Rohit Gurumith Singh

As the Major Study module draws to a close, I am able to reflect on the past three months and recognize that I have made significant progress in terms of knowledge and technical proficiency. Although I have made numerous errors, I have also learned from them and returned stronger. I will outline the key elements that have contributed to this progress -

WORKING UNDER A PREPLANNED SCHEDULE :

This was a new concept for me and at first, I was hesitant to use it. However, now that I have a better understanding of it, I am glad I did. Developing my first Gantt Chart for the purpose of constructing and tracking my schedule for a major project has been extremely beneficial for me. It has enabled me to be more aware of the deadline and has motivated me to complete tasks on time. Prior to using Gantt charts, I had a tendency to second guess when I would finish my work, which could have been disastrous if I had the same attitude when working on a major project. Although there were some consequences due to not assigning the days correctly, I have learned my lesson and will now fully utilize the preplanned schedule from now on.

WORKING AS A TEAM :

For the first time in this module and throughout my life, I collaborated with another individual on my own work. Normally, I would have done all of the work myself, however, I was advised to enlist the services of a sound designer in order to reduce the amount of work that would need to be done on my end. I am immensely grateful for this advice as working with the sound designer provided me with a new perspective on the subject matter. This has enabled me to decide to collaborate on future projects with others as it allows us to learn from one another and develop as a team.

RECEIVING CONSTANT FEEDBACK :

In this module, weekly tutorials were held with Katy, during which she would analyze the animatic and provide constructive feedback on what could be improved upon and what was not necessary for the film. This, in my opinion, was one of the primary factors in my successful completion of the project ahead of schedule. Additionally, there were numerous gaps in the film that she assisted in rectifying and guided me in the correct direction. Consequently, in the future, I would like to engage in this activity more frequently to join animation-related websites and receive feedback from experienced senior animators, which would further assist me in making the correct decisions in my career.

ALWAYS DO IN-DEPTH RESEARCH :

I also realized the significance of conducting research and viewing other films to collect material for my project. As with this film, I initially had difficulty with the concept of introducing a robot as I had originally intended to use an alien in this film. Katy recommended the use of a robot and sent me a few films for reference. This provided me with the opportunity to develop the character of the robot.

PRACTICE AS I LEARN :

I also developed the habit of applying what I have learned immediately as I am learning it. For instance, the Photoshop xEB synth technique. I observed a video and immediately decided to apply it. This made the process simpler and more confident as I used it more frequently.

BE ORGANISED :

In the past three months, my creative decision-making has undergone a significant transformation. There have been numerous alterations to the concepts, art styles, characters, and even methods, however, in the end, it appears to have been successful. Therefore, I will be summarizing the process of creative decision-making in the main study module buy, highlighting the key elements below.

CHANGE IN CHARACTER DESIGNS :

My initial character design for the theater owner and the robot was significantly different from the end product. Katy requested me to streamline the designs as it would save me a great deal of time that would otherwise be spent animating additional details such as hair strands, beard position, etc. Additionally, I decided to modify and streamline the character design for one of the disruptive audience members as I was short on time and needed to expedite the animation.

CHANGE IN TECHNIQUE/APPROACH :

Initially, the sculpted backgrounds were intended to be texture-painted. To achieve this, the texture paint feature was used on the blender and the brush with flat colors was used to paint over the background to create a cartoony effect. However, this technique was not successful due to the lack of research on the subject. Due to my lack of understanding of the feature, I began to paint some backgrounds for a few days, only to discard them the following day due to my dissatisfaction with the output. However, I learned from these mistakes after discovering the Photoshop x EB synth technique and took the time to fully comprehend how it worked before attempting to execute the technique.

SIMPLIFYING COMPLEX SHOTS :

Im always very overambitious whenever it comes to visualising an idea which leads me to make very overcomplicated shots when the idea can be visualised in a much simpler and an efficient way. Alex helped me get out of it to a certain extent in the practice 1 module and katy has now helped me get out of it even more in this module when I did that a lot of times in the initial stages of my project and after a point, i started to notice them myself and decided to simplify the actions in that scene to make them look much better in a way. some of the examples for this would be the shot of the robot handling the misbehaving kid. initially it was the boy rocking the chair with his arms and his whole body was shaking like crazy .the robot would then grab him and rock his shoulders before dropping him down. i simplified this into a shot of the boy kicking the seat and the robot grabbing him by the foot and spinning him around before dropping him. i personally found the second shot to be way more enjoyable than the first.

PICKING THE RIGHT COLOR PALETTES :

Despite having a great desire to create textures and audio effects of my own, I was limited in the amount of time I had available to do so. Therefore, I sought the assistance of a sound designer who could assist me in creating sound effects. As the sound designer was also working on a project of their own, they were required to use a soundtrack from outside of their library and from third-party sources. Below are the sources of the soundtrack and other third-party assets.

Textures :

Reference Image :

Sounds and Clips :

REFERENCES :

myfreetextures (2014). red rusted metal background. [online] www.myfreetextures.com | 1000+ Free Textures, Stock Photos & Background Images. Available at: https://www.myfreetextures.com/another-rusted-red-metal-background/ [Accessed 19 Aug. 2023].

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Pinterest. (n.d.). Prédio | Fachada de predio, Fachada, Fachadas. [online] Available at: https://in.pinterest.com/pin/328551735310725890/ [Accessed 19 Aug. 2023].

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wallpapercrafter. (2022). 604917. [online] Available at: https://wallpapercrafter.com/604917-brick-wall-background-brick-wall-background-old-aged.html [Accessed 19 Aug. 2023].

pixy.org. (n.d.). Dirty brick wall texture background image. [online] Available at: https://pixy.org/5452/ [Accessed 19 Aug. 2023].

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www.manytextures.com. (n.d.). Dirty grunge concrete wall texture to download - ManyTextures. [online] Available at: https://www.manytextures.com/texture/222/dirty-grunge-concrete-wall/ [Accessed 19 Aug. 2023].

Rola, S. (no date) Old Blue facade texture, Old Blue Facade - Free Texture. Available at: https://freestocktextures.com/texture/old-blue-facade,1121.html (Accessed: 19 August 2023).

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www.textures4photoshop.com. (2017). Old Rusty Painted Metal Texture With Green Paint. [online] Available at: https://www.textures4photoshop.com/tex/grunge-and-rust/old-rusty-painted-metal-texture-with-green-paint.aspx [Accessed 19 Aug. 2023].

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Unsplash (n.d.). Photo by Malik Skydsgaard on Unsplash. [online] unsplash.com. Available at: https://unsplash.com/photos/ylGcmefqE_I.

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www.wallpaperflare.com. (n.d.). HD wallpaper: wood texture, backgrounds, wood grain, pattern, flooring, brown | Wallpaper Flare. [online] Available at: https://www.wallpaperflare.com/wood-texture-backgrounds-wood-grain-pattern-flooring-brown-wallpaper-habbh [Accessed 19 Aug. 2023].

Smallbones (2010). English: The Broadway Movie Theater on Broadway, Pitman, New Jersey. Near Pitman Grove. [online] Wikimedia Commons. Available at: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Broadway_Pitman_Grove.JPG [Accessed 19 Aug. 2023].

Twisterium (2020). Happy Ending. Available at: https://soundcloud.com/twisterium/happy-ending [Accessed 19 Aug. 2023].

Waves, S. (2023) Stock-waves - inspiring motivational background corporate music [royalty free], YouTube. Available at: https://youtu.be/pbwVDTn-I0o (Accessed: 23 August 2023).

PRESENTATION & PROMOTIONAL VIDEO :

At first, I was perplexed and had no clue as to how and where to begin my presentation. Reading the assignment brief only added to my confusion, as I felt that it would not be enough to cover a period of 15 minutes. However, then I recalled that Katy had sent a recording of Ian's Zoom session regarding the presentation, and after watching the session, I had a better understanding of what was needed and how it should be approached, and I was prepared to begin.

During my presentation, I used Gibb's reflective model to assess my artifact. Upon rehearsal, I had a feeling that the evaluation section would take me approximately 8-9 minutes, whereas the introduction section should only take 3 minutes maximum.

The promotional video would take up the remaining time. I recorded the promotional video years ago when I was at an LRC meeting with a friend of mine. I thought it would be better for me to begin it as soon as possible, thus avoiding any potential issues and rushing later.

ORGANISING THE MASSIVE PROJECT FILES IN D DRIVE :

Once animating and coloring had been completed, it was necessary to render the files, to toonify the backgrounds in Photoshop and Ebsynth, import them into After Effects to composite them, and export them to Premiere Pro for editing the clips and compiling the final film. When I imported the post-Ebsynth Png sequence into After Effects to test it, I recall it was 700 MB for a 5-second clip. As my C drive was rapidly running out of space, I decided to transfer the project to D drive. This was the second time I had attempted to transfer the project files from the software itself, as the previous attempt had resulted in the loss of numerous files.

Now i had 4 folders- the actual PNG sequence, the eb synth PNG sequence, after effects files and the premiere pro files.

In each of the four folders, subfolders would be included for each shot or sequence in the film, making it easier to organize and access them quickly without having to search for them.

The process progressed smoothly and efficiently, and I also took advantage of my laptop's cool boost feature to prevent it from overheating during the renders. This was especially beneficial as, if I had to calculate the exporting time for all the sequences in all four folders, it would have taken approximately 1 hour and a half.

LAST MINUTE CHANGES AND LOSS OF FILES :

This was the part of the project where I was most stressed and a lot of things were going wrong at the same time. There was some issue with some blender files that corrupted some of my essential scene files. I still don’t understand how this happened. Maybe it was because I tried to move the files and textures to the D drive while they were still on the C drive. I don’t know for sure, but I ended up losing some really important scenes where I didn’t have access to them at all. In the same week, I had a group lesson with Katy and my classmates. When I showed them my animatic they gave me a lot of constructive feedback and suggested that I change a lot of things.

I took it to the chin and was looking forward to the changes I had to make, however, the real issue arose when I realized that I had a lot of work to do in a short period of time, especially considering that I had recently lost some files and was feeling overwhelmed. Consequently, I decided to take a couple of days off, even though I still had a lot of time left. The reasoning behind this decision was that I did not want to overexert myself when I was feeling mentally exhausted, as the last time I had done this during the Practice 2 module, I had a panic attack and had to request an extension.

SOUND DESIGNER :

Prior to this module, I had never worked with anyone on my project. I typically did all the work myself and was intending to do so during this module. However, my tutor suggested I enlist the help of others and divide the work among them, which would alleviate a great deal of stress. I am glad to have gone down this route as working with my sound designer provided me with a fresh perspective on certain aspects. For example, I did not know certain fundamental concepts and tricks in sound design that I am now familiar with and will use in future projects. Additionally, my tutor suggested that I enlist the help of other people to color-coat my animation, but I declined as I wanted to remain in control of my film and did not wish to divulge too much information.

The only way I was able to squeeze a sound designer in was by making it a service-for-service deal (he asked me to draw a concept of his avatar’s mask) and by setting dates for when certain things needed to be done earlier. I played my animatic to him and gave him my description of what sounds I needed in the order of the scenes in my animatic so that I didn’t miss anything essential.

THE GANTT CHART :

One of the first things my tutors told me at the start of the final module was that I should develop the habit of making the Gantt chart and using it to keep an eye on our schedules. At first, it was really hard for me because it was the first time I made a chart or even tracked a schedule because usually I just started a project and tried to get it done before the deadline. It was a really interesting experience but I think it’s safe to say that I’ve got the hang of it now and I will be practicing and improving on this habit when working on my next projects.

My Gantt chart underwent several revisions due to my tutor's belief that I had not scheduled certain elements correctly (i.e., she requested me to analyze which shot would require more days to animate, and then allocate more days to it, rather than simply assigning 2 days for each shot), however, there was a particular point in time where I created a final version, which I have adhered to ever since. Most of the time, I was on schedule, however, there were some days when I was unable to work due to illness or exhaustion due to mental burnout. These occurrences caused me to fall behind schedule, followed by numerous last-minute revisions that exacerbated the situation. However, as I was scheduled to complete the project approximately two weeks prior to the deadline, I was now projected to complete the project a day or two prior to the deadline. Overall, I was a few weeks behind schedule, but I was able to manage.

FINAL ANIMATION :

Synopsis: A movie theater owner and his son find a bizarre way to save their theater's dying reputation

FINAL COMPOSITING :

To add the final touches to my film, i imported the fully edited version of my film into after effects and added in a couple of little things.

I duplicated the film file and then changed its blending mode to screen.

my idea was to add a very subtle and smooth glow to the overall film. so what i did over there was added a luma key and then keyed out the darker regions of the film so only the bright portions remain.

To now highlight the bright regions and give that glow, i added the curves effect and played around with the values after which i added the gaussian blur and increased the size and spread of the glow layer.

Now to finish things up, i just added the vignette effect and made some final corrections to the level values and histogram to make it ready to be exported for one last time and to be made public to the audience!

I learnt this trick from this youtube video and have been using it for a while now :

REFERENCES :

EDITING TECHNIQUES :

Apart from the general sound mixing and clip trimming, i finally found a good approach to display those bad/good reviews.

I had the reviews floating over the screen and scrolling down from top to bottom, one after the other, rather than just showing them on the phone.

the reason i did this was because i felt like i could use this to build tension where i used a tension rising sound and it gets louder as every review passes by until it finally reaches the end point and cuts to black when the guy gets frustrated.

i felt like this scene was way more impactful than the scene i had in mind before. i also used this as a really great opportunity to add the title of the film "when it cuts to black" and it all came well together.

I created these reviews on photoshop and here's a list of everything i made and the website logo i created :

COMPOSITING TECHNIQUES 5 :

After importing the background and the audience members, i wanted to give them rim lights so i just added the inner shadow effect, gave it a brighter color value, changed the direction of the rim light towards the screen and changed the blend mode of the layer to "softlight" to give it more contrast and depth to it overall.

I also added the cartoon effect to the background to give it a bunch of linearts and strokes which would make the environment look more cartoony. i wanted to keep it as subtle as possible so i messed around with the values until i got the desired output.

I added a spotlight from the direction of the screen so it would look like the light rays is being generated by the movie screen.

I then added the characters and gave them some shadows. I gave the robot a rim light effect from behind since he is covering the screen so all the light coming from it is pretty much bouncing off of his back.

the goo was something i was really looking forward to and i wanted to make it look as slimy as possible. so i found an effect called "CC Glass" and then applied to the green strokes and it fully just transformed those ordinary strokes to a glossy and slimy liquid, which is exactly what i was looking for. i messed around with the values to the point where i was satisfied with the output.

I added the radial gradient ramp effect and just changed the colors since i felt like the values were already on point for the scene. i then changed the blend mode to "Linear light" for it to properly blend in with the scene. After that i added another spotlight to enhance the position and values of the previous spotlight.

COMPOSITING TECHNIQUES 4 :

I imported the background layer first.

I imported the audience members but they weren't behind the seat as they were in the blender scene, so I had to manually mask them out using the pen tool. to do that I had to duplicate the background layer and then put it over the audience members so when I drew the mask using the pen tool on the duplicate background layer, it would just keep that drawn layer and remove the rest, which in this case are the seats.

I repeated those steps for the middle row as well.

I added the cartoon effect to give the background some lineart strokes and make it look more cartoony.

I added a couple of gradient ramps but then I didn't make it too strong since it's in the middle of the theater and realistically, there will be light on almost every seat.

I imported the character and gave him some inner shadows and messed around with the values until I was happy with it.

I added a light glow to the phone by just adding an outer and an inner glow effect to it. I increased the size of the outer glow to denote that he was using his phone at full brightness.

On top of the outer glow, I added a spotlight to give the light rays from the phone a specific direction and make it look more realistic like a phone light rather than a light from a bulb. I messed around with the angle and softness values until I got the desired output.

I finally added the radial gradient ramp but I didn't move it around since the character is at the center and the main source of light is around the same area as well. using this gradient ramp enhanced the bright and dark values and made them look brighter and darker.

COMPOSITING TECHNIQUES 3 :

I Imported the wall first and I wanted to composite that first before I could bring in the character.

I then added the cartoon effect to add lineart strokes to the wall

I added the Gaussian blur effect since I wanted the main focus to be on the character and not on the background in this case. I messed around with the values until I got the desired output and then changed the blending mode to "soft light'' and made it more subtle. it also highlighted the lighting and the darker portions of the scene which I really liked.

I imported the character and then i wanted to add rimlight and shadows so i added the inner shadow effect and then changed the color, changed the blemd mode to linear light, changed the direction of the rimlight to match the direction of the lights in the scene.

For the shadows, i duplicated the character layer and just changed the color to black, changed the blend mode to multiply, and then changed the direction of the shadows according to the direction of the shadows in the scene. after this, i just changed the blendmode of the shadow to light so the intensity of the light and shadows were matching.

I Imported the audience members and then gave them a directional blur in the horizontal direction to match it with the direction they were moving in. I increased the length of the blur to show the speed they were moving in.

I duplicated the layer and changed the direction of the blur from right to left to make it look a bit better.

I finally added a gradient ramp to further highlight the dark and bright portions in the scene and also give the hue of the scene to the audience members and the kid so it looks like they're in the scene.

COMPOSITING TECHNIQUES 2 :

I imported the PNG Sequence into After effects

I added the cartoon effect to give this scene some black lineart.

I then imported the character as a PNG sequence and changed the fps of that composition to 18fps so the animation doesn't look sped up anymore and it now looked like it was perfectly timed.

After that, I wanted to give the character some soft rim light so I applied the inner shadow effect on it and changed the color and the blend mode to Linear light so it looked accurate to a rim light. I then changed the direction of the rim light according to the lighting in the scene and messed around with the values until I was satisfied and made the light softer.

I now wanted to give this character some shadows as well. so I basically just duplicated the character layer changed the inner shadow color to black and then changed the blend mode to "Multiply". I then changed the direction of the shadows according to the lighting in that scene. the shadows still looked too harsh after this process so I pretty much just changed the overall blend mode of the layer to "Soft light" which sort of evened out the intensity of the rim light and the shadows.

To make the scene more brighter I then added the gradient ramp and turned it into a radial ramp so it looks similar to a point light. I adjusted the values accordingly and moved the brighter part of the ramp to where the light is actually located in the scene

After finishing the full animation and rendering it as PNG sequences, it was time for me to go through the most experimental and challenging process of making this film - Compositing. After messing around with a lot of values and effects I found the right one and here's the step-by-step process of how I did it-

COMPOSITING TECHNIQUES 1 :

I Imported the PNG sequence from EB Synth.

I added the "cartoon" effect which adds lineart to your scene and posterises it. I had already posterized it using Photoshop and EB synth so I didn't need to posterize it further. all I needed was the lineart and I got that by messing around with the detail radius and edge enhancement.

I wanted the scene to slightly look brighter and have some more contrast. so I messed around with the levels until I got the desired output.

I also increased the saturation to highlight the lights in the scene and make it look more colorful and decreased the lightness to make the dark spots darker, further pushing the contrast and making the scene look crisp. I changed the blend mode to overlay so it didn't look too strong.

MAKING BACKGROUNDS :

So as I was on the hunt for efficient ways to toonify my backgrounds for ages, I finally found the perfect technique using 2 software - Photoshop and EB Synth and I definitely plan on using this for my upcoming projects and experimenting with different styles. Here's how I made it work -

PHOTOSHOP :

Firstly I opened Photoshop and imported 3 frames from the PNG sequence of my scene - The first, middle, and the last frame.

I then clicked on the oil paint filter in the "filters" option and messed around with the values until I was satisfied with the output. I wanted to not stylize too much since it would make it too smooth and smudgy which doesn't really look that great. so I kept it somewhere in the middle but I did turn the "cleanliness" option all the way up since it makes it look way cleaner and eliminates all of those minute details on the walls which is what I need in order to modify my backgrounds. I also slightly modified the bristle details as well since it gives the smoothing a little bit of a pattern as well.

I then exported these 3 modified images and stored them in a folder labeled "Keyframes".

2. EB SYNTH :

I opened EB Synth and pasted the "Keyframes" folder containing the 3 modified images, into the "Keyframes" section.

I then pasted the original PNG sequence folder of the whole scene into the "Video" so it would track the effects and apply them to every frame.

in the section below, once I hit the "Run All" option, it would track the effects applied on frame 1 and frame 75 and then apply those effects to the frames in between them which are 2-74. It would then do the same from frames 75-150 and would export it as 2 separate folders containing these 2 PNG sequences. this is how EB Synth works