Final Project

After weeks of hard work here it is my After Effects project.


Cat Fancy from Caitlin Lundin on Vimeo.

I'm very pleased with my project. I had fun with it and have always wanted to do an animated piece with construction paper. When I first put the animation together it was 30 seconds long and was far too rushed. That has always been a problem of mine, but I was able to slow it down to give each section the time it deserves. It was hard work for me to figure out the best timing, but overall I'm pleased. There are places that may benefit from a little more time of them but it was a tough call for me. I had some trouble with making movements look natural. There are some parts where the cat moves his head and it looks like something is just moving from one keypoint to the other. The are some things that I like like the wagging of his tail and the turning of his head and eyes. I'm glad I completed the project the way that I did. Definitely learned alot.

Final Stages

Construction Paper pieces were separated on to individual Photoshop layers so that they could be animated individually in After Effects.

Other than the common keys for things like position, scale and rotation I did a few other techniques. I made each piece 3-d so that I could use a camera to navigate in between the scenes. Parenting was also a technique that I used frequently in order to make the cat or other elements move together since everything was built on it's own layer but had to create one creature. I used puppet pins as well to create  fluid motion in the stiff paper parts that weren't suited for multiple layer construction.

Sound has to be added next which is one of my favorite parts because it gives the piece so much life. I'm going to look the the sound catalogue and get me some good sounds. I'll export the completed project from After Effects with no sound. From there, I'll take the .mov file into Final Cut Pro to add the layers of sound.

Progress on the Project

The story changed. I wasn't pleased with what I was able to come up with in the Amelia Bedilia like story. I moved to the dreams of a sleeping cat. It'll be a short piece but it will be a complete story which is what I want.

Having an incredibly busy end of semester, I have neglected the blog. This was the progress for November 20-26. I know that it is recommended to be in After Effects at this time, but planning these out and constructing them was a time commitment as well.

I cut out the pieces of construction paper and assembled them the to the amount of completion that I thought would work best in After Effects. For example I built the cat head separate from the body so that I could put them on different layers and animate them individually.

Here are the rough scans of the construction pieces. I'm really pleased with the look of the scans. It's cool to be able to see the grain of the paper and the shadow of the edge of the paper.

It was fun cutting these pieces out. Some of them had to have parts touched up in photoshop just to give it a little extra and have it stand out. I also cut out letters for the credits. 

Maya Motion

I created a quick scene with a ball. I added a key then moved the ball around adding more key frames to get the movement that I wanted. I added a lambert to the ball and put a color on it then set a key to the color and adjusted it so that the color would change with the movement.


Setting Keys on Maya from catlin lundeen on Vimeo.

After Effects Final Project

For my final project in after effects I was hoping to create an animation using construction paper to tell my story. I want to make a short 1-2 minute project telling a story about a cute animal and the things that that animal has to say about the world around it. I did a construction paper comic strip in French for a high school competition using jokes about idiomatic expressions. My life has clearly been affected by Amelia Bedelia http://www.harpercollinschildrens.com/kids/gamesandcontests/features/amelia/   I was thinking about doing something like that but with creatures. I'm not the most skilled at construction paper animals because their dimensions are a bit tricky but I'm thinking it'll definitely be some sort of creature. Once I have created the creatures and backdrops I would like to import them into After Effects on different layers so that I can animate the various pieces of the animation. The facial expressions will be animated as well.

Here is my estimated schedule

Week 1-
   Planning. Creating a vision for the creature and the world that he will interact with. The script should be written during this week.
Week 2-
   Creating. The script should be finalized and the creature and environments should be in the initial stages of construction. This will be very time consuming.
Week 3-
    Integrating. Finishing creation of the construction paper. Eat Thanksgiving Dinner. Begin taking the project into after effects and animating
Week 4-
    Animating. Completion of the interaction and animation of the construction paper creatures and worlds. And finally rendering.

This may seem like not very much time spent in after effects for an after effects project, but completing a construction paper animation has been a dream of mine and this is a great platform to complete it in. The weeks prior to week 4 will be completed with thought of how the creatures will be able to work in the after affects program. Also week 4 will be a very busy week as I will be devoting a lot of my time to completing the project. I will have more time to work on it then and will have thought a great deal about how to ring the animation together before then.

Motion Tracking in Maya

I took this short clip from Alias and exported it as a targa sequence so that I could use match movie and get a good motion capture on it. From there I took it into Maya. I created the two spheres and added the lightning effect to follow along with the motion tracking. Sydney Bristow is so fond of the Rambaldi Artifact that she found in Italy it really goes well with the stylings of her front hallway. That Rambaldi really could decorate.


Alias Lightning Motion Capture from Caitlin Lundin on Vimeo.

Green Screen Ben Bays Wizard Training

Ben Bays acted out the scene on a green screen. I took the video into After Effects and used a keylight to get rid of the green in the footage. From there, I added two foam emitters that were designated each with either the puppy or the heart. I attached the emitter to a location tracked on Ben Bay's hands. The cartoon look was an effect that I put on the footage with Ben Bays in it to add to the story. There's really no reason for it other than spicing it up a bit.


Ben Bays Wizard Training from catlin lundeen on Vimeo.

Making Soft bodies and Hard Bodies collide into One...Animation

In order to make the video that follows I created a scene using several polygons. I created the track for the ball to follow by creating a torus and then duplicating that torus and booleaned one into to the other to create the dipped track. I intersected the two and deleted some faces so that the ball could fall through. The torus was designated a passive rigid body so that the ball would not fall through it. The ball was designated an active rigid body and given gravity so that it would fall onto the track and follow the track to the bottom.


An Animated Image Sequence from Maya from Ben Kullerd on Vimeo.

Paint and Clone tool

I took a video and edited the time code to have it freeze frame while I traced it with the paint tool. I set it to write on mode so that it would make the animated tracing of the scene. When all was done being traced, I set the timing back to normal on the piece so that the boys could wave. I used the clone tool to fill the scene with watermelon signs.




Untitled from Caitlin Lundin on Vimeo.

Lighting the 3-D Model

After building and texturing my 3-D model the next natural step was to light this girl up. I created an ocean sphere to place my scene inside of. My idea was for my ship to be exploring the depths of the ocean. I thought to put a light on the bottom of the ship that was focusing on a coral reef. I attached a spot light to the bottom of the ship and aimed it at the coral which gave it a long light cast and shadow. I added the shadow in the lighting attribute window. I also tinted this light a slight green color to continue with the look of the ocean. The other light in the scene is an ambient light above the ship that had it's intensity lowered and colored a darker ocean blue. I wanted this light to be able to show what was going on in the scene but not take away from the visual pull of the spot light. The hub on top of the ship doesn't have any specific light on it giving it that glowing look. The glow was applied through a blinn texture that was added to it. I want to make some particles in the scene to make it look more underwater and so that the light has something to catch on to show the beam a little more.

From behind the coral so you can see how good it is

That's some huge coral

That's a spooky shadow

Using 3-D Cameras and Lights in After Effects

The Sheep Pun Gang from Caitlin Lundin on Vimeo.


The sheep and background were photoshopped to be on their own layer. From there, they were made into 3-d layers that auto-adjusted to face the camera as it past. The door was photoshopped out from the door frame so that they could be moved separately. The door was rotated back on the z-axis once the anchor position had been moved to the hinge of the door so that it moved naturally. The door swings open and then the door and door frame move towards the audience and then the camera moves along the z towards the rest of the scene. From there the camera and point of interest are shifted in order to focus on the sheep. 

Textured Manta Ray Submarine

Top

Side

Close Up on Metal Texture

The manta ray submarine space ship has clearly spent a few years making trips across the oceans and the galaxies. The ship was textured with different rusty metals that were found on the internet. In order to have the picture not warped by the varying shapes I applied the texture using either planar or cylindrical mapping based on the shape. I applied a blinn material to the metal to give it an extra shine in the final render. The real question is where do the pilots see out of. To be answered at a later date. 

Particle Generator Explosion!

The particle generator was layered and used to create the following explosion and fire. I repeated the playback of the explosion a couple of times so that it could be viewed better. When I let the explosion run longer it did not look as good. There are 4 layers on the explosion. There is one layer that is sparks heading out with a faster velocity and less resistance. There are 2 layers that have slower faded spheres with two different colors to help add to the body of the explosion. The final layer is a layer of smoke that has the highest level of  resistance and the no gravity on it so that it will stay where smoke should stay. I made the fire by layering two different faded spheres on top of each other with one adding and the other remaining a composite. The rear flame is faster and with less gravity. The front one is slower with more gravity to stay in the range of the hotter flames. Enjoy.


Explosions and Fire from Caitlin Lundin on Vimeo.

Text in After Effects

I created a text in photoshop that I wanted along with decorative attributes on different layers so that I could bring them into After Effects and animate them they way I wanted. The main technique for this text animation is scaling and I moved the snow and Santa hat accordingly.


Santa Text from catlin lundeen on Vimeo.

It was short and I wanted to see what else that I could do. The next piece is not as colorful but takes many more motion tracks in the telling of the story. Each line was given a path to follow in the telling of the story. On top of the motion path that they followed they were given other ramifications for change such as rotation or scaling. For the line "on my" I made it 3-D so that it could fall forward on the z-axis.


A text story from Caitlin Lundin on Vimeo.

Manta Ray Submersible from the FUTURE

Here is the future of space/ocean travel. Get ready if you're interested in either.

I smoothed out the features of the creature and took away the front jowls. They were mismatched and unappealing. The steamboat wheel is now attached to his smokestacks. A combination of using the edges, faces and vertices to shift and smooth the submersible into the final product that I wanted. 

Maya Space Ruin Preproduction

I was thinking about creating a creature space ship that could also make its way into the depths of the ocean. It's a mantaray form with a steamboat wheel as propellor and living quarters underneath. I'm thinking about adding some piping for extra oomph.

These photos are my inspiration.

Pretty much just copied this. I'll have to change that.

Proud Steamboat

Looking at some of these exhaust pipes

Help to get the overall shape of a manta-ray

From below

From Side

Straight On

From Above

My Pretty Special Steamboat Wheel

The manta ray was made by extruding a plane and then working with the vertexes, edges and faces to mold the shape that I wanted. I turned on the smoother which gave a beautiful look to the manta ray, but unfortunately it did not render out that way. I will have to investigate further.

Motion Tracking in After Effects

For this first video I tracked the basketball that the kid was playing with. The color stood out fairly well so it was a particularly easy capture with the need to adjust the tracking point a few times. Once the motion path was approved I placed a lens flare onto that layer. In the motion tracking window I selected the lens flare as the target of the motion path and voila the lens flare was attached to the movement of the ball. This kid will definitely be prepared for the 2059 olympics when we play in outer-space.


Kid Playing with the Lens Flare Basketball from Caitlin Lundin on Vimeo.


For the second video I wanted to play with tracking an image using corner pins to match up a square image with a video of a square object. The video is fairly shaky so the corner trackers had plenty to match up with.


Motion Tracking Dog Billboard from Caitlin Lundin on Vimeo.

Three of the four had little trouble with the location of the track, but the bottom right had more trouble. It was hard to make the hand tracked corner look as smooth as the others, so I tried to cover it up with a stock photo of a tree. I adjusted the photo in photoshop in order to match the tone and contrast with the video better. When I brought the still image into After Effects I put a grain filter over it and match a gray grain to the rest of the video. I parented the still tree to a null object that I had made the target of the motion path. The tree flails awkwardly in the wrong direction. I think this could be fixed with maybe having two corner pin motion tracks for the tree to follow. That may smooth out the movement.

YouTube has finally cooperated

Here is my completed project for after effects.

Easing and Parenting

I just got After Effects on my home computer so watch out it'll be getting crazy pretty soon. For this project I worked with parenting and eases.

I took the blob fish and yellow submarine into photoshop and eliminated the backgrounds and created the suction cup that's on the bottom of the submarine. I took the suction cup into the layer window and used the puppet pin tool to wave it around and make it suck. Back in the composition I parented the suction cup so that it would stay with the submarine. The blob fish was a little different. I made two different blob fish layers that start and ended at different times. The first one ended right before the blob fish is sucked up. The other one starts immediately after. I did this so that I could parent the fish with the submarine only after it was sucked up. 

The motion of the submarine was eased down so that it would approach the blob fish slowly and then it was sped up so that it would fly away. This was done with a bezier curve to the timeline. 

Due to problems with vimeo and youtube I can not put this video online yet. I will work on it and have it here soon.

Building in Maya

I wanted to  created a scene using the techniques of extruding, lofting, revolving and planing, so I looked up a fairly simple building sketch online to sort of follow.
Here is the original sketch.

I chose it because the isometric view of the building could help me get a grasp of what its different sides looked like.
Here is the recreation I made in Maya.

Front View

Side View

There are obviously some differences between the two but I wanted to focus on building the shapes and getting the feel right as opposed to exactly capturing the sketch. In a future endeavor I will more closely follow the original sketch. 

The columns are a curve that was rotated around the y-axis. The window panes are NURBS squares that were laid within one another and then the whole thing was planed in order to leave the panes empty and create a frame around them. A further framed it with cubes to fit just to make the windows stand out more. The curved windows in the upper center portion of the facade were created by extruding a tube out from a circle that I altered to fit the design I wanted. 

I have to admit that I could not find a reasonable use of a loft on such a square building like this so I made a flower to put out in front of the building. 

So Pretty

The Flower From Behind

The flower was created by lofting several wavy curves and then flipping it so that the bottom was visible. This is the underside. I did some further adjustments in order to give the petals some depth. The stem from the flower is a circle that has been extruded back on a funky curve. The design of the line that it was extruded from was further altered to work with the stem look. 

I hope to in the future add some texture and color to my building and build a scene around it. 

Perspective Pet Shop

Two vanishing points were established to help build the proper perspective for the buildings. Windows and doors were added using the same vanishing points and color was added. It was decided that the sun would come from the left and behind leaving the shadows on the bottom and the right. For the shadowy areas I tried to throw a little light up from the area around it. Where the building meets the street I used an opaque brush with a lighten setting and a gray color. For the areas where the sun was hitting I used a yellowish opaque lighten brush to add some color.

  The turtle tank was an attempt to understand how light works in water. It will take much more practice to get there, but I'm glad I did it.

After Effects

I started with the basic frame and added the layers of a photoshop project to it. I isolated the whale layer as a composition on it's own so that I could use the puppet tool to create the flopping and dragging from the still 2-D drawing. I broke the body into two sections with puppet pins so that the tail and head could move separately. Once the whale was infused with puppet motion I transformed the flopping whale from off the screen to the middle. The text also has a simple effect placed on it that is aligned with a sound effect.


Whale vs. Spiny Lizard from catlin lundeen on Vimeo.

Mapping Unto a 3-D Sphere

For this project I created a lambert and attached this visual and mapped it onto a sphere. The first two images are from inside the sphere. The third one is of the sphere's exterior. I did not adjust the UV because I liked the way that the picture sloped down towards the bottom. I think it worked well with the destructive look of the picture that I used. 

Species Unknown

I also created this creature to see how I could mesh the different polygons to make a new construction. It was just to get a little more acquainted with Maya. 

Photoshop Project

Potato House 

For this project I wanted to make a landscape out of food. Once I got started however I thought a humble little potato house and broccoli tree would be a good start with my first time with photoshop. I had fun working with the layering trying to get perspectives right. When I first put the potato house down it cut into the landscape too much and looked too flat, so I thought to hide the base with some bushes. This helped, but I think there is something funky about the bushes in front and I couldn't figure out how to make them look like they better belonged. Lucky for me the internet is full of pictures of vegetables with good lighting and white backgrounds so eliminating elements that weren't part of the final project were a breeze.

Putting the door, windows and chimney on the potato worked when I used the multiply setting on the paint brush to add a little shadowing to make them look like they're there. I also did a little shading in parts of the broccoli tree.

I'm proud of this as my first interaction with photoshop as a program, but I need to improve on perspective and shading.

Introductions

My name is Caitlin Lundin. Most people mispronounce my last name as London. It's Lun Deen. It's cool though. No hard feelings.

Super Fancy Grocery Stores Excite and Confuse Me

I'm very interested in creating using various mediums. My favorite is construction paper art. I made several pieces sing construction paper and even entered one into a French comic competition. I did fairly well. All my pieces have been 2-D static pieces though. My next step is to try a short stop motion using construction paper art. My muse is my sassy and lazy dog named Pepper.

She pities the fool

I have taken one animation class before that focused on Flash animation. The piece was short but I had fun working on it. I'd like to make more projects in the future. I definitely want to learn more programs so that I can enhance my animation skills. I hope to someday work in children's entertainment. I think the best job would be doing some sort of creature construction for a Bill Nye type show.


Tuesday Morning from Caitlin Lundin on Vimeo.


Other work that I have done while at the University of Texas at Austin includes a documentary that I co-directed with my boyfriend called "What's in a Name?" that was screened at the Austin Gay and Lesbian Film Festival here in Austin as well as selected to be in 10 Under 10 this year. I have also worked as a restaurant reviewer for a segment on TSTV's Austin Underground called "Put this in Your Mouth".


What's in a Name? from Ben Kullerd on Vimeo.