Compositing and Special Effects

September 02, 2018

Compositing and Special Effects

(Week 1- Week 14)

Module:Compositing & Special Effects - MMD60504

Tulekova Arailym (0326122)

Week 1

Lecture

27 of August, 2018

I missed this class because I just came from home-country, but what I found out from my classmates and this module outline that during whole semester we will have three projects to do including Final project. Also the most used program in these classes will be Adobe After Effects.

Tutorial

31 of August, 2018

There was no class today cause of public holiday. Anyway Mr.Kannan posted exercise for us to do explained in video, so we can still learn some skills at home. Moreover he posted few other video tutorials and articles that could be interesting.

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Week 2

Lecture

3 of September, 2018

Today Mr. Kannan showed us how to use some tools in after effects as well as a few tricks that we can use whenever we deal with animation. Moreover he listed down all the short cut keys to save more time during process.

R - rotation
S - scale
P - position
M - mask
T - opacity
A - anchor point/light attribute/camera attribute
Ctrl + S - save
Ctrl + Shift + S - save as
E - efx's
U - on/off applied keyframes
~ - fit to the screen
Y - Change position of the anchor point
N - to make the viewer/ work area smaller
Space bar/ control + 0 - preview or play
Alt + [] - to delete the length frame

Lecturer also showed the steps on how to do a Replacement of object/ Graphic (E.g. background)/ video elements.

Make sure you highlight your layer on timeline
+ Highlight the image on project window
Hold + Alt drag and drop the new object on the layer that you want to change

Also Mr. Kannan gave as exercise based on video that he showed us in class called "12 Principles of Animation" . We were supposed to do it in After Effect using box shape.

After this class we need to start thinking about our first project . The main theme for this project is " Technological Impact " and we can choose any movie title sequences to recreate in this project or just create our own. For next class our task is to create a mood board with sketches so we can start to work on our storyboard.
Moodboard:

Font
Styles
Color palettes
Design

Tutorial

7 of September, 2018

Today Mr. Kannan briefly explained how Adobe Effect works and what we can do in this program
On the tutorial class Mr. Kannan asked us to refresh our online journals on the activities that we did and he demonstrated us tips on making a mood board. These are what I put in notes class from Mr. Kannan today.

Steps to good Mood board:

Search for inspirational pictures as a references
Distinguish from every one of the references you are utilizing
Compose a short portrayal on what you needed to use from the components you discover (style guides, hues, fonts, and so forth.).

After mood boards we have to start working on thumbnails.

Thumbnails are fundamentally ideation of how your idea and composition will look at the end.

We completed a short exercise to experiment with the instruments that we can use in After Effects where Mr. Kannan demonstrated us the tools such as making Lines in a gradient color form, morphing, repeating, trim paths, wiggle, looping, etc.

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Week 3

Lecture

10 of September, 2018
Today was no class cause of public holiday so Mr. Kannan shared a few tutorials on Facebook for us as exercises .

Tutorial

14 of September, 2018

Today Mr. Kannan taught us how to use "Audio Spectrum" effect. There is what I came out with:

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Week 4

Lecture
17 of September, 2018
Today was no class cause of public holiday so Mr. Kannan shared a few tutorials on Facebook for us as exercises .

Tutorial
21 of September, 2018

In this class Lecturer showed us how to use tool named "puppet pin" we were supposed to choose any picture with face. Then place all the pins on facial parts and edges so later we can move them and change the facial expression. There is what I did:

After that Mr. Kannan divided us to groups of three people, so we can complete next exercises. Our task was to create a simple composition based on what we already learned using shapes and texts. There is our work that we came out with :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOtRKEK6IEg&feature=youtu.be

After the activity, Mr. Kannan clarified that we should have discussed design together on what we needed to do before we begin doing the creation with no course. Arranging is an essential piece of the procedure to guarantee we don't stuck on the way and waste time.

For next class we need to download Animation composer.

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Week 5

Lecture/Tutorial
Today we had consultation sessions about First Projects.
On the tutorial Mr. Kannan briefed us about our second project- Matte Painting. He showed us a lot of examples of matte painting.

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Week 7

Lecture/Tutorial
Mr. Kannan taught us how to paint with the select tool and textures in Adobe Photoshop using Wacom tablet in class. We carried out exercises painting a ball and rock with silhouettes with light areas. This exercise is for Compositing Special effects painting matte project and also one shot for our games design artwork painting.

Always remember all scenery landscapes have 'V' shapes everywhere.

These are my exercise done in class:

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Week 8

Lecture/Tutorial
On Friday class, Mr. Kannan checked our 5 Paint matte drafts and told us to choose one that we think we can do as the best. After that, he proceed to teach us more about how to do matte painting through various ways. One of them is we can use 3D max to create to depth. He also showed us painting matte video tutorials from Youtube.
Geometry shapes is not necessary to add depth as it is cuboid and flat. But, using organic shapes may be more difficult as it requires depth, for example, a forest setting.

p.1

p.2 ,3.

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Week 9

Lecture/Tutorial
We had a consultation session with Mr. Kannan about our painting matte project.
I've chosen one of the sketches with floating Islands and started to search for the pictures that I can use for my Matte Painting.
On the consultation Mr.Kannan suggested for me to search for bridge that fits the perspective and add details that will move to look it more interactive.

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Week 10

Lecture/Tutorial
After todays consultation I choose to add a windmill footage from the video.

I animated environment details with the puppet pin and with animation tools of after effects.

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Week 11

Lecture/Tutorial
Mid-Sem Break

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Week 12

Lecture/Tutorial
We were briefed on our final project in class. Our final project's theme is abstract, with a good instrumental song and motion graphics (2D/3D) which matches with the beat. We can choose any song for our project, but it should be without any lyrics.

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Week 13

Lecture/Tutorial
Consultation with Mr. Kannan on Monday class about our final motion graphic project; Music, mood board, sketches/storyboard.

On Friday, we had a consultation class as well. After showing the start scene of my motion graphics, Mr. Kannan said that I need to play more with the animation effects in the After effect and make my motion more dynamic and interesting .

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Week 14

Lecture/Tutorial
We had consultation session on Friday class for a short while before we leave to proceed with our works.

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