VFX Special Effects

As part of this module I will have to create various special effects for my short film. As an example of this I have used video 'When Gordon Met Chell' to show various combinations of how special effects can be used to convey various emotions and situations.

The reason why I love this video so much is that It has pretty much every component ofeach effect that I would like to use in my film, including laser beams, explosions, collapsing structures and even spaceships which I have used for inspiration.

Upon seeing this video and the effects that they show it makes me wish that we had been offered more insight on how to even get started making things such as collapsing buildings and realistic laser beams.
Even though we haven't been given any tutorials for how to create anything like what is shown in the video I will definitely be using tutorials in the future in order to improve my After effects skills and hopefully create effects like these, even possibly apply said effects to my own short film in the future.

VFX Modelling My Ship Interior In Maya

Here are some screen shots of some of the assets I made for my spaceship interior.  I've tried to make each asset reflect the horror/thriller genre that I want my film to be. The picture above shows a trio of skins that have been stretched with over sized chains, I got inspiration for this particular asset design from the game 'Silent Hill - Downpour' when protagonist Murphy comes into brief contact with a creature known as 'The Monocle Man'.

This screen shot is more of a development to the stretched skins, the skins themselves are one object, however to make the scene more disturbing and industrial I created pipe-like objects going into and around the walls, the chains of the skin are made to look like they are bound to the piping. I referenced various scenes from the 'SAW' films to create this asset.

This shot shows a birds eye view of the 'corridor' that my actor will walk through in the scene, the purpose of this walk way is to amplify the horror aspect of the scene by separating the harsh rusted metal textures with the fleshy organic walk way in the center of the room. 

The final screen shot is a close up of the fleshy cocoons that are littered around the walk way, I will be duplicating some of them to have growing out of the floor further away from the actor and out of the line of his walking path, they are made of the same organic material as the walk way and are meant to represent cysts growing from the floor of the ship, these cysts reflect the aesthetics of the Alien also.

I will continue to develop the assets of my environment, I am in the process of making large chains to hang from the rafters of the scenes roof, these chains and various hanging objects will give the environment the purpose and feel of a demonic industrial slaughterhouse.

VFX Modelling My Ship In Maya

As part of modelling my assets for my short film I have finally finished the design of my spaceship.
Although I'm very happy with how my spaceship looks I have run into a couple of problems throughout the modeling process.

The first problem that I encountered was with the ships UV map. After I had created the UV for the ship I successfully applied it and continued to work o other aspects of my model, however, upon opening the most recent scene at that time I realised that the texture appeared to be out of place on the ship. I noticed this as while I was going over the design of the ship I noticed that the wings, underside and aerials of the ship had white stripes running along them. My UV map however, showed no signs that the texture had been moved out of place and the nets of each shape on the map were lined up perfectly with the texture I had put on them.  This problem could only be fixed by me remaking the UV map and redesigning the whole thing again.

Another problem I encountered was that after i had combined all of the pieces of my ship I realised that for some reason the red strips going up and along the 4 wings weren't in line with each other and were not symmetrical. On closer inspection I realised that when I had duplicated two of the original wings to translate over onto the other side of the ships body I had not translated them in such a way that would make them equal. Due to this mistake two of the wings were facing the wrong way and due to the subtle bends in each wing I had not realised until the ships components had all been combined. This however was easily rectifiable. 

A technique that I've been taught in this module that I've found extremely valuable was the use of the glow effect in Maya. By creating various coloured lamberts and changing the glow and iridescence of the texture I was able to make different parts of my spaceship glow when rendered. 

By changing the glow levels and iridescence of each lambert I was able to experiment with different levels of glow and the effects that they created on the ship.

In any future projects that require us to model mechs I will definitely be taking advantage of this new skill again as it had created just the effect I was looking for with my spaceship.
I may even try and use this effect with organic based models such as plants and animals to see what results it will give me.

VFX Modelling My Alien In Mudbox (Body)

 After making the bust of my alien model based on the concept busts I have also done some experimenting with the Molten Plague alien as a full bodied creature. I've done this as a safety precaution so that should just the alien bust alone not suit the scene of my film then I have a backup full bodied alien thats ready to rig.

 Like the original bust model, this aliens full body was created, sculpted and painted in Mudbox. This model is based more around the previous work-in-progress concept piece that I did of my alien as one of the first attempts. Although its a full body piece I can honestly say that I didn't spend even half the amount of time making this as i did with my bust alien, this was because I was quite sure that just the modeled head of my alien would look fine in the scene.

 There are aspects of this model that I like, such as the spindly fingers and humanoid shape. However, the colouring of the alien in this example is not as nice as the one I did for the original model of the alien but is more of an example of the similar colours that I would be using should I have to need to use this full bodied model in my shots.

I think that even if I did have to use this model there are things I would need to change about it. For one, the colour, it would need to be detailed and have the same colour pallet as my original molten plague concept. Another thing I would change would be the club-like hand, although this is shown in one of the original concepts that I've combined with the more up to date concept I only oversized the hand which in the long run would cause mesh errors so I would have to model the club in Maya then take it back into Mudbox. I would also have to give this alien a mouth that is wide and gaping like my original concept design.

VFX Modelling My Alien In Mudbox (Bust)

Rather than creating a full model in Maya I saved myself some time and used my concept art as a reference to modelling in Mudbox instead. The modelling process itself was relatively simple, I used the bust of the human head template given by Mudbox on startup in order to get the more humanoid proportions in the shoulder width ect.

After getting the template up I began to use the various sculpt, bubble and foam tools to make the original base distorted and bumpy. However using these tools sometimes made the polygons of the model spike excessively so for each bump I made I had to smooth it down a considerable amount in order to get the more rounded cyst effect. 

Once I was happy with the shape I began painting the model directly from Mudbox. I much prefer painting this way rather than creating UV maps in Maya as it is quite relaxing and rewarding to visibly see results by painting directly onto mesh. For this model I was using my 'Molten Plague' as reference and used the same volcanic colours: Ash blue, white, red, orange, green and yellow.

By painting the colours correctly onto the model I was able to recreate the same look at the original concept art piece, reflecting that the Molten Plagues body is covered in magma filled red hot cysts  that glow through its skin in various spots. The inside of the Plagues mouth is a steady painted gradient of orange to white, giving the impression that the inside of the aliens body is white hot with fluid.

Above you can see an image of the camera looking up into the inside of the mesh, the large white mass in the center of the inside is the white hot walls of the aliens mouth as described above.

Modelling and painting this alien has been my favorite part of the modeling process so far, I enjoyed being able to freely use a different medium that I enjoy doing and have found new ways of painting onto a model successfully. I will definitely be using this process on other models in the future. 

VFX After Effects Induction 4

This was the last proper induction that we had with Mike Flower and today we were taught more in depth processes of animation, we were given various pictures of sunflowers, hills, moutains, clouds and solids to make a steam powered car.

We were told how to repeat cycles of a shape, we used square wheels on our little car to show how they were moving constantly and taught special code to make the wheels constantly spin.
I'm not sure on the code that was used to make the wheels spin constantly but I will have to talk to Mike about it or do my own research into the different codes that can be used withing After Effects.

Mike also taught us that nothing that moves has a straight line of animation, everything that moves is in curves and wobbles, I found this to be quite useful as its helped me to make my drawings more dynamic through applying the 'curve' technique to the pose. I'll hopefully be able to practice this with further animations too.

Even though that was our last after effects induction with Mike I'll definitely be going to see him in his office if ever I do more After Effects work, its also given me more confidence that he seems to have taken interest into my future module prospects of doing a concept art cinematic and he said that he would help me with that which I look forward to. 

VFX After Effects Induction 3

Todays induction focused on making objects ease in and out of movement to make things look a bit more realistic. We learned about how different key frames can affect an animation in different ways and the situations we would use each one.

We also looked more into what makes up a solid composition and how useful the pick-whip tool can be to connect layers to other layers when working.
I'm beginning to understand After Effects in more depth now and I'm enjoying everything that I'm learning, that said I'm not sure on the whole pick-whip process and how exactly it aids in combining different layers so that will be something that I will have to research for myself.

Im hoping that we learn more about how to create videos from photoshop layers to make short films like the Guild Wars 2 cinematics that I have mentioned previously, I'd really like to learn more about this program for the future and feel that it would be extremely valuable for securing income for me in the future if I can combine it with my art. 

VFX After Effects Induction 2

In this After Effects induction of week 2 we focused more on green screening.
We were given footage of a student stood on a wobble board doing different movements in front of a green screen, after we were given the footage Mike explained to us the process of keying out people in After Effects by putting various chokers and pen junk mattes around the student.

I found this to be quite complex upon first hearing it as I was watching all of these different options being tampered with in order to successfully key the guy outof the shot and make it clean.
However, after working through a PDF of how to make a clear cut key I got the hang of things very quickly and can now green screen out the footage that we were given.

VFX After Effects Induction 1

Today was our first induction for After Effects with Mike Flower. We didn't learn how to do many things to create active special effects, instead we were walked through how to create compositions, how to make solid shapes and how to use the stop-watch symbols beside each option in order to make simple animations.

I found todays lesson to be quite interesting and enjoyed learning how to manipulate the solids to move, change shape, change opacity and create a path for them to move along.
The reason why I've been looking forward to learning about this is because I know that the opening character cinematics of Guild Wars 2 are created through combining original digital concept art with the various principles we have begun to learn with After Effects today with Mr.Flower.
It is these same cinematics used in Guild Wars 2 that I would like to recreate with my own concept art using my own story for the upcoming self directed brief.

I've put an example of what it is I'd like to do for my self directed brief below, showing a Guild Wars 2 cinematic. Although I'm currently focused on this project I'm glad that I can now identify the sorts of stop-watch animations they have used in each scene of the cinematic. I have also shown Mr. Flower the cinematic and explain to him what it is that I'd like to do in the future which he was very enthusiastic about. I'm looking forward to learning more about After Effects for future reference.

VFX Storyboard

Above shows my storyboard ideas. Unlike my previous concepts where I have drawn out a frame by frame storyboard, for this module I have simply written down the ideas that I have for various short films.

Because I have already explored the more family friendly and cute genres I think I'm going to design concepts based around idea 2 on the first page where the alien staggers towards the actor, by approaching a more horror genre of film i'll be able to experiment more with assets, concepts and sounds, this will over all give me more experience.

VFX Final Concept Art - Alien

This is my final piece of concept work for my Alien design that I'll be including into my project. After creating the full bodied design that I used previously as reference I began to refine the look of the creature, adding more definition to the puss filled sacks on its body. Another aim I had was to create a more defined mouth, making it huge and gaping, filled with rows of sharp teeth.
For each variation of the design I created individual backgrounds to why they look like they do and how they use their assets to survive.

Poison Plague (Venenum Pestis)
Poison Plagues are found in areas high above sea level where the oxygen is thin, these areas can include mountainous regions, around active volcanos and guisers. They cannot survive for long in a high or even balanced oxygen environment. The mouths of the Poison Plague bare four large canine fangs, much like that of the modern day Babboon or Mandrill, between each pairing of fangs are more humanoid teeth, this suggests the Poison Plague is infact an omnivour. Because of the high levels of Carbon Dioxide/Monoxide these Aliens ooze a constant thick funnel of toxic fumes from their mouths that if inhaled by human, is fatal.

Molten Plague (Conflatilem Pestis)
Unlike their relatives, the Poison Plague, Molten Plague are able to inhabit a wider variety of habitats. Such habitats include inside and around active volcanoes, underground canyons and volcanic beaches. The Molten Plague gets its name from the glowing sacks hanging from its body, these sacks are infact filled with the red hot rock and brimstone that this creatures main diet consists of. Because these creatures rely on extreme heat to survive they have evolved in such a way as their bodies have developed various holes in the skin to allow excess heat and steam to be released. Although the Molten Plague has a diet of various hot rocks and minerals (hence the rows of scraper-like teeth around the entire jawline) these creatures have been known to eat other living things and kill them by expelling firery hot embers and black smoke onto their prey, choking and burning it to death. 

Sea Plague (Oceanus Pestis)
As its name would suggest, the Sea Plague inhabits various active coral reefs in the ocean. It is a highly adapted predator that is nearly invisible to the naked eye. The Sea Plague relies on its complex camouflage and ambush instincts in order to hunt its prey. Like the modern day Angler fish, the Sea Plague uses the tentacles on top of its head as a lure to other predatory animals whilst the boney coral formation and glowing fungas on its forehead and spine disguse its form further. Like many of Earths Octopie, Oceanus Pestis can change colour to both blend in and display. The large, single eye in the centre of its head allows it to hunt in deep waters where sun rays do not reach, its large and many tongues help it  latch and dismantle prey with little effort. 

Royal Plague (Regius Pestis)
The Royal Plague is arguably the most aggressive and adaptable of the Pestis genus. This creature gets its name from the large axe-shaped crest running along the top of its head as well as its crown of thorny spikes and thin, poisonous barbs along its spine. Unlike its relatives that use camouflage, lures and poisons to kill their prey, Regius Pestis uses brute strength, relying on its enormous neck muscles to carry the weight of the large tusks growing from the sides of the head. The Royal Plague mainly populate the forests and savanahs of its world, providing the area is vast enough it is possible that Royal Plagues can live in relative peace with one another, however when in close contact with one another regardless of sex they will maul and kill each other.

VFX Improved Concept Art - Alien

After doing more research into what I wanted my alien to look like I did some studies of some of the monsters of the Silent Hill games. It wasn't so much the design of each Silent Hill monster that i was looking at more than how they appeared, I studied how each monsters skin looked in conjunction to what my environment was going to look like and what the personality of the alien would be.

As an end result I designed this creature, although its still in its rough stages I really like the design that I've made for the alien so far. I'm not sure about how easy someting like this will be to model in Maya alone, I imagine that I'd had to constantly extrude faces of the model to get it looking even remotely lumpy and bobbly like this example so I think I'll look into using other programs like Zbrush and Mudbox to craft all of the lumps.

I'm not sure on the colour sceme as of yet, currently its keeping to a mottled human colour rather than being too eccentric although I can see this changing soon as I want an alien that looks unique compared to others that people would usually think about.
My next step will be to refine his look and to experiment with colour and blending, after that I'll be able to pick my final outcome and begin modelling with any luck, so far I'm very much enjoying making the concept art for this module.

VFX Initial Concept Art - Alien

To start off with my Alien design drew up a few studies of the human skull in various positions, I then modified each copy with more alien-like features to create different concepts. The first one I designed resembled a fish or swampy  underwater creature complete with a large boney head fin, boney frills either side of its face and a large jaw. The next design I created didn't really resemble any kind of earthly animal, I gave it a large gear shaped head and a huge jaw that sticks out far away from its face. Although I like the head design for this alien I really couldn't decide what its jaw should look like and what kind of teeth it would have, leaving the end result looking less than satisfactory to me.
The last design, "Blind Eye", had to be my favorite as he is disturbingly human-like. When designing him I wanted to make a creature that was sporting some kind of large display crest either on top or around the head, I feel that I've achieved this with Blind Eye, I also loosely based his design on Egyptian Pharaoh coffins as he has the large appendage on his bottom jaw.

These designs are only my first initial sketches that I've made for any kind of aline creature in my film. Soon I will be looking at some of the creatures seen in the Silent Hill games and use the concept art that they have as reference for more work to come. 

VFX Initial Ideas

After we were given our brief for the new module i sat down and started to think about what sources of inspiration I could use to create my ship, alien and ship interior. I made three separate pages for each design that I needed to make. Immediately I used some of my most favorite games that I knew had the criteria I needed as inspiration. I knew that I wanted a more haunting and scary short film as my last module was very family friendly so I focused more on more serious designs. Because I enjoy drawing beasts and other creatures rather than mechs my first brain storm page focused on the alien. On this page I considered a range of possible ideas, from cute and cuddle Neopets to more stereotypical representations of aliens shown in Star Wars.

My second page focused on my ship interior, for this page I referenced games such as Halo, that I knew were heavily Mech oriented. I also considered other games such as Sonic and Star Fox as the ships shown I found to be quite appealing. Although I didn't reference as many things on this page the games still gave me enough concepts to design my own ships interior.

The last page i designed was dedicated to the design of the space ship itself. I repeated some of the references that I had used previously for my space ship interior such as Halo and Sonic the hedgehog. Aside from games I also considered using reference from nature, doing research on heavily built animals to see how their bodies protect themselves in the wild.

I will continue to look through different references over the next few days until I have a rough idea of what it is I want out of my short film where I will then make some rough sketches.

VFX Briefing Day

Today we were given our critera for the upcoming module that we are preparing to start. For this new project we are to focus more on the practices of After Effects and super imposing things into a film that we will be making.

The theme that we are doing this project on is called "invasion" and as such we are required to design an Alien, spaceship and spaceship interior for our characters to move around in. Although the guidelines are set for us we've been told that we can go as simple or as crazy as we would like to with our designs for our spaceship and our aliens which opens up a lot of possibilities.

During this module we will be learning more about green screen, After effects, Maya and final cut to piece our film into place. I'm quite looking forward to learning how to use After Effects as I'm wanting to create my own cutscenes combining my artwork and what I learn through after effects in future modules. 

Our Exhibition

Recently we had our exhibition where we got to show off all of our latest machinima module work. The venue was a gallery at the bottom of town and we were all placed in charge of making sure that as many people as possible found out and knew about the exhibition.
When we got there we all began setting up various plinths, tables, projectors and posters showing off our work and videos as well as a table full of food and drink for when people arrived to sample some of our arty goodness.

At first I was quite nervous of the exhibition as I wasn't sure just how many people would show up to see our artwork but I was very happy when lots of people began to show up and took a lot of interest in all of the work that we had to offer which made me quite pleased.

 This was our official banner that we used for online advertising for our exhibition.

 This was the leaflet picture that we used for further advertising around university and on the day. We handed these out for people to come over to see our work.

The gallery itself was quite a nice size for our exhibition as it allowed for a cozy environment when viewing the artwork. However it was absolutely freezing throughout the entire exhibition and even when indoors the room offered near zero shelter from the cold. This was by far the biggest downer of the exhibition day because I feel that if the room had been warmer both the audience who came to view the work and us putting the work on display would have felt a lot more comfortable.

 It made me feel happy when I saw that so many people had showed up to the exhibition. Everyone seemed to take a lot of pride and interest in our work and people were keen on asking us lots of questions on how we went about making our machinima animations. I think it was a definite confidence booster to see that so many people took interest in our work despite how cold the gallery itself was.

All in all I enjoyed the exhibition quite a lot but I felt that It could have looked a lot better and had a better environment. The gallery was beyond freezing and I heard quite a few people commenting on this as they were walking around the premises. If we were to have another exhibition it would be nicer to use a less industrial environment like the gallery we used this time. I couldn't understand why we didn't organize to use the gallery that is on our college grounds, its clean, warm and welcoming.  I do think it was quite a success however and would like to do another exhibition again when I have time to further improve my skills as an artist.