Completion

The first draft of our film is complete! On the off chance it gets sent to festivals or something, we're refraining from posting a final copy.

It's been a wild ride, on which we've learnt many crucial lessons about timekeeping, shortcuts, narrative structure, team management, and last but not least, After Effects.

I developed a knack for Photoshop, and am frankly flabbergasted I managed to churn out so many aesthetically-satisfying backgrounds. My Flash skills have developed, my work method having become more streamlined and precise, and my leadership skills, although fundamentally lacking for someone who isn't really a director at heart, have come along in leaps and bounds.

Gary and Jake had moments of inactivity, and there have been some frustrating moments, but their unwavering loyalty to the project meant that I never felt the project was jeopardised by anything they did. Ultimately, that loyalty (and, at times, genuine love) for the film was the saving grace, coming together and making sure there was something to show for all the discussions and development work.

Overall, I am delighted to report that the feel of our final film is pretty much how I envisaged it at the beginning, narrative and aesthetic tweaks aside, and my team did well.

Further tweaks are to be made for the blu-ray submission, finishing extra shots and polishing the footage more, but for now I intend to sleep.

Compositions and animations

As the 3D elements made slow progress, that aspect of production was shelved, and the textureless 3D environments were used as perspective reference. Jake moved onto working full-time on post-production, and as I've been animating shots he's been adding the backgrounds to them and lighting them where possible.

Jake's work has improved in quality and quantity since changing from Maya to After Effects. AE is clearly a program he feels much more comfortable with, and he seems to derive genuine enjoyment from experimenting with the software to create some cool effects.
His experimentation is paying off - we've discovered a wealth of options within After Effects that could serve to make our film look fantastic.

To demonstrate, here are a few of the latest shots:

Composition development

In between animation, I've been supervising Jake's 3D work. One issue that was raised was the look of the park, an area Jake's still working on, and so we looked for relevant autumnal scenes to draw inspiration from. The picture below was a strikingly appropriate example, complete with bench and usable colour palette:

I took the main colours from this picture, and started plotting out how things in the park should look in terms of colour, tone and composition. The picture I'm particularly pleased with is this one:

As you can see, the colours are much more washed out than in the source image, and as the camera angle only consists of things in the mid-to-far background, the purple-ish mist is much more dominant. It looks suitably autumnal, though, and as long as I can get a bit more oranges and yellows into the shots, presumably when things are meant to be nearer the camera, things won't be too purple overall.

The Twinings' adverts have provided some inspiration, come to think of it...

The Magpie: animation and experiments in composition

Compositing was always something I had intended to do especially right when it came to the final cut, as it has such a large effect on the general aesthetic and the audience's perception of the film. I went into After Effects with what was then the only fully animated shot of the film, and played around with masks and effects until I found a combination of tools that accurately recreated the look I was going for.

I used this lighting and filtering test, created in Photoshop, as a visual target while tinkering in After Effects.

For this film, it's important for me that the flash animation doesn't stand out too much from the backgrounds. There's always going to be a certain degree of separation as they're starkly different mediums from each other, but the animated characters have to nevertheless look like they belong to the world they've been placed over.

Also, I've been getting a fair chunk of animation done. Having concentrated on Estelle's project, Pups, lately, I've been striving to redress the balance in my workload. Shot 4 of my film, the shot where the man encounters the bird for the first time, is a long shot to animate and so I took a break from that and concentrated on a shot from later on in my production schedule, just to keep things interesting. In this next shot, shot 17, the man is sitting on the park bench and prepares to eat his lunch. However, just before taking a bite from the sandwich, paranoia suddenly sets in and he looks suspiciously around to see if that mischievous magpie's around. He's clearly still sore from the handkerchief fiasco from earlier on.

The Magpie: images so far

Here's a compilation of all the visual material from this blog, from the very beginning. I figure that a definitive visual summary of all that has been posted would come in handy.

Composition Concepts

In between animating for The Magpie, I've been trying to see how the film will look once everything's been composited together. Once I've figured stuff out in this way, it'll provide a more concrete goal for us when everything's animated and it turns to post-production.

Here are the first designs.

Compositing test

For The Magpie, post-production will play an important role in making sure the animation blends believably with the background. For example, shots with a background involving a strong light source will be complimented with effects, applied to the overlaid animation in After Effects, to simulate the same light hitting the subject.

Here is a little compositing experiment using a generic park image from Google as a makeshift background.
I noted the general direction, and colour, of the light and shade, and tried to replicate it over the man. Largely, I would say this has been successful, but the tweaking will continue.