Sem 2 Week 10: Diseases flying around

26 Nov 2016

By popular demand for my viewers (hi craig and martin if you're there), its time for CHARMAINE'S QUOTE OF THE WEEK!. *theme song plays*

To keep the body in good health is a duty... 

otherwise we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear. 

Buddha

Almost everyone fell sick this week, I unexpectedly stayed healthy even though there was so many germy people surrounding me. Its really important to keep health, through last week i learned that once you fall sick, your will to do work drops and the quality becomes crappy. Even our teacher fell sick and it really affected us because we haven't see him for 2 weeks and there was so many things we wanted to consult him about.There was Red Camp last week, where secondary school students came to tour our school. It was really uncomfortable having so many students stare at you while you composite and it made all our teachers unavailable because they were the tour guides. 

Dailies 

Thankfully the teachers went out of their way to squeeze out a few minutes for us to consult them. We had a 2 hour consultation with Philip on Thursday, and it was the most useful one so far because we haven't seen him in awhile. He helped me with my environment lighting and colours. What i mainly got out of it was i had to make the environment more desaturated and blur to bring focus to the characters. It aches my heart desaturating my work because i love to have colourful and vibrant drawing. However for the best of the team i shall follow his instructions. Here are some composites that i did which I most probably have to redo. An extra fact is that we just confirmed what type of brush we are using for monsters and humans.

Team Dynamics

I think our team is doing fine, though i do feel like we are behind time which makes me very anxious. We haven't had any arguments or upsets in awhile and everyone is getting very serious with their work. It shows we are getting use to each other however i do miss those times where there was a bit of drama. Not to jinx anything because i really do enjoy the peacefulness and i hope we get through this sem well! 

See you next week

sem 2 week 9: 1 more week till presentation

20 Nov 2016

Hello guys!! whoo hoo! This week was amazing, one of the best birthdays i ever had. So many people wished me and many more celebrating my birthday with me :). But now on to work

CPD 
This week i played a lot with the after effects filters, and like usual because my friends want to change the composition of their shot, i have to change the composition of my lighting, which requires me to re-render EVERYTHINGG!!. This week I've learn we cant do any super hard camera movements because to get the 2D perspective of the toilet shots is way too difficult. So at first i'd finish compositing all the toilet scene but now, I have no toilet scenes complete because we are scrapping the work to find new compositions. Sigh pies... I know this is the greater good of the project but it breaks my heart to see my work get wasted.

This week i intend to finish 3 more lightings. I've actually finished compositing the lift lobby scenes as well but alvin gave me a advice on how to improve it so i guess i have to re-render it.

Audio Design workshop
Though in our course we aren't taught audio design, our teacher invited a guest, Mr Kazz Sato, I could clearly see his love from his work and through his showreel you could tell his specialty is horror sound effects. He didn't talk about the technical aspects of the sound effects but talk more about what is suitable for what situations. How the weirdest items can make the most natural sounds. He reference to a few films that i love, like kill bill for the dramatic sound effects when they hit each other and singing in the rain where there was juxtaposition, because though rain is associated with saddness the man singing, sing in the rain is very happy. Another good note is that when the characters are speaking you should dim the background sound so as to hear the characters.

He had very good advice, he also told us not to give up on our passion because he has seen alot of talented people giving up just to have a stable jobs and he finds it a waste. This talked actually gave me more encouragement to do my work better because i do love what i am currently doing right now, though i have doubts.

Here is what i did last week:

Camera angles like these wont work

AN APPROVE SHOT YESSS!!

LETS KEEP IT UP CHARMAINE!

Sem 2 WEEK 8: blending days

13 Nov 2016

Hello everyone, sorry i didn't post last week, i was really sick and totally forgot about it. Anyways just a short recap of last week, nothing much happened i started lighting a few shots. Stanley's house, the lift lobby and all the toilet scenes.

This week i did the same except i practice more of compositing in after effects. I looked through some youtube videos of professionals and how they composite their render layers. I realised that a lot of the lighting and effects are done in after effects! (well it is in the name but still...) and from our lighting class we only touched it for 4 hours. Luckily my mentor Borko showed me some filters I can use and gave us a very brief lighting masterclass. Everything was really fast, i wasn't sure if i even absorbed anything.

Anyways i am really stressed out about not being to finish on time , the 3 renders i worked on all of last week 2 of them need to be retouched. I do feel some of my work being wasted. My group members seem quite chill about the whole thing though, maybe i should be more like them or i should just keep doing my own thing.

Either way for this coming week i hope i will concentrate more on my FYP, i am embarrass to say that i have been concentrating on my other modules way too much and have been going out a lot on weekend. TIME TO SHUT MYSELF IN

Renders: