Major: Lost Boy - Present Graeme Skeleton Complete

Life Drawing - Session 4

Minor: Lot Boy - Art of Updated

I decided to return to my art of as I ran into a lot of problems with issu  just before hand In. I didn’t realise that Issuu automatically makes the pages front facing as I designed it to not take this into account when creating the document with artboards - I had the cover page be half the size and the following bulk of the document be twice the size of the cover page, even though I did do a test upload with the first two pages which seemed to look fine it was not the case when the whole document was uploaded as the pages were squashed down as issuu read the two pages as one, making it really wide but squashed, to accommodate for this with Alans help I had to add another page after the cover page and chop the front facing pages up into individual pages which unfortunately meant that my concept art and pages that run and makes sense next to each other were chopped up in the process. It is unfortunate that I did not get my art of to look the way that I wanted it to look for hand in as I can honestly say this is the first Art of that I have created that I actually like and I think it reflects nicely the style that I am going for with my film.. But I am taking it with a pinch of salt and have learned a valuable lesson.

I decided to finesse the art of more by fixing typo’s and adding more analogue elements such as more little doodles, an about section describing the story and page numbers, I also wanted to share that during the Christmas break when I was back home in the emerald isle I asked my niece to do some drawings for me and she was giddy to oblige which I included in the Art of,  as it was Christmas my neice’s drawings were mainly Christmas related which I think is adorable and I loved putting them in the art of and hopefully Eve can do some more for me and they can be scanned over and added for the Major art of.

The other elements such as the doodles were simply fonts that I downloaded from dafont and put on a separate photoshop document and just copied over the ones I wanted on a particular page, the majority of the other elements were vectors that I mainly download from  Clipartmax Along with a few that I scanned in myself. 

MTF doodlewhats

MTF Doodle

GMDoodles_Animals

Doodle Art

Brian Powers Doodle 2

I really enjoyed doing the Art of for Lost Boy I like the way that it looks and I am happy that it reflects the film and it is nice to feel contempt with an art. 

Minor - Reflective Statement

I have throughly enjoyed the process of the minor project.
I particularly enjoyed doing the previz for Lost Boy, I love manoeuvring and manipulating cameras and lighting to try and get inside the characters shoes and to feel what they feel. I think my skills in storytelling have improved a lot and the previz really helped push this along.

It has been hard to pin things down and not let myself fly off the handle in terms of getting a film made as I cut down a lot of my ideas of shots and elements that I wanted to happen in the film - this is one thing to my own character that has been an issue, through doing the previz and trying to be as ecomic as possible and actually foretelling my capabilities of what I can achieve in the short few months for the Major hand in I think I have a good jumping off point with telling the story of Lost Boy.

I would have loved to have had at least one character rigged and skinned and to see them non-static would have been an achievement, I need to speed things up a lot more in terms of rigging and skinning as I do feel they are the most important part of bringing the character to life - I am apprehensive because of this as one slip could mess things up but I just need to have more confidence in myself and not move at such a snails pace as I really just want to start animating and directing again.

I like the look of the characters I think I have achieved the original sketchy art style of my original concept art and although I did have issues with my art of I thoroughly enjoyed designing it, I really felt like I could let myself go with it and it felt really lose and natural and I am happy with how it looks although I am going back to tweak it as there are errors and certain elements have been mistakenly chopped up.

I loved how communicative minor has felt from having meetings with Phil or Alan or nabbing them whenever I can to show them what they think of something and getting feedback and inspiration from chats about creating things has felt inspiring.

Minor has all in all just made me feel like I completely get my film now - I get the way that I want it the look, what the characters are feeling and what I want the viewers to feel and when I want them to laugh out loud or feel a smidge of sadness. I think I am on a good path going full steam ahead into major, I just need to crank things up a notch.

Minor Lost Boy - Mrs Pratt UV's

I didn't get the chance to update Mrs Pratt's turnarounds with her painted textures as part of my my minor submission But I do think I can improve the textures of all the characters furthermore.

Minor: Lost Boy submission Hand in

Young_Graeme_Texture_Turnaround_2 from Graeme Daly on Vimeo.

Mrs Pratt Tuarnaround from Graeme Daly on Vimeo.

Present Graeme Turnaround from Graeme Daly on Vimeo.

Minor: Lost Boy - Character Turnarounds

Present Graeme Turnaround from Graeme Daly on Vimeo.

Young Graeme Turnaround from Graeme Daly on Vimeo.

Mrs Pratt Tuarnaround from Graeme Daly on Vimeo.

Minor - Lost Boy - Match Moving Test

I have been testing match moving with the pre-viz in After Effects to try and get the sketchy quality of the concept art into the film. I simply brought the sketchy layers that I drew over the pre-viz render with into photoshop and used the match moving effect using this video as a guideline. I'm not completely happy with it as the photoshop elements don't match the camera movements completely as I think the match moving didn't pick up enough tracking dots, but I do enjoy trying out different ways to get the style I am going for so I am going to keep the ball rolling with this.

Lost Boy - Match Moving Test from Graeme Daly on Vimeo.

Minor: Lost Boy - Pre-viz

Lost Boy Pre-Viz Screenshot

I thoroughly enjoyed animating and editing the Pre-viz for Lost Boy but especially directing. I learned a lot from doing this especially with camera movements and how a certain shot can really put you into the shoes of that characters emotions to feel what they feel, I found myself constantly questioning why this shot is needed and I ended up filming more shots than was required and had to cut things out. I had a lot more ideas of things that I wanted to happen with them being more amplified and exaggerated such as the cracking screen scene - I originally wanted present Graeme's face to crack and shatter and not the background, I also wanted the malignant figures in the airport to melt into an ocean and have shark fins swim around present Graeme as he rotates in his hellish airport nightmare.. but to get things done I need to be cut throat and think about where I am putting my money as I don't want my ambitious to leave me thwarted.

I enjoyed incorporating cinematic elements into the previz with crane shots and close ups and blending between scenes used to its advantage, being provided with the crane, pan, roll and pitch camera rigs on the tutorial website really helped along with an amazing camera rig called Josh cam which I cannot fathom how helpful it has shown to be, this short video describes how robust this camera rig is and I would advice anyone with dynamic shots to give it a whirl  (its free!)

To get the black outline seen throughout the pre-viz I just slapped on a cartoon effect to all the clips in after effects which I think shows nicely how the film will look with sketchiness of the concept art. The 2D elements of the pre-viz are not as controlled as I would like but they will be in the final film, I do want to add more 2D elements into the film along with impact and smoke effects for the cigarette and when the passport poofs into thin air. I watched Cool World during the Christmas (its on Netflix!) after being advised by Alan which is directed by Ralph Bakshi and I am in love with his style, I have been getting inspiration for 2D smoking effects from this along with the stunning backgrounds which inspired the red and blue sky in the art room scene as I originally had those play blasted with a black sky but I decided to re-playblast them with the new sky as I think it adds more emotion to the scene. 

Cool World Screenshot

Sound is really important to the telling of Lost boy. I got sounds from multiple websites, a great one called Zapsplat as well as getting the Motion Pulse pack created by Andrew Kremer for video copilot which is basically all of the more impactful and base heavy sounds, it really added a different atmosphere and gave it a nice impactful oomph.  

I wanted to work as efficiently as possible with the previz and in doing so I played around with dynamic workflow as  it speeds up your work twofold if not more. Dynamic link basically is an in-between program that works behind the scenes with Premiere Pro and after effects and lets you work on one program while the other updates live, you don't have to be faffing about with importing files - so if you use premiere to edit and dynamic link to after effects to composite as after effects has so much more capabilities for effects and then you can export it out through premiere. I will definitely be using this from now on, unfortunately I did run into some issues where files weren't showing as they did in after affects after linking from premiere so certain chunks of the film had to be edited and rendered in after effects alone and then re-imported back into premiere with the effects. 

Now that I have the general flow going for the shots I am going to start contacting composers to get the sound right for Lost Boy and also create a shotlist.

Premiere Pro Workflow

After Effects Dynamic Link Workflow

Lost Boy Pre-Viz from Graeme Daly on Vimeo.