This week I did all the compositings work and finally editing and also dubbing and adding some transitions.

Compositing

I put all the layers sequences into After Effects and then I tweaked them separately for some effects like the curves and brightness and contrast. Finally I put the default compositing into a new sequences and extract the Z depth and adjust the focal length by that. Furthermore I add another adjust layer to edit the color into a shade of orange with some glow effect.

Final Editing

After composting for all the sequences, I drag them into Pr and replace as previous playblast video. I seems quickly get a nice effect. And I find some free BGM which suits the mood and tone of the video. I roughly adjusted the duration of some of the clips to the rhythm of the music to make the images match the sound.

And here is the whole FMP video.

This week I optimised all the animations including add breakdown and edit animation curves, and I got some nice animation clip. And then I also set the rendering for the whole files.

Optimised Animations

Optimising animations is a very tedious task and every detail that is not in place can make the whole animation look very strange. I usually like to first adjust the curve to the keyframe animation to get the rhythm of the animation down, and then add breakdowns to refine the connections between the different poses.

Rendering Layers

After editing animations I begin to set the rendering. Thanks to my previous works, I already have a cup of nice effect images, I just need to follow their parameters to the animtion file and add some extra effects in depending on the needs of different shots. After that I will layer out the parts that are animated and layer out the parts that are not animated separately, which saves me a lot of time in rendering. Finally I need to spend time on waiting for the rendering sequence.

This week I mainly anime the keyframe for all the cut according to my storyboard, furthermore I also playblast them and put them into Pr to edit. And I get a basicly first version of the whole video without rendering.

Animation Layout

For the keyframe animation, I usually image first what kind of action I need, then I would try to perform it and record it on my phone at the same angle with the storyboard. This way I know exactly when I need to keyframe and have a better understanding of the movement of my body parts. So I use this method for all the cuts, after that playblast them.

Editing

The reason I need to edit the very first version is that find out if the shots made from the storyboard are coherent when put together, and determine more precisely the duration of each shot and of the film as a whole.

This week I mainly focus on the shader and lighting and scene rendering.

Because last week I have finished building the model of the two main scenes, so I just need the first step to play the light first, has confirmed whether I want the sense of atmosphere. And then according to last week’s look develop each asset to make materials and finally unified integration to the complete scene.

Finally, according to the previously debugged lighting rendering, in this process I used some atmosphere fog to enhance the sense of atmosphere of the image. And then I send them into After effects to composit and adjust some color tone.

Here are the high solutioned images.

This week my main job was to build the entire scene (including a bedroom workshop and a town) and to look develop all the assets to make sure they would be referenced in the scene without errors.

For this bedroom studio, I did a lot of reference works on Art Station and Pinterest. According to my script setting my character should be an artist, so his room should be stacked with all kinds of painting materials and various art books.

So I set up a set of electronic drawing boards and some painting reference models (a mannequin and a plaster head model) on the table, and I also set up a set of easels next to the table which can indicate the identity of the main character artist. In addition to that, more living details can be added in order to enrich the whole space. I added a lot more living ornaments, such as some stickers, through which the protagonist may want to remind himself to always keep smiling and other life chores. I also added some office supplies and a trash can full of garbage. All of these can suggest that my protagonist in daily life often study art and forget the time and so on.

Another small town scene, according to my initial description I looked for a lot of Gregory Crewdson’s work, he created a sense of atmosphere is exactly what I wanted, so I locked the camera in a street community, I want the protagonist standing in the middle of the road spotlight on him, surrounded by the eerie and quiet town environment.

So I looked for many neighborhood assets from the 80s and 90s (which included houses and cars on the road). I deliberately chose objects from the 80s and 90s because they represent the past, and people always selectively choose to remember the good and forget the painful, which I think has a strong sense of contrast.

These are the two main scenes in my film, and I have created separate folders for all the assets in them to look develop, which will ensure that I don’t make too many mistakes later in the operation.

Some whimsical ideas

Yes I was working on a scene and it occurred to me that I could add more surreal shots to enhance what I wanted to say about people being out of touch with their lives at work. So I decided to delete the previous shot of the bird flying over and use several hands to reach out from the main character’s chair and pull him down. In addition I might also do some pure fantasy scenes for the protagonist to walk in, such as a gorgeous world of only grasslands or let the protagonist fall in water all the time. In addition I want to rename the project Escape. That’s all 🙂

This week I will mainly create the main character which including the design and modeling and finally finish the rigging part.

Design

According to my setting, this protagonist should be a more freedom-loving character, but the story takes place in her bedroom where she usually works, so I’m going to try my best to make her dress look more everyday, but at the same time show her freedom-loving character.

So I quickly thought of Ruby, the heroine of a TV series Euphoria, whose characteristics fit my requirements, free spirited, etc. So I combined her image, and then I had some new ideas. I wanted to design a roll-dyed T-shirt for the character, which is often worn by people who are into street culture, which is also chasing freedom, unrestrained, etc., so I thought it would be a great fit.

Modeling

I quickly start to model this character. For the modeling I just follow the regular modeling principle after that I split and set the UV for whole charater. Then I import whole of it to Substance Painter for texturing.

Rigging

To complete the rigging workflow faster, this time I chose to use Advanced skeleton for joint and controler and Ngskintool for skin weights .

For the first week I mainly set up the whole script and storyboard. And thanks to Alan’s suggestion I watched so much artwork from Edward Hopper andGregory Crewdson which suits my idea well.

Script

I started to conceptualize my work. Because I wanted to express the loneliness of people in the busy city life, I set the time in the late night, and the main characters are people who work until this point. He wanted to break away from real life in this night to return to a remembered utopia, like a bird or like an animal, so I decided to name it Nocturnal Animals.

Storyboard

Based on the script I started working on the storyboard again, at this stage I had to be very careful to control the number of shots because of the limited production time.