Week 8 Tutorial Exercises

Motion Tracking

Jessica Cupitt (n7542399)

Two tasks this week. The first task was to pin some text onto a Creative Industries building in the source footage. While I managed to get the text to fit in, somewhat, I could not eliminate the jitter completely.

The second task was to corner pin a screenshot to a screen in some footage. This one went a little better, probably because I went through frame by frame (twice) and adjusted the corners to stop the screenshot from jittering too much. I used motion blur and lowered the opacity to make the screenshot fit into the scene a little better.

I hope working with low quality footage is not standard practice, it seems time consuming.

Attributions go to the unidentified cameraman that shot the footage, I suppose.

Week 7 Tutorial Exercises

Audio Keyframes

Jessica Cupitt (n7542399)

The task was to animate using audio keyframes. Besides that, there was no specific goal, so I thought that it could perhaps be a little silly, to match the audio.

I used the same character twice and made them move slightly differently. (I also changed the shirt colour to red on one, just to make them different.)

I used the graph editor quite a bit to amplify the motion in the audio keyframes. I also used the pickwhip to make some expressions and then changed them slightly, particularly with the position frames, so the characters would be centred instead of off in a corner.

I quite like the end result.

I wonder if a similar method is used for the windows media player's visualisations...

Royalty Free Audio:

Super Polka - http://music.incompetech.com/royalty-free/Super%20Polka.mp3

Attribution:

mikebaird - http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikebaird/2678307443/sizes/o/

Week 6 Tutorial Exercises

Temporal Graffiti

Jessica Cupitt (n7542399)

The task was to animate some graffiti appearing on the supplied background.

I liked this task, it used things that I am familiar with, like colour correction and layer modes, so I did not have to spend too much time trying to learn new things before I could get started.

I tried to scale and rotate the images to make the graffiti fit into the background. I also tried to animate the three pieces of graffiti in a slightly different way.

I do not really have much more to say, the composition was only four seconds long, after all. Although, I am glad that I now know how various clips and things that I have seen achieve the graffiti being sprayed onto a wall effect.

Alphabetical Attributions:

Anyone Anywhere - http://www.flickr.com/photos/anyone_anywhere/4846018875/sizes/l/in/photostream/

salim - http://www.flickr.com/photos/salim/3726978/sizes/l/in/photostream/

salim - http://www.flickr.com/photos/salim/9039417/sizes/l/in/photostream/

salim - http://www.flickr.com/photos/salim/112475320/sizes/l/in/photostream/

Week 5 Tutorial Exercises

Kinetic Typography

Jessica Cupitt (n7542399)

The task was to use text, text presets and the 3D camera in conjunction with the supplied audio to get a message across.

It did not go well. We will call the end result 'abstract' instead of bad, shall we?

So, I managed to get the 3D camera working with a 3D text layer which used an animation preset, but getting other images to work with the layer did not work well at all. Some images ended up warped beyond recognition when I tried to include them as 3D layers due to the scaling required. So instead, I kept the images as 2D layers and made a sort of montage to the audio, including some 3D text here and there.

I suppose, practice makes perfect?

Audio:

Civil Defense film - Duck and Cover,1951.

(http://www.archive.org/details/DuckandC1951)

Alphabetical Attributions:

anarchosyn - http://www.flickr.com/photos/24293932@N00/2707596343/sizes/l/

earthhopper - http://www.flickr.com/photos/earthhopper/31551712/sizes/o/in/photostream/

Éole - http://www.flickr.com/photos/eole/2342256254/sizes/o/

gamp - http://www.flickr.com/photos/gamp/1345487054/sizes/l/in/photostream/

joiseyshowaa - http://www.flickr.com/photos/joiseyshowaa/1400175456/sizes/o/in/photostream/

spiegel - http://www.flickr.com/photos/spiegel/8866764/sizes/o/in/photostream/

tidewatermuse - http://www.flickr.com/photos/tidewatermuse/38963406/sizes/o/in/photostream/

Week 4 Tutorial Exercises

Temporal and Spatial Montage – Retail Client Brief

Jessica Cupitt (n7542399)

This week the task was to create a twenty second ad according to a client brief, essentially. We were given a logo and colour scheme to work with.

I suppose my end result was influenced by watching sale ads for supermarkets and things. There's often spiky bubbles spinning around or text seemingly slamming into the screen while someone with a suspiciously upbeat voice shouts about prices and just how low they are.

I masked some images of possible products and tried to make them look 'mad' when displaying the prices. I expect it would be even more mad with some kind of soundtrack, perhaps something with a tuba or an accordion. I also kept to the purple, red and white colour scheme.

I was not particularly sure how to aim this at a wide demographic. Most people under a certain age are unlikely to be interested in crazy prices on blenders and toasters. (Including myself. We could do with crazy prices on kettles though, ours is leaking.)

Alphabetical Attributions:

alberth2:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/alberth2/3043057545/sizes/l/in/photostream/

healthserviceglasses:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/healthserviceglasses/3256234213/sizes/z/in/photostream/

Niels van Eck:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nielsvaneck/275378733/sizes/l/in/photostream/

Week 3 Tutorial Exercises

Temporal and Spatial Montage

Jessica Cupitt (n7542399)

This week we were still cutting images out and placing them into a background, but this time we were using masks in After Effects. After masking the many images, we were to make them jump up from behind the wall while trying to convey a feeling of weight.

The result is a little iffy (and very low quality; not a lot of RAM, internet connection at home is less than fantastic), but then, most people jumping move more than a still image.

I again tried to keep the light source somewhat consistent. I also tried to scale the images of the people so they appeared to be in perspective dependant on their location within the image. I believe the task description calls it a spatial relationship, but I am used to refering to it as perspective.

I thought just having a lot of people (and one dog) jumping up and down behind a wall would be a bit dull, so I tried to move them around a bit to keep things interesting.

The masking took a long time, in the end I decided to mask most of the images with a series of short, straight lines rather than fiddling with a lot of Bezier handles. I may have applied a motion blur and used ease in and ease out on some frames to make the motion seem smoother. Although, I am a little wary of using ease out at the end of a jump, since gravity does not generally let people down easily when they are hitting the ground.

Alphabetical Attributions:

anarchosyn:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/24293932@N00/2707596343/sizes/l/

anirudhkoul:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/anirudhkoul/2523651888/sizes/l/

Éole:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/eole/3306193932/sizes/o/

Éole:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/eole/2342256254/sizes/o/

jumpinglab:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jumpinglab/2633227714/sizes/l/

mikebaird:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikebaird/2678307443/sizes/o/

Week Two Tutorial Exercises

Spatial Montage

Jessica Cupitt (7542399)

So the idea was to cut out the buildings from the source pictures (listed at the end of this post) and place them into a desert landscape while trying to emphasise the spatial relationships between the buildings.

This is the result.

First I flipped the images so the light source appeared to be coming from more or less the same direction.

I kept the cityscape intact in two of the images and transformed them until they became a backdrop spanning the width of the desert-scape.

I attempted positioning the two buildings to the front of the cityscape as if they were getting smaller with distance, but I do not think it worked very well.

I had some trouble trying to position the Flatiron building. In the end I placed it behind the cityscape because is very tall and was taken at an angle where the viewer seems to be looking up at it. Also because placing it in the foreground would have blocked the Empire State Building.

Because of the amount of transformations I applied to some of the buildings, I decided to use a filter to sharpen some of the images again. I added some shadows around the foot of two of the buildings and to the side of the yellow building and made an attempt at colour correction, particularly on the Flatiron building which was very red and out of place originally. Several buildings also had their brightness lowered.


I did not like the look of the above image so I decided to turn the whole thing sepia, to see if a uniform colour made a difference. I must say that I prefer this image.

Having one tone also makes it easier to see that the two large buildings in the centre of the background look out of place because they seem to be less affected by the light source.

If I were to alter the final product further, I would lighten some areas on the buildings in the background. I might also rotate the building at the front left clockwise so it appears to be leaning towards the centre of the image. I would keep the image in sepia though.

I did not have time to complete the temporal montage activity in class, I will try to make one and post it at a later date. (Actually, I did not complete this in class either. Somehow the system had blocked me from using Photoshop. But not After Effects. Most unusal.)

Alphabetical Attributions:
andrew mace-:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/acmace/4120587279/sizes/o/
Bobcatnorth:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bobcatnorth/383409166/sizes/l/
harry_nl:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/harry_nl/4031055107/sizes/o/
RaeA:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/raeallen/68856492/sizes/l/
ScubaBear68:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/22310955@N02/2551583663/sizes/l/
sparktography:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sparktography/91830784/sizes/o/