27/06- ending

So this blog was supposed to be done last week but I ran out of time. So anyway I finished the sound and the team was really happy with how it turned out. To be honest I am pretty happy with it as well, but I wish I did have a little more time to work on mainly the foley of the film. But one thing I am totally unhappy about is the motion tracking I just ran out of time and didn't know what to do to fix it in a quick way.

23/06- Sound and Motion tracking

Hello

So far this week I have worked on Motion tracking and sound.

Motion tracking was a bit of a pain and I don't think it looks very good, but I have used the time I could for it and I think it's good enough. This was my first time doing and it was pretty difficult to do in the low light situation.

Sound is nearly finished i have to do the final touches Friday morning. I had to change everything I had to fit the final timing which was the easy part. I then had to put in a whole lot of other sounds to complete the mix.

16/06- Sound

Today I re-recorded the last two lines of dialogue because they were not clear enough. i think the new versions are a lot more clear and still fit into the action nicely. A concern was that the last line would not sync up after I lengthen the end but it fits surprisingly well. I still need to time it up with the timing of the shots and what not but I actually need them to be able to do it. Waiting on the others to finish the animation so I can.

10/06- Sound

This is my latest sound file. it is making good progress and is a bit different from the last sound track.
I have had a few problems with the file storage. I don't think it had been my error as I kept all the files together in one folder, but who really knows and it's fixed now anyway.

26/05- Synth Hud

This is what I have done so far for the Synth HUD. I'm pretty happy with it so far. I tried to go for something for a bit simple rather then making the screen cluttered. The 3d map I think is really cool, bearing in mind I got that as a free after effects file. I don't know if that's not allowed, but I can change or remove it if that's the case. I'm thinking that the spaced white lines in the circular pattern isn't really working, so I may remove that. I tried the blue/purple/aqua colors because I felt that they will contrast well with the red filter. I thought red/orange and yellow would have been a better color combo but that would have been to similar to the red of the filter.

19/05- Synth ui

I did some more work on the Synth UI today and I thought it would be cool if the it had a grid over laid behind it with the opacity shifted down. The way I think i am going to do this is make it in Photoshop and then shift it into after effects and add static and blinking text and lights to give it some movement a bit more authenticity for what we want.

16/05-cinematic synth ui

This week I am going to start doing the UI interface for the Synth's perspective shot.

I did a quick search on google and this was the first one I found. I think that this is a good example as it has the center target which would be on the male character and it also has the added peripherals on the side to add authenticity.

I don't know how in depth the other guys want this to be but I thought the one below was a good example of a simpler one. I think that a lot of the one below is unnecessary mainly the peripherals. 

13/05/2016- Sound

Hey there. Yeah yeah I know what your thinking it's been awhile since my last blog. That's my bad. However over the last couple of weeks I have been working on sound design for the film. I just finished the rough final sound for the film, I say rough because it is still far from completion. I believe that it would have been to hard to do sound for the model as I do not fully know what its actions will be. I do believe that what I have thus far is a step in the right direction and I look forward to seeing it further developed. After recording several dozens of versions of my voice for the dialogue I found some that I were happy with and I manipulated the pitch and added some filters to give it a robotic feel. I gave each dialogues different vibes this was due to mistake and intention. I did not intend for them to be as different as they are but I don't think that is bad thing. I believe that the dialogue came out really well and in the future if we wish to change the person saying it to provide more variety then we can do that because we do not need to sync the words to any lips. The background is simple yet effective, it provides and eerie and thrilling feeling to the scene.
Overall I'm happy with what I have done I hope my teammates feel the same.

15/04/16-Cinematic footage

Here are some more shots from our Monday shoot. I think that it went a lot better then the last time but my acting hasn't improved any unfortunately.

11/04/16- Cinematic filming

Last Thursday we did our first set of filming. I feel as though it is very difficult to shoot at night as the camera lenses f-stop is not capable of going below 3 so that means to get enough exposure we had to increase the ISO and so this created a bit of noise.

Here are some stills of what we did:

04/04/16 - modeling

This is what I modeled last weak. There are smoothed and rough versions of the left arm. It was pretty simple to do. I had some troubles with the forearm part but it was done... thank god!

24/03/16- Modelling left arm_X-22

I started modelling the left arm of X-22. I started with the shoulder guard. At first I had troubles getting used to the Maya controls again from last year. But I have started to get the hang of it again and I will finish the arm on Monday hopefully.

18/03/16-Today

Today I spent my time by helping Jacob with the timing of the animatic and I also recorded sounds and received sourced sounds from https://www.freesound.org/ to apply to the finished animatic.

17/03/16- Dialogue

From out last meeting one of the things we discussed was the dialogue. I started to brainstorm some ideas but the one that stuck out for me was

"Revolutions are a fight between the future and the past. We are the Future! And we intend to clean out the past."

This was for the first part where the Synth overlord is on the laptop screen talking to the man. I figured that the Humans represent the past because they have at this stage had their chance to rule over earth, but fail at this and the Synths take it upon themselves as the representation of the future to clean the wrong doings of the Humans. Very much like in real life how we constantly screw things up and hey we only have one planet, but we don't do a very good job of looking after it.

Later on when we see the synth assassin come in the overlord from the T.V said

"You call us Synths, but we are so much more!"

While I was trying to figure out what he says, I had to find out what these lifeforms were called I juggled a few options such as, Golems, Automatons, Sentinels and Androids to name a few. However I felt Synths worked the best because the word embodies this idea of Techno organic forms very well.

Later on when the man opens his eyes and they appear red and mechanical I thought instead of " we will be slaves no longer!" simply repeating "We are the Future!" from the overlord is a confirmation that he is now one of them.

17/03/16-Character Profile X-22

This is character profile I did for the robot character. I did it really simply because as far as the story goes we don't need to know that much about the synth.

Storyboard-15/03/2016

Here is a final storyboard that I just completed. This was a collaboration between Gabe and myself over the last week. It is still open to change at this stage. 

Production Schedule- 04/03/16

4th - 13th of March's schedule.

Stuff in brackets isn't until the week after but is something to work on if everything is finished.

Matthew Coles: Storyboard > Rough Sound > (Clay Maquette)

Rhys McKenzie: Style Concepts > Character Concepts > Environment Concepts > Colour Palettes > (Animatic)

Jacob Knight: Style Concepts > Character Concepts > Character Model Sheet > (Animatic)

Michael Fearon: Style Concepts > Environment Concepts > Colour Pallettes > (Environment Sourcing > Character Profiles)

Gabriel Palomo: Style Concepts > Storyboard > (Modelling)

Above is schedule that the team made for the next week and a half based on our final production schedule. I volunteered to do the clay maquette as I think we can finish the storyboard a bit earlier then expected.

Below is the updated production schedule. The only things that changed were Jacob got a promotion and I got a demotion, something to do with our track records or something. Also we removed two weeks of animation for Michael and Rhys to do the matte painting for the windows.

Production Schedule-03/03/16

Above is the Production schedule for Team Boiz. This was chosen after careful deliberation and team discussions. We started from the third week as the first two were pretty much done and dusted. Me and Gabe put our hands up for the storyboard because everyone agreed that we were the most knowledgeable about camera shots and techniques.

We all wanted to have a part in the modelling phase so we have tried to divvy up the additional tasks among all the modelling. For example I will model one of the minor parts and at the same time begin working and researching sound for the film, just like Rhys and Jacob will be working on the animatic.

UV is not my strong point so I will help out where I can but focus primarily on the filming and acting of the live action side, the rest of the team will help me out when they can. This was a clear course of action as I have a lot more experience with acting and film then the others, this is the same reason for the editing of the footage in the following weeks.

The second term we all will take part in the animation process and around the side I will be finishing and polishing the sound of the film.  However I think i can get the sound done earlier so I will help out with the other parts in the final weeks.

ScriptCinematicProject-28/02

Script-Cinematic project
Title: TBC
30-40 seconds

Mark wakes in a strange white room. The room has two doors, one labelled Heaven and the other Hell. Mark is perplexed by the room and its minimalist interior.

Mark stands up and walks over to a nearby poster. The poster is strange, it describes what Heaven and Hell look like and has a picture as an example.

The door labelled Heaven swings open and bright light streams out of the door. A small, cute and well dressed angel floats out holding a clipboard. Angel looks to the left expecting someone to come out of the other door but appears dissatisfied when no one does. Angel knocks angrily on the door until it creeps open leaking out a dim red haze and the noise of loud rock music. A small, drunken devil floats out struggling to stay airborne. Devil eventually falls onto the floor and vomits up the contents of his stomach leaving a mark on the pristine white surface.

Devil lifts himself up after a moment and floats over to mark. He has an extremely close look at him and then turns away. Devil slowly makes his way back to the door.

                                                          DEVIL
                                     You can have this one, he looks boring.

Angel floats over to Mark and grabs him by the shirt and drags him to his own door. Mark struggles to get free.

                                                          MARK
                                      Let me go, I wanna go to Hell.

Mark gets free and tries to get to Hell but just in front of the door he slips on a banana peel. Devil is floating in the doorway laughing maniacally and the door slams shut by it self.