■Senior Project

Finally the class where I can let my imagination run free! In the Senior Project class we're supposed to come up with a project that reflects our main focus. Since my focus is everything, I chose a project that covered everything. I created a starting animation company that's creating their first cartoon. I intended to do:

  • [Graphic design] Create a logo for the animation company and the cartoon.
  • [Graphic design] Create corporate identity for the company.
  • [Graphic design] Create ads for the cartoon.
  • [Web design] Create a website for the company.
  • [Multimedia/Animation] Create an opening sequence for the cartoon.
  • [Illustration] Create detailed character illustrations of the cartoon's main characters.
  • [Photography] Take pictures of the DVD case.

In the end I ended up having:

  • [Graphic design] Created a magazine ad and DVD cover.
  • [Multimedia/Animation] Created a 10-minute sequence for the cartoon.
  • [Illustration] Created detailed character illustrations of the cartoon's main characters.
  • [3D Modeling/3D Animation] In Maya created a temple, an airship and a puzzle-like thingy. In Bryce created three outdoor sceneries. All this was added to the 10-minute sequence.

I went that direction because midway the teacher told me I should forget about all that and just focus on the movie, that I have sufficient graphic design work behind me anyway. He was really impressed with what I was producing with my opening sequence. I sure did add more to it, and it ended up being almost 10 whole minutes. ^_^

I chose the name "EverDream Animation" for the company because I wanted a name that expressed a hype to dream forever, to always strive to fulfill dreams. I chose the name "Fantasy Realm" for the cartoon because I wanted a name that described the type of cartoon it is.

■Character Illustrations

Ramblings: These figures were partially traced. I traced over asexual nude bodies from Poser (Poser is a program that generates 3D people that you can pose in any position). I added the clothes, hair, etc. myself. The genie all the way to the right was a last-minute addition, so that would explain why I re-used the black guy's body for him.

■Magazine Ad

Ramblings: The two figures I drew through the same process as the above character illustrations. The wings came out nifty because I was looking at a photo of a bird's wing as I drew them. Also on this ad is the logo for the cartoon and the company.

■DVD Cover

Ramblings: I love how this came out! Naturally, I was looking at some of my own DVD cases to make sure the format of my cover was realistic and professional. It took me a while, but I finally figured out how to make Maya spit out 300 dpi images (for the 3D airship).



Click image to download
my sexy movie »

■MY MOVIE

Type/Length/Size: WMV, 09:50, 55.6 MB

Ramblings: And here's the sexy beast of my project: "The Fantasy Realm Preview DVD". Note that this is a compressed version. The original version is high quality at 640x480 resolution. Next I will explain each scene in my movie - with screenies!

Update: On Friday 12/16/05 at 4 PM, I presented this project. All graduating seniors must present their senior project to the dean (the head of the Visual Communications department) and an assembly of core teachers. They judge and critique on the work. Those who present a poor project don't graduate (not literally, that just means they need to re-take the senior classes and produce a better project). Well, I had a good presentation, but 'good' wasn't enough for me. :\ I won't bore you with the details, I'll just say my expectations weren't met.
 

And here are screen shots and reflections for every scene of my movie.

■Movie - Scene 1 - Introduction

Ramblings: Here I recorded myself as an overly enthusiastic announcer. And I stress that I am acting. I'm very much not like this in real life, lol. I'm introducing the cartoon, its story and the characters. I decided to add this scene at the last minute. I added it because I thought it would be a good, quick way to extend my movie. The story needed to be better explained anyway. I used some basic After Effects (the program where I created my movie) features to make the images appear next to me. I used some semi-advanced After Effects features to erase half of the background behind me. I did that to help reduce the grain from the soso-quality video of me and so that I can have the EverDream Animation logo behind my head.

■Movie - Scene 2 - Corporate Demo

Ramblings: My corporate demo is one of my most favorite parts! It looks so professional; it gives me goose pimples. It's entirely Flash.

■Movie - Scene 3 - Opening

Ramblings: At around a minute it's quite short, but it's packed with tons of eye candy. Basically, the opening just introduces the main characters and the two kings. Included are three delicious 3D sequences and lots of Flash. With the Flash I made heavy use of masking, and nested animations to give the illusion of camera zooming.

These characters were made a tad differently than my illustrations. Instead of tracing over the asexual Poser bodies in Illustrator (which would take eternity and a day) I printed them out, traced them by hand, scanned them, converted them to vector using Illustrator CS2's new Live Trace feature, imported them into Macromedia Freehand, then imported them into Flash. Within Flash, I cut off body parts for a few characters and animated them separately.

I didn't use any After Effect features. I probably would have if I knew more about After Effects when I made this. FYI, altogether the movie took me about two months to make (worked on it little by little), and at the beginning of the month was when I first learned After Effects.

I'm SO glad I decided to cut this opening in half. My original intention was to make it 2 minutes instead of 1. I probably wouldn't have been able to finish on time if I continued it. Making all these short clips took eternity to do.

Everything came out so slideshow-ish because this was the best way for me to produce this cartoon with the time I had to do it. Although later I learned I had a tough competitor. If I would've known of his work while making my cartoon, I would've been driven to do better, to make my characters more animated and add more footage.

■Movie - Scene 4 - Prelude

Ramblings: This is the longest part of my movie. It preludes the story, giving the origin of "The Contract of Silence". This is when I began using After Effects' sexy features for the first time.

Here I'm using blending modes.

Here I brought in a single flame animation I made in Maya and duplicated it several times and at different sizes to give the illusion of many different flames. I manually animated each flame to move along with the 3D movie. Later I learned I could've just set up the flames in a 3D After Effects scene, which would've saved me a lot of work. I didn't know After Effects had 3D capabilities. >_<

Here I'm using a 3rd party 'clouds' plug-in to make smoke and mist.

Here I have a masked pattern layer on top of a really bright lens flare.

Here I'm using a 3rd party sun rays plug-in to make light shine behind the angel.

Here I used four masks to animate sand blowing out of his hand; two masks for the sand in his hand and two masks blowing it out. One mask is used to display the sand while the other is animated to fade it in/out from visibility.


To spoil the rest of the story after this sequence (hey, it's not like there's going to be more =P ), what eventually happens is that the Light King wants his powers back so badly that he conspires with the Dark King to obtain three ancient relics that can break the seal of silence. This path eventually leads the Light King onto a path of evil, which eventually leads the Continent of the Five Kingdoms to ruin, hence allowing the dark entity of evil incarnate to destroy the world. But will the heroes allow that to happen? Do tell.

■Movie - Scene 5 - Closing & Credits

Ramblings: I didn't want to end my movie with the sad story. To lighten things up a bit, I added a quick closing sequence to remind you about the heroes. For the credits I made a rotating thingamajig in Maya. Midway I switch to a close-up of the thingamajig. Except for the short piano tune from the Evanescence song, all the songs I used were video game songs. :) And yes, I did use aaall those programs I listed. I'll explain what I used each for.

  • Photoshop CS2 - To edit and print out the rendered bodies from Poser.
  • Illustrator CS2 - To convert my scanned drawings to vector and to prepare a few images for my movie in After Effects.
  • After Effects - Where I put everything together to create my movie. I used several of After Effects' features to spice things up.
  • Sapphire plug-ins - An awesome collection of plug-ins for After Effects. I used them to create light rays and mist/smoke.
  • Flash 8 - For all the Flash.
  • Freehand MX - The best way to import Illustrator documents into Flash is to pass them through Freehand.
  • Fireworks 8 - I only used it for one thing. :P To create the red fiery haze for the city-on-fire scene.
  • Maya - To create the 3D shrine, airship and thingamajig.
  • Bryce - To create the 3D outdoor scenes and the city.
  • Poser - Where I generated the asexual nude bodies to trace for my characters.
  • Sony Sound Forge - Just for basic sound edits.
  • Acoustica - To record my voice and pass it through Acoustica's awesome noise reduction filter.
  • Pinnacle Studio 8 - To digitally capture the recording of myself and spit it out into an AVI clip that I can fiddle around with in After Effects.

Oh, and here I'm using some sexy masking to blur out the right side of my thingamajig.