Saturday 29 March 2008

Completed!

The composited film is now completed!

Final editing, title animation, credits, DVD menu and cover is all done in the past few days. This work load was separated up to make it more efficient, at the very end, we put them all in premiere before the final rendering.

Before final rendering, we decided to ask our supervisor and lecturers for some comments. With some useful comments, we decided to cut down the film from 6 min (approx) to 3 mins (approx)and also added some extra bits inbetween to make the movie flow better and easier to understand.

After editing some parts, we all watched the film and all approved to render out as a final film and burnt it on to DVD.

Asset folder is all now together inside a folder, DVD will be burnt shortly, separated to the film as the files are too big.

Completed film and assets files DVDs will be all handed in first thing on Monday

-Mary

Tuesday 25 March 2008

Post Production and Final Editing

In the last 3 weeks, all animation and editing is completed. Gremlins are all animated, shadowed by adding lighting and planes (which is set as background texture) in Maya.

Throughout animating, some problems were involved. We went back to the library to record some more footage and also filmed outside of the library for us to use for the beginning of our film.

Each member has now rendered out their own work in After Effect. All Maya files were rendered as .iff files then import to after effect for more post-production. To make gremlin and the props look like they are part of the footage, we use tools such as masking and effects such as blue, grain and brightness to adjust.

Each member produced their own individual scenes, and also worked together on scenes when more than one gremlin was shown. Once composition was complete for each scene, it is all rendered out with the original footage in high quality QuickTime format (.mov).

Sound is also recorded in Garageband; this includes sound effects and gremlin voices, which were rendered as mp3. (We all record our own sound for our gremlin)
Soundtrack has also been made in garage band.

Because Harn is took less part in animation, she has been organising the footage together in Premier pro, putting the footage in the layout of the animatic, staying true to the original idea. Sound is also being worked on and is currently being added into the film.

The final editing will be completed as a group, this will involve organising titles, adding credits, DVD menu and cover and making sure the film flows before rendering out it as final film-This will be discuss and worked on tomorrow. After final product is produced, very shortly we will organise an audience testing to get feedback.

-Mary

Tuesday 4 March 2008

Post Presentation and production

The Presentation passed by and it went well, we presented our 3D models and in the last few weeks have been completing animating.

The edited library footage has been imported into maya and projected through a camera so we can animate our gremlins against a background. Each team member has animated their own section of the film using scenes, and we will be putting all individual bits together at the end. In parts of the film where a group of gremlins are shown we will be doing shared animation - sharing the maya file and adding each gremlin in individually.

What is greatly important is shadows and lighting, which is what we are currently working on in our scenes now that animating is pretty much sorted. Use of the two will help to make the gremlins look more real and also like they are part of the 2D footage, which is very important!! We have been looking into methods of adding shadows in through maya and also through after effects, to see which will give us the best results.

We are also looking into a soundtrack and thinking about what kinds of sound we will be using :)

-Harn