CGI/Compositing/VFX

The assignment for the module Animation this semester was as follows:

Semester assignment:

„My Superhuman Powers“
Create a clip (based on the skills you have collected so far) consisting of compositing with 2D graphics plus VFX and/or CGI.
Create a clip that shows and explains your „supernatural powers“. Choose a supernatural ability that suits you and can be realized within the time frame.

The aim of the assignment is to experiment with tracking a scene and to develop a production process.

Mandatory parts (animation disciplines):

• Film (a simple cell phone video is possible)
• 2D graphics
• VFX and/or compositing (the „supernatural powers)
• Audio

Production process:

Brainstorming:

During the brainstorming process, I considered which superhuman power would be most practical for me.
I quickly came up with the idea of teleportation, as I often find myself running late. Therefore, I decided to open portals, similar to Doctor Strange. In my video, I demonstrate opening a portal from my home to the university to arrive on time for a lecture.

Implementation:

Creating the portal:

To ensure that the essential foundation of my video idea was in place, I first created the portal. I used a tutorial as a guide, which also provided the necessary expressions for the particles. The first challenge was creating the portal. I wanted to add a text with Chinese characters to mimic the mystical character of Doctor Strange. However, the text disappeared every time I applied the „fx saber“ effect to it and tried to link it to the portal. So I created a solid to which I could apply the effect and make the text visible. I just had to make sure that I applied the previously created text layer to the „Core Type“ (under „Customize Core“) so that it could be used as a reference. I then duplicated this solid to completely outline the portal with text.

Shooting videos:

I only started recording the videos once I had created the portal. Shooting the videos didn’t cause me any major complications. Only the quality of the videos could have been better. It would also have been more helpful if I had made a storyboard beforehand, which I could have used as a guide during production.

Post Production:

During post-production, I took care of the usual things like:

• colour grading the videos to create a consistent look and feel
• using vignettes, textures and colour gradients
• For the sounds, I used the original audio from the videos themselves, as well as sounds and music from Pixabay, which you can download royalty-free

There were two scenes in particular that were a bit challenging:

1. the scene where I open the portal from a first-person view and
2. the scene where I jump into the portal

1. the scene where I open the portal from a first-person view:
   I encountered different problems with this scene. For one thing, there was the problem with the couch and a shipping tube. When I shot the video, I thought I needed tracking points to place my portal. However, when editing I realised that this was not the case and that the shipping tube was placed unnecessarily. To solve this problem, my lecturer gave me the tip of creating a still image that I could easily edit in Photoshop. I did this and had the right background in a matter of minutes. I then put the still image back into my composition and added a „shake effect“ to the image to simulate a slight camera movement that was also present in the original video.
   Problem #2 with this scene was opening the portal itself and properly masking my arms out of the video. This had to be broken down into several layers. First, the couch, which is the background. Then the portal, which represents the middle ground, and only on top of that can you see my hands opening the portal. Masking my hands was difficult as they sometimes crossed over each other and left the frame, making it impossible for the tracker to function properly. My lecturer gave me the tip to mask out the arms one one. Said and done. Using the pen tool, I masked out the arms one one, frame frame.
   This solution was very time consuming and the end result was a bit messy.
2. the scene where I jump into the portal:
   At first I was worried that I would have to mask myself out again, as I had to do with the arms, but this was not the case. In this case. I could simply use the Roto brush, which delivered relatively good results.

Other scenes worth mentioning are the „clock scenes“, where I look at the clock in a first-person view and a text appears above the clock, saying „You’re late!“ in one scene and „On Time!“ in the other. To create these scenes, I used the 3D camera tracker to track a point on my watch, then added a camera and text. I masked the text with a mask path and applied the ‚flicker-out‘ effect to make it more dynamic and engaging for the viewer. I duplicated the text and placed it, slightly scaled down, directly on top of the original to create an extrusion effect and add depth.

And now for the result: