Extra Credit - CTN 2014

Proof of CTNx 2014 attendance.

Extra Credit: Lighting a Scene in Maya

 1 point

 2 point

3 Point

I'm not 100% sure if I did the lighting right for this one, especially in the third light?

I did play around more with Maya's physical sun and sky though.

Building a Scene in Maya

Special Effects in Animation and Live-Action

My first two term paper scores were 92 and 94; I will not be writing a third term paper.

Outline for the Third Term Paper

Special effects have always been a big part of film and animation. In the past few decades directors and filmmakers have taken advantage of advances in technology to create more and more special effects to wow the audience. One of the more recent effects has been being able to create a spinning environment in which the character must survive in.

Inception

• Inception is about a group of strategists working together to convince the subconcious of a business owner of a decision against his will
• In the film Joseph Gordon Levitt's character, Arthur, combats dream security in a hotel room, and when his body has the sensation of falling, the hotel hallway begins to spin
• the way this scene was shot was the hotel room was actually built, and made to actually spin with the actors in it
• a camera was attached to the “floor” of the hallway, so as the room spun, it looked liked the characters were being tumbled about
• if the room was longer in one direction, the spinning effect spun too quickly, cause the stunt team to lose control and risk injury, to fix this the machine was purposely rigged to spin slower, if it was spinning on the long side of the rectangular environment so the actors could catch up before falling
• ex. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PhiSSnaUKk
• ex. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnPMCxPSeRM

Gravity

• In Gravity Sandra Bullock plays Ryan Stone who must survive and escape a severely damaged space telescope, and somehow return back to earth.
• The way these scenes were shot were done by creating a room/environment that was spinnable
• some of these scenes even suspended Bullock with wires, while the room spun around her
• the wires were taken out with green screen, to create the effect that she was in space.
• ex. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2U8juidXC8
• ex. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXGT4QOQn3U

Effects like these are absolutely stunning to an audience, as it leaves them in awe as to how it was done. This movie magic just keeps bringing them back time and time again, to experience stories larger than life.

Character Animation

For this project I worked with Christon Han and Russell Alindogan. We spent some time brainstorming, until we came up with the idea of a pose mannequin getting revenge on a human character playing with it.

 

Christon created some basic boards so we would remember what scenes were needed for the short film. We decided to have Russell be the human character in the film, because he proviced the best expressions, and acting. Both Christon and I helped direct Russell into pose and take photos for the animation. Christon also animated and posed most of the mannequin's poses, and I found the appropriate sound and music for the film's quirky nature.

Using a mannequin turned out very useful, as we were able to have the character "stand" without too much difficulty. When all the needed photos were done, they were compiled together in after effects for the final film.

Here's the final film!