it.

After this, I brought in my footage, added the inner shadow to my characters and set it to a highlight by changing the colour and blend mode, and added the remaining effects to them, such that it looked like they were being recorded.

Finally, I keyed the position of my footage and the "lights" such that it lined up with my animatic, and set each key to toggle hold keyframe, so that the change was instantaneous as opposed to gradual.

[drew-mga2022mi5018]

Development | Filmic Glow Effect

I wanted to add a touch of bloom to the lights seen in some movies. To do this, initially I just added a Gaussian Blur effect to a duplicate layer and called it a day, however, after some digging, I found that if I used a Luma Key and adjusted the threshold and cutoff values, THEN use the Gaussian Blur, I could target the blur to just the brightest parts of the scene. Then, I simply brought down the opacity of the layer to make it more subtle.

I wanted to check the values of my scene as well, to see if they worked on a fundamental level. This was just a matter of adding a pure white solid and setting its blend mode to colour, which allowed me to see everything as a pure greyscale. I was quite happy with it, so I then set my scene to render.

This was initially meant to be a temporary test to see what exactly I could do in After Effects, however it worked much better than anticipated. This has given me a clear understanding on how much time compositing the film will take and what I can do to really enhance my animation.

[drew-mga2022mi5018]

Development | Final Scene Compositing Test

I wanted to start putting together the scenes where I had all the elements already, so I began with the final scene of the film. I began by compiling my footage together and adding an inner shadow to them. After playing around with the values, I changed the blend mode to a more additive property, screen, and changed the colour to red to reflect the final lighting in the scene. I also added a Lumetri Colour effect to the characters and brought it down to around -2.

After that, I made minor adjustments to the colour grade of the drum according to the colour grade of the background. I used employed the same method as I did earlier, using a Curves and a Tint effect to create a scene that read as night, and a Lumetri Colour to slightly lower the exposure of the background. Side note, the reason you are already seeing most of the layers here is because I forgot to take screenshots of my process until I was halfway done with compositing this scene. An amateur mistake, I know, but it is what it is.

After this, I wanted the scene to read as if it was shot on a really low quality smartphone and being watched on a CRT screen. To do this, I added and adjustment layer above the background elements and added Chromatic Aberration to it to achieve an RBG split. Then, I used a Grid, Noise and VR Digital Glitch effect to achieve the effect of a CRT screen. After playing around with the values, I also added a Gaussian Blur to blur out the effect a little, and a Curves with an Exposure effect to bring out more contrast in the background.

Using a shape layer, I faked a spotlight by creating a vague trapezoid shape and lowering its opacity. After this, I added a Gaussian Blur to the shape and a Light Burst effect. Admittedly, I have no idea what the light burst does in theory, but in practice I do know it expanded the blur a tad bit and added a subtle element of bloom to the layer.

As a final touch, I added a red circle and text to denote recording, and had the circle flicker every 10 frames by setting each keyframe to toggle keyframe hold. Already, this was looking way better than I had expected, so I brought it into Premiere for some final touches.

[drew-mga2022mi5018]

Development | Final Animated Scenes WITHOUT COMPOSITING

Without any further ado, these are my final scenes put together and timed according to the audio. I have done NOTHING ELSE to composite this video, the purpose of this is to get all my animated scenes together in one file. The drum set used here is a test render taken through the Eevee render engine, with next to no clean up using Ultra Key.

The purpose of this video is to showcase the non composited animated scenes I've completed for the animation. Now that all of that is complete, after lining out the crowd I can finally move on to actually compositing the film and adding in transitions, effects, shadows and highlights and of course, colour grading each of my elements to make it cohesive. As an aside, I adjusted the timing for the impact frames and I feel this works much better with the animation.