Having completed the final project, project 2 saw the first attempts at some special mapping and post-editing methods, and lens-wise I did some testing for FMP.
In this film I was responsible for set construction, texture mapping, character animation, lighting, rendering, post editing and soundtrack.
This week I continued with the facial expression character animation, as I was not happy with the previous week’s spline, which was too fast, so I first changed the spline to slow down the overall pace.
Then I started tweaking details such as the fingertips not coming to the table at the same time, the head movement being more like a bouncing blob, the face having a richer expression, the accuracy of the mouthpiece matching the audio and the timing difference between the arm and head movements. The character animation course was very rewarding, I learnt to move the drawing step by step, I knew some techniques and I grew to love this part of character animation.
Continuing to change my dissertation this week, I have added subheadings to the title of my dissertation, and I intend to use Roger Deakins’ example to justify my title.
I went on to write the section on Research Methodology, as well as breaking out the topics and content of each chapter.
This week I continued to work on the character animation part of the facial expressions, firstly I modified the blocking-plus part to include more intermediate frames, then I switched the curves to spline to add more detail.
This week’s project enters its final part with the start of editing as well as the soundtrack.
I changed the title of my thesis again this week. The previous title was hardly a worthwhile discussion; I couldn’t keep praising the talents of one director, and it would be too difficult and narrow to discuss just one director of photography with too many variables, so I changed it more to explore how the style of cinematographers has changed with the times and technology.
From this I will list some well-known directors of photography and films to help me complete my thesis.
This week I started working on the blocking-plus for the facial expression character animation, first I modified some of the keyframe animations and shots, then added some of the keyframes and made them match the audio better.
This week we started post-production of some of the finished rendered footage, mainly using nuke colour grading and pr for editing and post-compositing. The switching of the two scenes is a very important shot in the film and will be brighter with this editing and compositing technique.
As I continue to write my thesis this week, I’m gradually starting to open up my mind and throw out questions such as: How did Roger Deakins design the lens? How does he use similar shots to show completely different eras, plots under different films.
The character animation of facial expressions continued this week. Firstly, I started with the animation in blocking mode to help with later changes, and I k-framed the key expressions, and languages.
This week I’ll be partially rendering footage for post production, colour grading with nuke, using pr to create the Tyndall effect, adding subtitles etc.
This week kicked off with a new character animation, this time focusing on facial expressions as well as upper body body movements, I chose lines from Joker from 《 Batman: The Dark Knight 》with a performance of my own creation.
Reference
Sketches
For the introduction section of my dissertation this week, I looked up a large number of books as well as papers on Roger Deakins and searched for several of his iconic, award-winning films such as: 《Blade Runner 2049》, 《1917》, focusing on his unique aesthetic in the field of photography.