Final Project: Door of Mystery

This is my final project, based loosely on the "Door of Infinity" I did earlier. Basically, I used the idea of a "magical" door as an excuse to play with a variety of effects. I put a greenscreen inside the closet, filmed my backyard, and used a portal trailer and train image I found online. The smoke was taken from particleIllusion. Lighting the greenscreen better would have made this easier. It would also have been better if the camera didn't move every time I started recording- the double is slightly off from the original shot.

Motion Tracking

This was an in-class project to try out motion tracking. Tracking the picture frame was harder because my bracelets are about the same color as the frame, so the tracker would try to follow them instead. Other than that, there weren't many places where I needed to make corrections.

Portal Typography Video

This is a typography video I ran into a while ago, I think it's pretty well done.

Final Project Storyboards

These are my storyboards for my final project. I intend to greenscreen out the inside of my closet, as well as add in a tennis ball flying past and smoke coming off the door from particleIllusion.

Morph

This was an in-class project on morphing one image into another. I started with a picture of me and morphed it into a painting by Picasso.

Greenscreen Test 2

For this assignment we had to add ourselves to a movie. I chose Back to the Future. I filmed at home, which made things more difficult because my greenscreen is not long enough to reach the floor. I also forgot to take that into account when selecting my chair, so I just left out its legs. I ended up rotoscoping my feet, as well as Michel J. Fox (so he would be in front of me). About halfway through this process, I realized that if I had mirrored my footage I would have been looking at them as I originally intended instead of looking away.

Head Explosion

This was an in-class project to experiment with the shatter effect. We also played with ParticleIllusion and added a sound effect. The fact that his arms were occasionally in front of his face added a lot of rotoscoping work. Eventually I decided to just abandon the hand, because the explosion and the shortness of the clip makes it less noticeable.

Background Test

This was an attempt to remove an actor from a scene without removing all the background. It was much harder because of a camera move, which I couldn't just follow without getting black lines on the edges of the screen.

CarCrash

This project was more difficult because the victim's legs and feet kept getting cut off. Also the "chaser" would cross in front of where the victim was, which led to a lot of rotoscoping.

Project Glyphic Animation: Light Glyph

This was an animation project I did in my spare time. It illustrates some of the glyphs from the language in my capstone project.

GreenScreen Test

This was a greenscreen test shot I filmed at home. I think I bumped into my backlight between the regular shot and the green screen, because the greenscreen has more of a pink tint. I also moved the camera slightly between shots, because the greenscreen didn't reach all the way to the floor.

Door of Infinity

My doubles project. This is what happens to people who aren't careful with their while loops. Naturally, my first reaction to the word "doubles" was Portal.  Deciding that making believable portals was a bit beyond the scope of the project, I settled for a door. Although it only took about 10 minutes to film, the lighting changed dramatically due to clouds, etc. I also had to stop filming once while the neighbors were talking in their backyard. I learned from this not to trust natural lighting to stay the same and to film a longer clean plate.

Lightsaber

My first experiment with rotoscoping.

Dreamer

My first project in After Effects.

Stop-Motion Substitution

 

Our first Visual Effects assignment. I decided to approach this project as a magic trick. The main challenge was to remain completely still as a pokeball was put in my hand or a cat was thrown into the shot. I learned from this project not to use animals unless you have a lot of time to re-film.