OUDF601: Survey Results

After finishing my practical synthesis, I conducted study, it was a survey consisting of 10 participants, aged between the ages of 18-24 years, 3 were female and 7 were male. The study was to find out which effect had, a superior visual style, a superior visual illusion, flexibility, cost efficiency, and finally which clip they preferred overall.

100% of the participants said the digital effects clip has a superior visual style.

100% of the participants said the digital effects clip has superior visual illusion.

60% of the participants said digital effects clip has superior flexibility while 40% said the special effects clip was more flexible.

70% of the participants said the digital effects clip was more cost efficient to produce while 30% opposed.

Finally 100% of the participants said the digital effects clip was more superior overall.

OUDF601: Synthesis Practical | Magical Orb Project

Creating the orb that I ended up using was relatively easy. I started off by wanting to model it using Autodesk Maya but that proved to be a bit complex. I simply created a sphere using a polygon primitive, to achieve the glow effect I experimented by assigning a new material called 'mia material x' and rendered using mental ray. The effect wasn't what I desired so I tried a different material called the 'maya surface shader'. The glow effect was perfect and it was the desired look. Now came the time to export the object into After Effects, this proved to be an impossible task, watching tutorial after tutorial, i simply couldn't grasp the concept. 

I then decided to do an alternative solution of creating a 2 dimensional orb on Photoshop CS6. I had to to make it to appear 3 dimensional, to do this I simply added a subtle drop shadow and a slightly intense glow, see fig.1

fig.1

To retain the alpha channels I saved the image as a PNG. The next step was to import to After Effects and line it up with the footage I filmed earlier. the footage was shot using a canon 5D MK2 with a 50mm f/1.8 attached to it. I used available light to illuminate the environment and the main subject.

The orb was perfect and it didn't need any tweaking at all. For result see fig.2

fig.2

The next step was to add a flame for realism. For this I simply used  footage of a flame with alpha channels on it, I turned the blend mode to 'colour dodge'. See fig.3 of a flame with an alpha channel on it.

fig.3

A one of the frames, the flame was spilling out from the orb, to fix this I simply masked it out around the orb and slightly increased the feather. The solved the problem immediately. The animation process was also simple as I was going for the simple floating look. See fig.3 

fig.3

I decided to duplicate everything I did above for the second angle that shot. see fig.4

I finally graded the footage to give it a film look, and a bit of depth to the colour so it can be pleasing to the eye. 
I'm happy with the final outcome of the video. I added titles, particle effects and music to finalise everything. 

OUDF601: COP3 | Academic Poster

During our extended assay we were asked to present academic posters to help us present our research information. The title of my essay is Are Visual Effects Improving or Detracting from Cinema?
Prior to creating this visual presentation, I hadn't done one before so it was a bit of a challenge. The whole idea of this project was to give us an idea on how to create one so we can use it to our advantage in the future. 

What I included on my poster is the Introduction to what I'm doing on my essay, the Objective of what I'm going to cover throughout the essay, the Methodology of my research, the Quotes from the research that I've done and finally the References of the books I read.

The poster was not bad to say it was a first draft. In terms of feedback, I did not get much constructive criticism except for "good information", "poster is readable", "good illustration" etc.

I've attached an unfinished version of the poster as I could not find the full version that was printed off.