Project Evaluation

This project has been a huge help to myself, and to the rest of the group. I've learnt a lot about communication, techniques and different skills required to make such a project like this. All of which can be used in the future.

In working with many talented people I have learnt a lot, and this is because of the different key areas the group compromised of. I have learnt how to model better, learnt how to planar map the textures, and I've learnt at what is doable in the time we had to make it. I truly believe what we created was superb, we hit all of the right notes when creating it, and that's all I can honestly ask for. Maya as a whole is far more accessible to me, before I could only really animate in the program, but now I can do a lot more. I managed to model a crane and an animated pumpjack, which I'm admittedly quite happy about.

I managed to take the skills of lighting I have in photography and apply them to the film. I could also somewhat apply other skills I have in photography to help us, much to my joy. I informed the team of what would give off a far more cinematic feel, and I truly believe using a 2.39:1 (also known as 2.35:1) aspect ratio really helped give off the feel we wanted to go for with it. I made sure that we'd go with that aspect ratio, especially since many of our favourite films use it. My skills with After Effects have also greatly improved, before I could only do basic things, but now the scope I can use to realise my vision has been expanded. Luckily for me I know a fair amount about Photoshop, and I can now see the parallels between the two applications.

We encountered a few issues on the way, most notably with the rendering side of things. For example, we had to render each shot out on our laptops in order to get it done. The way we created the textures was an issue for us, because we hadn't been told mental ray had to be used with tifs for the textures. For the most part the textures we used were jpegs. Other aspects such as lighting just didn't work with mental ray, because we weren't told of how to do it. Having said this I'm extremely happy with the lighting I managed to create, and the final renders of the piece.

I believe (and hope!) I contributed well within the group. However, one of the things I can criticize myself on was the lack of enthusiasm at the beginning of the project. This was mainly due to a few personal issues, but after a while I managed to pull myself together. In having a few issues, I was sometimes reluctant to work, but at the end of the day I've got to look past the issues and just get on with it. I also wish I put a bit more effort into the conceptual side of things, but after seeing the work of Chris it was clear to me he had the same vision myself and the rest of the group had for the project. I immensely enjoy concept artwork, so it saddens me I didn't put a bit more effort into creating some.

Although this project was occasionally quite stressful for all of us, it was also incredibly enjoyable. As I've mentioned, I've learnt a hell of a lot, and many of the things I've learnt can be applied to things in the future. The group I worked with all shared their own aspects of talent, but many of the skills we had were shared between us all. We were also all very committed, working late pretty much every day for the last 4 or so weeks, even to the point of ordering a Domino's Pizza twice in the last two weeks so that we could eat whilst we worked! I'd just like to end on saying that working with Andy, Alex, Ben and Chris was absolutely phenomenal, and although we did occasionally have our differences we all realised the vision we set out to create. Thanks for such an awesome project, and I look forward to hopefully working with you all again in the future!

Submission

We have finally submitted our short film project! I'm very happy with the final outcome, and I'm very proud of what myself and the rest of the group have accomplished.

Sadly however, we had to compress the film quite heavily since the rendering in full 720p was taking far too long within the deadlines we had. We have however all agreed to re-render the film in the highest possible quality when we get more time.

First shot rendered!

Busy busy busy times! Here's the first shot after the hangar door opens.

http://www.vimeo.com/9781612

Pump jack now textured!

Here you go guys! Finished and textured fully.

Crane now textured!

Here you go peeps! I'm pretty happy with the textures I've given the crane, and hopefully you will be too! I've also done a basic render to showcase some basic lighting.

Progress of the Crane

Modeling modeling modeling, that's all I've been doing! I must say it's been incredibly awesome learning how to model properly with Maya, especially since I haven't really ventured into the modeling side of things until now. I'll soon be texturing both this and the crane in the coming days, I just wish to first fine-tune a few issues with both of the models.

Progress of the Pump Jack

Here's the development of the pump jack! You can see what appear to be a few anomalies, however these will eventually be textures applied onto them.

Lighting examples: Sunset

In order to create a decent lighting feel, looking at sunset lighting truly does help us in our knowledge of how the world should look.

Lighting examples

I think it is in the interest of the project to highlight the importance of lighting in this piece.

Since the start of the project I've been researching into different forms of lighting to create something that echoes that of film. We all want something that shows the environments true atmosphere, so hopefully by looking at the work in film, it can give us a good example of how to do this!

Blade Runner

Cinematographer: Jordan Cronenweth

When it comes to Blade Runner, I must admit I'm a bit of a fanboy. The film is in my eyes absolutely flawless, it is truly superb. Not only is the story brilliant, but also visually speaking it is breathtaking. The films cinematographer was Jordan Cronenweth, his visual representation of the world is in my eyes is some of the best there has been in film. The way he got his team to assemble the lighting was amazing, with its wonderful negative space, and blue colour grading it creates and sets a tone that goes well with the characters.





2001: A Space Odyssey

Cinematographer: Geoffrey Unsworth

Like Blade Runner; 2001 is a true masterpiece. The film was planned to be photographed in 3-film-strip Cinerama (like How the West Was Won), but was changed to Super Panavision 70 (which uses a single-strip 65 mm negative) on the advice of special photographic effects supervisor Douglas Trumbull, due to distortion problems with the 3-strip system. The lighting is for the most part quite basic, or at least it looks basic from the point of view of the viewer. Once you investigate more it is very apparent that lighting is the key to the film, so this is why I will chose to research into the films lighting a little bit more.





Wall-E

Cinematographer: Roger Deakins

Wall-E is a very good one to look at because it is a computer generated film to start off with, in being CG we can look at it in more depth. I feel Wall-E is also visually very similar to what we wish to achieve, but obviously Wall-E is on a far greater scale than what a few people with laptops can do. But in terms of the lighting it is simply gorgeous, the screen I've uploaded should demonstrate that.

Depth of Field

As I mentioned in the aspect ratios post, depth of field is very important for the film.

There are a few misconceptions with depth of field.

Firstly something that is fully in focus has what's called a large depth of field, since it's all in focus. Whereas something with a shallow depth of field only focuses some of the scene. So saying something such as "this image has a lot of depth of field" to an image that really has a shallow depth of field is infact completely wrong.

Depth of field relies on the aperture of the camera, if I were to shoot a picture with f22, it is pretty much a given the scene will all be in focus. If however I were to shoot a scene in f1.8 you will get a lot of the image out of focus.

f1.8



f22



I hope to use the right aperture with each scene to create something that echoes that of actual film.

Aspect Ratios

Although this is more to do with post production, it is important to sort this all out now, especially since I'm the cinemaphotographer of the project.

We have all agreed to go with what is essentially the science fiction standard, which is 2.35:1 (more commonly referred to as 2.39:1 and 2.40:1 nowadays). This is used in films to create a wide image of viewing.

A few examples below:

Wall-E



Blade Runner



2001: Space Oddysey



In using this aspect ratio, I hope we can give off a cinematic feel to the piece. In usiong the right depth of field along with this, we should be able to get something that truly looks as if it belongs in the theatre.

More research!

We need more! So here we go!

Mine research

Here are a bunch of images taken from the internet, this will help us realise exactly how the mine should look. Many of the mines I'm baffled by in researching into them! Somewhat otherworldly, which is EXACTLY what we need.

Sand and Snow concepts

Here are two quick concepts I created to demonstrate the look and feel for either of the two settings. Personally I do not have a preference, and it really does depend on which will be "easier" to accomplish. The problem I have with setting the environment in snow (although it would look awesome) is how much tougher creating the snow would be. I would want it to contain the shine and feel that snow truly has, and at our current stage I really do not believe this to be possible. As a group we are I believe siding more with sand, but we've still got to give it a lot of consideration.

Jungle concept

Here's a quick concept I had created, although it is doubtful we'll be going with a jungle theme for our project I thought it'd be in good practice to do one!

Halo

Halo is a big inspiration to us, and although the game does not feature a similar world to what we want to achieve, I believe many of the buildings and architecture we are creating reflect what was created by Bungie. We are all big fans of the game, and so it is quite obvious a lot of our inspiration comes from the game. However, having said this, we are trying to look at what inspired Bungie in the architecture and world, so that it can hopefully inspire ourselves.

WW2 research

In order to help us create something unique, we have to look at many of the things that inspired many of the great science fiction vehicles, many of which stem from real life! I feel looking at many of the vehicles from World War 2 will be of great help to us.