You shouldn’t do your tests on a black background, because transparent effects turn out completely differently when composited onto background plates. You should also use an additive blending method for the layers.
This look cool, but has a 2D animated feel. It’s also moving to slowly.
Mathew, thanks for the critique and the advice. We will definitely be speeding it up and making it more of a 3D orb rather than the flat proxy that it is now. Your absolutely right that it looks too flat, and it still doesn’t have the crawling electricity feel that ultimately I’m looking for.
Hey Velk, this is turning out to be very interesting. I am eagerly watching the development.
This is an FYI to ALL teams.
ROBERTO’S BULLHORN: SUPERPOWERS DATELINE Three Weeks to go!
Also I Just wanted to check how you all are doing, and i there are any issues or questions please post on the thread i just posted.
-R
Update finally
Here is one of the tests that we have been running to refine the lightning. Only a still as we haven’t finished the roto on her hand yet. You can also see the first stages of the color correction.
We are still loosing a bit too much in the skin tones, and overall its too blue for dusk. We will be pushing this right up to the deadline to get everything completed. More updates soon.
Made some changes to Shot 09, did a first roto pass on her hand. Also started refining the color correction. Temporarily removed link as the file wasn’t compressed for the web
This is what the footage looked like at the start.
Here is a quick peek at our Shake node setup for this shot.
Here is the final sequence:
High Bandwidth, 34MB, Sorenson3
High Bandwidth, 21MB, H264
Low Bandwidth, 4MB, H264
More screen shots, and settings/experiences to follow.
Software Used:
Shake
Maya
Motion
Final Cut Pro
Sound Track Pro
Photoshop
Illustrator
InDesign
Time Taken:
The shoot lasted for 3 hours, after that I stopped keeping track of the time things took.
FX
All Shots:
Color correction.
Shot 1:
Follow shot steadied with digital camera stabilization, iPod battery screen animated and added, lighting effects added, sky replaced.
Shot 8:
Replaced sky.
Shot 9:
Rotoscoped in FX lightning under the hand.
Looks cool, but I dont really like the overlay color on it. Have you tryed to use an other or maybe without it?
Concratulation with completing it, and best of luck:)
H3ro: thanks for taking a look and for the comments. That coloration was the 3rd or 4th attempt that we made. Still not really happy with it; simply ran out of time to continue fixing it. Discovered that the blending modes in Shake work somewhat differently than in PS, figuring that out has been interesting. Should really have used a ND filter on the camera to make our lives a lot easier.
Hi there,
just seen the low-bandwidth version only (and with no sound, don’t ask… I should be workin…
):
I like the first shot in general as it pulls you into the action. As for the ´FX, I know it’s a good thing in general when you don’t notice their existence too much, but the flickering light of the lantern/street light was quite inconspicious. Might have been more of an eye-catcher with the second street light going dark, too, maybe.
The superpower shot is very nice. Reminds me of the Star Wars dark force flash… :bowdown:
When it says “sky replaced” in shot 8 what piece of sky are you referring to? Again, just seen the low bandwidth version only and I was trying to make it out. Is it in the bg among the roof tops?
Will watch it again back home with sound and high-res.
Til then: great work and good luck with the voting…
Mu: There is just a small piece of the sky that is visible in shot 8 between the building tops, it was blown out and we replaced it with a gradient. As for the light, it was in perfect view; and then we cropped for a 16x9 feel and almost lost it. Started to add a second light but ran out of time to add it in effectively.
I’d say that of anything that I learned from this challenge, the fact that you can’t plan too much would be at the top of my list.
Nice to see this finally finished! I really like the opening shot especially - that was well done. Congrats on finishing! I know you worked a lot on this. 
Cheers,
-Rebecca
Rebecca: thanks so much! I’m really glad the opening shot worked as well as it did.
I think I’ll post some side by side still captures of that sequence to show a few of the changes in greater detail.
Velk: That would have been really cool. Do you think you maybe also could write a few lines about what and why you changed things?
As promised here is a before and after of the beginning of shot one. There are a lot of things going on here. We added the battery icon to the iPod. The Sky was really blown out so we added in a digital sky. Then we did color adjustments attempting to replicate the dusk almost evening time of day.
As you can see from the Shake nodes everything in this shot flows after the deinterlacing and the camera smoothing happen. That made it a lot easier to key frame the sections with the lamp flickering on and off, as well as the iPod battery animation.
Both the street lamp and the battery animations were animated in Motion, while the battery icon was created in Illustrator.
yaaaaay am back from my parents and was finally able to look at the full thingie :D.
so great congrats to all of you and im very pleased with the outcome
hopefully see you around soon velk
