my sky shot for dave.

Grace

Seeing Green...

(green being the colour of finished shots on the shot list)

signed off on the night sky, hayley, good job.

as far as i can see the eyes are lookin good grace, i've checked off those shots now.

from lookin at the shots so far its obviouse we are gonna be doin alot of clour work tomorrow to tie it all together (that is not to say they are not lookin good as individual shots, just that when we put them together its aparent that the colours gonna vairy). but that hopefully wont take too long.

~Dave

Night Sky Shot

I got something into video format so I hope this works. Here's the night sky shot. I did the evening sky one as well earlier on in the week but I'll save it for the show reel. I just wanted to share this one as after a whole day of screaming at computer and colour correcting at snail pace on other shots (Im so AE illiterate its not funny I know T_T) this is done enough to show. I painted the backing board also in this shot and arranged the twigs on a blue screen to photo. (For those who didn't see me cellotaping things artfully to a wall in the basement XD).


~Hayley

Good stuff everybody

hey dave here are 3 more shots with eyes what do you think?




Grace

Awesome, more shots...

looking good grace, have you played about with the colour correction?

for that scene and the boat scene, i forgot to tell everyone, not to do the whole dowm with red, up with blue malark, as its ment to be still light and around afternoon just before sunset. i haven't got a deffinate colour correction for this as i haven't done one of those scens yet (james might know i'll ask him), but i pressume it'll pretty much be up with red, play about with green, and down with blue, so as to create a warmer atmosphere.

yeah i've been trying a few other methods for the eyes, none of which are perfect, how did you do yours? The eyes move around a tiny bit but that'll probably do, tis hard to tell on shuch a small vid screen.

keep up the good work...

~Dave

hey dave here u r check this....

Eyes

i am finding the eyes difficult and my computer is so slow but iv done this and am working on others,what do you think Dave?i got your text earlyer i have done this but its not quite the way you showed me how because i cant seem to make my computer do it but im still trying! Grace

Good Job Hayley...

Tis lookin good hayley, done well. as you said on the phone though, it does look a little pale/washed out, maybe tweek the levels a little bit.

if you haven't done it already...

Right click on the adjustent layer > Effects > Colour correction > levels > in this menue under the part called 'histogram' adjust only the right hand and middle upward facing arrow directly under the graph like image (theres no need to adjust the others)

you shouldn't need to do too much but this should make the image more crisp and contrasted.

to anyone reading the instructions on the post befor last...

first part was only relevent in context of what i was saying at the time to hayley (which was about adjusting the images, that you should be doing all of your sdjustments in an adjustment layer) the rest of the instructions are just about gettin started.

you all should have my number and hopefully got my text earlier, if you have any problems with after effect, no matter how stupid they sound, call me so we can sort it out quick (if you are worried about credit text me and i'll call you back).

~Dave

Is this ok?

Just posting here so David can ok my current colour correction.

Here's a comparision. Might not be 100% the same as all monitors seem different but it will give a rough idea.

~Hayley

Just to forward some instructions

David kindly wrote me some notes while he put after effects on my laptop and asked if I could upload them here as other people will probably find them helpful so heres a copy paste:

Create new adjustment layer. so you dont have to change all frames.

open after efects

create a new composition (1024 x 576 , 25fps, square pixels, field= no field - progressive scan) and folder, name them botht with the shot number and brief description


open up folder (out side oof after effects) and drag al frames into the folder you've just created, double check frames are still in order

highlight all frames and drag into the composition that you just created

with all the frames highlighted drag them all to 2 frames in length

click off and re highlight form top to botom then, right click on them > keyframe assist > sequence layers > OK

make sure composistion and work area are the right length....composision > composition settings > duration

~ Notes written by Dave posted by Hayley

hey peeps

merry xmas and hppy new year to all.

dave do you have photos of trees or general scenery that i can whack in to replace the bluescreen?if so can you email me them. thanks for that choker thigy aswell.
Grace

Back to business...

Hi everyone,

Hope everyone had a pleasant and productive Christmas. We are back into Hey Negrita full swing now so lets make the last final push to the finish line.

In terms of footage we are not dreadfully far off completion. I'm sure some of us will be able to animate some more shots before we start back at uni on the 4th. Dave, if you want I will be able to come round tomorrow afternoon, and Saturday and Sunday evening (after 5pm) to animate some more shots, but while you have access to the set it would be obviously be worth you doing some more yourself.

Grace, your shot looks very good, although the jump is quite evident in the middle, but that can be easily fixed. I think you just need to shift the image down in After Effects so it is aligned with the frames either side.

Myself, I have been finessing shots that we have completed so far, by which I mean adding eyeballs, eyelids, and where necessary freezing backgrounds to stop the trees falling over. I'm not doing any colour correction for the moment because we can do the lot in one batch near the very end of the project to get a consistancy. Please could this apply to anyone who is working on their shots at home, do everything to it that it needs, but leave the colour correction for later.

Talking of eyeballs, we have a lot to add. Most shots are filmed without the physical drawn on eyes, so this means we'll have to add them all in post production, some frames involving 5 characters. This is a time consuming but key step, and after a little research me and Dave discovered that tracking a black dot to characters' eyes in After Effecs is the quickest and easiest method for doing this. Hopefuly one of us'll get a step by step tutorial of how to do this up on the blog, for everyone's use.

So not much else needs to be said... apart from let's all be in Monday morning at 9am (you may have all got the same e-mail from Jordan telling you this), and it will be very important so we can collate all our shots and have a looks at where we are and what needs to be done. Basically we'll have a week after we start back to have the film all but finished.

Let's keep going, I salute you all and trust our finished film wil be excellent.

- James

Late Merry Christmas to all...

I hope everyone had a very merry and relaxing Christmas, i didn't do any work in the end, between travailing home and back and seeing friends there really wasn't time for anything but sleep. It was nice to have a little break though.

Yesterday I set up the cabin set in its new location (my room) and then James and Ben came round and did some animating. James got one shot done and Ben got three so we had quite a productive day.

Hey grace, it’s nice to hear from you. I think the effect you’re looking for is the 'simple choker' under the 'matte' option in the effects panel. The shot is looking good so far. A few things you might want to consider though; there seems to be a frame that jumps a bit at around the 1second mark (you’ve probably noticed) (we found out the other day that if you hold ctrl and press the direction buttons, on after effects, you can scroll through the clip frame by frame), maybe try adding a pause at the start and when bill is at the window so that its clear bills looking out the window and play about with the lighting and colour a little bit, the shot takes place around about afternoon time, if that’s any help.

Looking forward to seeing your other shots, keep us posted.

~Dave

question to dave

hey man, merry xmas to all!!
i just want to know whilst blue screening on after fx where do i find that tool thats like a tighterning for the blue screen?do you know what i mean? Grace

a test.

i done this test of bill, let me know what you guys think. i have been working on the shots we have done over the holidays. my after fx is abit slowand crappy been having trouble with the raw files cus they so big and blue screening. Grace

Its been quite a while since my last post, the vids comming along well, although a bit behind schedule (which was to be expected) we're over half way now and overall its lookin good.

Today me and james did more of the boat scene, 3 quite long shots which involved a fair bit of action and a camera move (i had hoped to get these done last fri but due to camera and lighing issues they took longer than expected) whilst james was animating i made a few more engine parts for the next shots.

We also had a little play about with adding in pupils on after effects, which i think will work quite well. This has also made me realise just how much post production work there is to do, finishing the animation is just the beginning of a whole new world of work.

(I'll try and post more next time).

~Dave

post number 60 whoop whoop!

where to start, its been a while since i last posted.

feedback:

Hayley's post #1...
firstly as you know we have been using both the background for the set, so it wasn't a waste of time for either of you, which is always a good thing.
yeah it is aparent that we have been a bit ambitious, and there are many ways in which we could have aproached the project that might have been easier, but who knows. we're here now so lets just work with what we've got. the stuff we've produced so far, allbeit minnimal, does look pretty good and if we work hard hopefully we'll get it done.
sorry about the camera hayley, i didn't actually mean to leave it in uni, if i had i would have left the charger, but done well for gettin on.

Jordan's post...
i beat you to it with that little gem of a music vid, was one of my first posts i think.

James's post...
those dungerees really did the trick, bills looking sutably awesome, which is nice.

i think if we put a bit more time into it, that float shot could work, but as grace said we might avoid this shot if it becomes too much work, good job for such a short amount of time.

Grace's post...
the boats lookin good, although as we found out the depth wasn't figured out correctly (sorry about that), but thats been sorted out now.
One thing about Paul S's walk is that it needs arm movement, that aside, nice work on the animation.

Hayley's post #2...
I do agree with hayley on the shirt, they shouldn't have been cut off so hastely. but i don't think there gonna fall apart and there would be no reason to point figures if they did, everyones doing the best they can with what they have and learning as they go, and that all you can really ask of someone.

Grace's post #2...
good job on the turn arounds. and its nice to see some of the trees, the only thing is if we're wanting to use them for blue screening we might have to do them again, as they might need to be from a lower angle and off the set so that theres no twigs in the background.

That shuffle walkin came in handy the other day, i agree with grace that this is the way foward for alot of the shots with most/all of the band in, although it woul be nice to have some full band walking we probably don't have the time.

What have i been doing...

i've been workin on the schedual quite a bit lately, and although its been hard to keep to it for the past couple of days, i'll e-mail everyone an updated version by the end of today. also, i was thinking its gonna be very hard to complete this by the 23rd so i think we should be prepaird to move the sets to another location and continue after christmas. The options we have here are either Ben's spair room or my room. I'm lucky enough to have quite a big bedroom and i think it wouldn't be hard to fit one or both of the sets in my unused floor space (i also have a spare table to put it on already in my room). So we can either have one at mine and one at bens or both at one persons, the only thing is that we only have one set of lights. what does everyone think about this?

Bill's head development....


Heres a test animation of Bill, firstly the aspect raitio is wrong because i shot it with the camera too close, so when i re-scaled it too much was cropped off, also the table props and chair move at points, so i need to make sure to stick everything down next time and it could do with a few more inbetweens. Overall, although it has its fualts i am quite pleased with the outcome.

Well heres a test i've done for the blue screen walking camera pan shot, i used the animation hayley did of Niel walking in front of the blue screen, a photo of the set i found on my hard drive, and the foreground trees from the animatic with a few ajustments.

As you can see its far from perfect but it only took a max of an hour to complete, from figuring it out to final render; and as you can see, i used quite a poor image for the background with terrilble lighting and the foreground trees are 2D, so with a little bit more work i think it could work really well. what does everyone think?

woow that was a long post for those of you who made it this far, thanks for puttin the time in.

i forgot this test.

i done this test of them walking by shuffling, i think this technique will work for medium shots eg waiste upwards. let me know what you guys think.

james and hayley have started shooting now and we will continue into next week and as long as it takes for everybody to shoot really.

Grace

tests and turnaround

here are the turn arounds we done , me and hayley done them, i done the trees.

Grace

Character Line Up - Responce

I love how prolific the stop motion team is, you are certainly the most active on th blog

Live is really coming together.

I'm sure you have noticed/worked on many of teh things i am about to say but here they are anyway.

All charcters need hands
Armature can been seen on PROFT T's leg and neck, fix some how
Felix could do with some dark red braces (or other suitable colour)
Ogre is awesome, head needs to match hand skin tone

Another photo with instruments and completed characters would be great.

Jordan

Nice

Also, in next line up add digital pupils so I can show client