17/10/11 Fun

Despite the beginning of this day, there was a lot of positives.

- I figured out the problems where i couldn't upload a few of my very very short animations onto vimeo. They were saved as a massive file and they hadn't been rendered properly into a film. I exported them and saved them as a much more appropriate setting that was liked by vimeo.

- I exported the filming i did at the weekend. I don't love what i have done, but a few things i do find very nice.

- Learnt some basic settings that were very handy for filming. They were very obvious settings that i really should of played around with, but i just didn't think. They were to do with exposure and looking at the light you have in your setting.

And lastly, I went to the hyde park picture house in the evening, where i saw an event sort of where one of my favourite comedians, artist men, who is also obsessed with music videos showed a load of inspiring music videos. It was so satisfying and he showed some really good stuff, and mentioned a lot about after effects and made me feel good that after effects is definitely something i should be getting into if i were to really go into making music videos. Here are some of the videos he showed...

17/10/11 Crit

I began the day with a crit. It was a little dampening to my soul. I really have no idea what i'm doing with this project and am really finding it hard to focus and the crit today highlighted this very brightly.

But this is good, as now i can try and improve from here. I do think a lot of my struggle is to do with my blog and the fact that i am being too vague with what i want from this project.

I'm discovering i also never look back at my tutorial notes once they've been written, so as a way of improving my learning and hopefully finding more focus i am typing the notes up now, with extra notes. This does seem lengthy but it is helping me to reflect and pick out main things to then post on my blog.

So from writing up my notes i have found that i need...

- To make my blog clearer, less chatty. Using bullet points and summarising what i have learnt, and why i have learnt it. Evaluate the learning process, was it worth it? I would ideally like to re-summarise and refine my blog, and fill any gaps.

- Explain in more detail about the camera and equipment i am using as well as introducing after effects and other programmes into my blog. 

-  Get more specific. Find specific things i want to learn and go with it. Be less vague. Find more animations that use styles and effects i like and attempt it. It doesn't need to be amazing quality in the aesthetics of it, as this project for me is to explore and to get far more confident with after effects. To do this well, i really do need to find specific effects. 

 I also learnt that do think i am trying to aim for too much. I want to be able to illustrate my animations and to also be in charge of any filming, as well as the after effects. These are all things i want to be really good at, however, animation and after effects are what i have chosen to do for this project, and is something i do really enjoy, and actually enjoy learning.

Something completely opposite but big interests

Going out filming

Yesterday was a saturday. On friday i rented out a camera. I thought i'd like to get some new clips to play around with and the practice some camera skills. I only got out the small handheld camera, the focus is a bit tricky and the outcome isn't as nice as the DX 1, but that was too big to take around.

I do feel i'm not amazing at capturing things nicely. Fortunately, i went out filming a few things with a few quite experience filming influenced students so they were there to give me a hand, but this is still something i'd like to improve on. I'm starting to realise i do have quite an interest in film. I'm not quite sure if i'm fully up for looking into cinematography, but i am interested in the way things look in a video. I really really am interested in combining animation with film, even in the very subtle way.

The clips are still on the camera, and am hoping to get them all on the computer on monday then up on vimeo in the evening. However, the videos are pretty boring and mainly just trees and people doing silly things, but i did get a few shots of people's faces, which could be cool to animate with illustrations and effects.

 

http://www.kimholm.com/

It was mainly after watching this video that i got inspired to go out filming. I really like this video and like the idea of combining natural scenery with animation, something i'd really to aim for with my clips.

I was also introduced to Maria's brothers work this weekend. He has a really nice style and really beautiful filming with lovely music too. The animation that goes alongside his films are not something that i'd really try to aim for, but i do really like them, his filming however is something i'd love to achieve, but possibly just a hope, but maybe i'll make an attempt at it.

http://helloimago.com/



Istanbul 5AM from Quba Michalski on Vimeo.
Valentines 2011 from Quba Michalski on Vimeo.

Mocha issues

Well, since my last blog, i approached the mocha programme, and went through a few clips and made a new track for them. It was going all pretty nicely. The track followed my finger very well and i took the tracked clips into after effects and began animating. I made another rainbow clip once again, added colour to it and put key frames in in all the suitable places and it played back very well. However, something went very very wrong and it was unable to to render properly, meaning no video was made.
This was very very annoying and we spent a long time trying to figure out what went wrong and where the problem was. But nothing could be found.
Although, i did get a few screen shots of the process so that was alright and the whole purpose of this was to see how smooth mocha made things compared to the original process. I made a few animations after that, which was able to render and proved that using mocha did make a lot of difference and does smoothly follow my finger.

I really don't know what went wrong in this process, but i do think mocha and trapcode and tracking something is reliable and won't usually go wrong, however, i did look into other techniques that i could use and that i could use at home where i don't have the plug in, which uni has, like simple tracking in the effects panel in, that doesn't need any trapcode, which does seem to work just as well. I did create a few animations and made videos, however, something again has gone wrong, and i'm stupidly saving the videos as massive files causing them to take ours to upload to vimeo. This is a problem i will solve soon.

Tracking in Mocha

So far, I have produced two videos. One using the program 'mocha' but using the effect 'particular', which isn't really a look i want, and then one video not using mocha, but with an effect i'd want - the 3D stroke effect. This effect just creates a line - the rainbow videos that i have been making.

The program mocha is what allows me to track a particular object in my video. On the first video i made it was very difficult to track my finger as there was know defining interest in it, so it got confused with everything else that was going on and my other fingers. So, Matt in the a/v suite suggested i just re-record my fingers with a dot. So i then went on to record my fingers with small dots on them to have a point of interest for the tracking to follow. I did this using a HD camcorder. Last time i used a massive camera called X1. After filming with both, i definitely prefer the recording of the X1. The focus on it is a lot more defined and just looks a lot better. However, the camcorder still doesn't look too bad.

But anyway, back to mocha...

Opening up mocha and creating a new project

Pick the clip I want, or drag from an already open folder

 

Go to create x-spline layer tool to start creating the path. This creates a new layer every time you press it. You can also choose to use bezier too, which is the pen tool with the 'b' symbol.

Begin the tracking round the particular object you want to go around. The point on the finger will help the tracker to stay focused. Can adjust the point by moving the blue lines. If i were to want to start tracking the other finger then that would be possible on another layer, and to do this i would simply just press the x-spline tool again. They new layer would pop up on the left. Once i am done creating the shape, i press play on the tracking buttons that are underneath my video. I can choose to go frame by frame too by pressing the play button that are to the left. Then i just watch it play through my clip whilst tracking at the same time.

Once i stop the clip, or it comes to an end i then export the track, ready to take it to after effects. Once in export, i either get the option of 'clip corners' or something to do with corners, which is not what i want. I believe this is an option to save something as more of a rigid object that doesn't change too much, like a square or space on a bus which stays the same. The option i want for this particular clip is 'transform data' which allows more flexibility... i think. There are a lot of things that i am not quite understanding the full terms of and find it hard to re-explain, but once in after effects, i seem to remember all the right things to do, a bit. Anyway, i then save the export, which i think, think saves the text/data of my tracking, so i can just copy and paste it into after effects whenever. From here, i also saved the project too.

From here, i then go into after effects and begin the magic there...

I open up the clip that matches what i tracked in mocha. Create a new composition for this piece.

Make a new solid for the tracking data to be pasted onto and the 3D stroke effect to be applied to. I then draw a path using the pen tool, i make it any shape as it is just something to allow me to paste the track to. Once i have pasted to new track data the both with flip to the shape that was made in mocha, like a squiggly train track type thing.I do one more step before this though.

Before pasting the track, i go into effects and add the 3D stroke effect, which is to the right of the clip. This is where the whole animation side of things can be adjusted. I can play around keyframes, thickness, and colour or whatever in this part. Once applying this effect i can then begin with pasting my track.

When pasting the track, i end up pasting every little detail, when all i want is the position of the track, so i create a new 'null object' to paste all the data on to, and then copy the position details of that, then paste that onto my solid layer, which has my path on it. I do this to avoid having to reset all the settings that were changed from the data. Once finally copy and pasted i then delete the null object as i don't need it.

Once pasted, the path switches to this. I now have a path linked onto my clip which should hopefully follow my finger round the screen. The only trouble now is that i don't know where i began tracking on the clip. This should be ok though and can now just play around with the 3D stroke settings. For future experiments and animations, i should definitely know where i began tracking on the clip. This is a very stupid mistake. 

keyframing the 'end' setting in 3D stroke to 0, so no path/line shows up. I will then go to the end of my clip and set the end setting to 100. This means it will make a path following my finger and a line should be drawn.

Matt Saunders

Matt Saunders
Previous vis com student who seems to be pretty good with animation and moving image. I really like his idents for the Leeds film festival. Yet again, another thing i'd like to try.