Idea 3: Student Support

Idea 3: Student Support


Idea 3: My other main idea, is an advertisement for a student counselling service. As a high school student, I was involved in the Student Support Team, which was a counselling service for students run by students. My idea involes following an individual who is slightly out of sync with his environment. This would involve a lot of rotoscoping and matte painting.

Samaritans advert by CentralSouth

I liked the idea of combining the illustrative and real life to visually create the effect of being out of step with reality. I wanted to take a character and make him and take away the colour and the detail, he could be anyone. This would require a lot of rotoscoping and matte painting.

These are just ideas and not so much a storyboard, but the main two shots are I think, the standing outside the window and the skyscraper shot. I did however think that these maybe a little cliched and may not be saved by the effects I wanted to use within the shots.

Idea 2 - Comic-book Hero

Today I am going into post overload. I have been out the last few days taking photos and working on storyboards and so have fallen behind on my blogging. First things first, I need to post all my ideas as the wizard sequence is not the only idea I have for this project.

Idea 2: Having spent my entire summer researching comic-books for my dissertation, I decided I wanted to incorporate this into my creative work. This would involve inventing my own comic books character, story and art.

I started off in the usual place, brain storming, but I wanted something a little different. Having developed a better understanding of comic-books, I realised that most were invented during a time of patriotism and heroism. Modern popular media characters, such as Dexter, House, Sylar from Heros, and the Jedi, are less reliant on strength and more famous for their intelligence, attention to detail and putting together pieces of the puzzle. My idea for a modern super hero, is one who can use super intelligence to solve crime. In the guise of a street performer, he can create illusions to blow peoples minds, but never uses his powers for evil.

Above are the brainstorms for characters and potential scenes to be carried out. Below are the initial character sketches for the magician character. 

However for this idea to really be pulled off, the costume needs to be perfect and this will require a budget outside of my financial situation however, this could be a contender for the Final Major Project. 

Research and Tests: Castles

If I do manage to get the spell effects looking good, then I will obviously need to place the character in some kind of environment and storyline. This will require a certain amount of matte painting and/or 3D structure. I have a few ideas for matte paintings, all requiring a castle and so I have undertaken some research on castle structure, both in real life and tv/film.

The castle closest to my location is obviously Cardiff Castle which would be ideal for base images for the matte painting. There are also a number of churches in Cardiff which are also useful. Particularly one just off the high street which has gorgeous arch windows which could be taken advantage of for looking through onto scenes or creating the sense on a hall way.

I have also been watching Harry Potter and Merlin avidly to get a sense of what a castle in a magical/wizard setting would look like. Camelot in the early series of Merlin for example is all spires and bright white stone surrounded my trees and greenery. Yet in later series, it is much darker, and in a state of disrepair.

Similarly, Hogwarts started out much like Camelot in the series of Merlin, and as the films have gone on this has become darker and moodier. This is emphasised by the dark clouds and stormy weather.  I believe this is to suggest the increased level of danger and also the maturing of the characters within. It certainly creates a higher level of intensity which keeps viewers on the edge of their seats.

My own ideas for the Wizard sequence would involve an external shot, perhaps a wizard in flight around the spire of a castle, and also an internal shot perhaps creeping down dark hallways and casting spells that light up the ceilings and cast shadows against the walls. I particularly like the dark and frightening sense of danger that is present in the later episodes of Merlin and Harry Potter and would like to try and recreate this in my own design, perhaps with destruction and disrepair evident on the castle itself.

My VFX shots still require work, however I also need to start developing a few other ideas I have, including an advert for a Student Counselling Service, and one or two other stand alone VFX shots.

Research and Tests: Spell Tests

I've done a number of spell tests, none of which I am entirely happy with, but at this stage I am simply experimenting with particles and fractal noise within Maya and After Effects. Hopefully something will starting looking good. I stress, these are no where near the finished effects!

The last test looks the best by far but still isn't what I am looking for.

Research and Tests: Wizard Sequence

On Monday I filmed in the green screen studio some footage which I am using for a test for my wizard sequence. Currently I am working on using particles in Maya and After Effects to produce a specific spell effect. I'm modelling it on a couple of videos I have seen, but I am not quite there yet in terms of style.

I'm also working on a flying shot. If I can get these to work, they will be great shots which I can produce a matte painting for. 

Week 1 of Minor Project A

As part of my Minor Project A, I have opted to keep my Production Journal on my blog. This site shall now contain my planning, testing and execution of my projects for my final year at university. All these posts will be tagged with "Minor Project A" so there is no confusion as to what goes with what.

I hit the ground running with this first project, having spent much of my summer generating ideas, I managed to book the green screen studio on the first day back to film some footage for a test.

This year it is important for me to showcase my skill set to create a showreel. My aims are to show I am a competent rotoscoper, compositor and matte painter. For this, one of my vehicles is to create a wizard/Harry Potter film sequence. As of yet I have not created a storyboard, but I wanted to collect some footage to test the VFX required if I am to continue with this avenue.

Doctor Who - My Inspirations

Today I read that fans on twitter are sending abusive messages to Steven Moffat. Honestly I don't understand this. Generally I don't understand abusive behaviour at the best of times but this took the biscuit.

For me Doctor Who was a major inspiration, and one of the reasons I decided to enter into the world of Visual Effects. As a six former, young and somewhat naive, I was studying chemistry and opting for a very safe career path as a science teacher. This was who I was when the announcement that Doctor Who was returning to our screens. As a much younger person, I had grown up on classic science fiction reruns, Doctor Who included, so this breaking news sent me into a giddy overload which ultimately resulted in my exclusion from most social groupings. At this point in time I had a love for film particularly visual effects, but to me it was "computer magic" that I would never understand, let alone be able to one day do.

Fast forward a few years and I'm at university, a very good one, studying chemistry and generally unhappy with my life. It was at this time I started building websites for fun and sometimes money, and managed to get sucked into the magical world of the Doctor Who online community. My levels of Geekery massively increased ten fold, but something amazing happened. I discovered photoshop. With this knowledge, practice and development of artistic flare, I learned I could thrill people with my digital art work. I started making banners for other people's websites, members of the Doctor Who community would set me challenges to create wallpapers and blends to meet certain criteria. It was then that I realised chemistry was not the way forward.

The rest as they say, is history. I got myself some formal IT qualifications and went back to university to study visual effects. One day I hope to work on the Doctor Who series. That is my ultimate goal. Of course I would like to work on film and become a millionaire, swan around in a convertible and generally be loved by all, but honestly I would trade this just for one day working on this iconic show.

Doctor Who is a show for the whole family, it frightens children, stuns us with it's beauty and takes us on a moral and emotional roller coaster on a week by week basis. What other show in the world could do that? Russell T Davis brought this show back from the dead. Steven Moffat took it like an olympic relay baton and is racing to take it to new heights of incredible. If haters bring down this show, they would have destroyed something monumental. There are so many of us out here who still love it.