Colour Test

A test of Elwood's comic black and white style and how it can be put into the real world.

Elwood in the Foyer

Another test of matching 2D with live action. I got a bit more advanced with shadow/reflection than the previous test and added some masks to have the 2D elements behind practical ones. The match moving is still a little off, but I think this could be fixed with clear tracking markers and steadier footage. I don't intend to have such wobbly hand-held shots in the film.

With the assessment date rapidly approaching and two other projects on the go I didn't have time to do any animation specifically for this, so I borrowed this walk cycle from a cartoon I did years ago. So don't judge it harshly. The feet don't make good contact with the ground and it could do with being on 1s instead of 2s to better mix with the live action, but it served the purposes of this experiment.

First Compositing Test

I haven't spoken a whole lot yet about what my project is on this here blog yet, but I shall be talking about that in my next post. For now I'll just give the basics needed to set up this video. I am planning a short film that will integrate 2D characters into live action footage. This is my very first test of integrating the two together. I shot this with my compact camera, so it's grainy and compressed. This also means the tracking points aren't as accurate as I'd like, resulting in the 2D element floating a little. I'll be borrowing a nicer camera from the University for subsequent experiments. There's also very little animation to speak of, but that wasn't necessary at this point for reasons I'll go into.

The aim of this was to test two specific things:

1. Tracking - how simple is it to track camera movements and apply them to the animated element?
   
   
2. Environment - how well can the animation be integrated?

I'm keen to keep the 2D elements as flat and cartoony as I'd draw them in their own context (i.e. comics & animation - more on this on the next post) but I want them to affect the environment. So I did some pretty simple (or down-right crude) effects in the composite to achieve this.

Click read more below to learn more about the various elements I experimented with in the compositing...

Time Displacement

I was playing around with time displacement effects and this was my second test. It's not an effect I plan (or planned, at least) to use in my project but I'm exploring different ways of changing things. At the moment I don't want my project to be one thing. I want to have a surreal element to it. I want to use animation and effects to express ideas.

Test

I shall hopefully populate this blog with more stuff soon, but for now here's a quick proof of concept video I did for my project:

No Entry from Mark Haldane on Vimeo.