Tan Yi Yun 0345559 Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media Final Project/Abstract
Motion
INSTRUCTIONS
FINAL PROJECT : ABSTRACT MOTION
Storyboard
I always wonder why time flies so fast when I get older. I always buried my
head in the screen to do work, until I forget to see the little things
happened around me. Hence, I took this opportunity to discover the unusual
objects, or even the usual objects that always appear around us but we do
not pay attention to the little details. I wanted to observe how living
things breathe and how non-living things stay alive too in this
world.
I called this project "Elapsed". It delves into
the captivating concept of the passage of time by capturing a fusion of
ordinary. It cooperates videography and abstract illustrations, conveying a sense of nostalgic and
serenity.
Figure 1.1, Storyboard 1, Week 12 (25/6/2023)
Figure 1.2, Storyboard 2, Week 12 (25/6/2023)
Video recording
I became a videographer and sourced for a good spot to take the footage for
my idea. I went to a lot of places such as my desk, university campus,
outside of my hostel, park, restaurant, shopping mall, Petaling street, MRT,
and central market. I ended up filming approximately 150 videos. Since I do
not have a camera, I used my iPhone instead and changed the camera setting
to 1080p HD at 60fps.
Figure 1.3, Video footage, Week 12 (25/6/2023)
Figure 1.4, Video footage, Week 12 (25/6/2023)
Animatics
I filtered out the video clips and compiled them in Adobe Premiere Pro. I
tried out some rotoscoping, motion tracking and MOCHA. The details of each
progress are documented in the following section, under video
editing.
Animatics Progress #1, Week 12 (22/6/2023)
Animatics Progress #2, Week 13 (27/6/2023)
Proposal
I compiled all the ideas, sketches, and storyboard into a proposal.
Proposal, Week 14 (6/7/2023)
Still Assets Preparation
To get a real hourglass image, I searched up in the Internet because I did
not have any hourglass with me. I found this nice image in
Freepik.
Figure 1.5, Hourglass (taken from Internet), Week 12 (25/6/2023)
I brought the image to Photoshop and removed the background manually. I
also changed the color of the glasses and removed the sand.
Figure 2.0, 3 characters in MRT, Week 14 (9/7/2023)
I prepared quite a number of still assets in Procreate and Photoshop which I will show along the progress below.
Editing Process
I tried to remix two different videos, both are taken from Pexels. I
applied "exclusion" blending mode to remove the black background of the
stars. However, I noticed there are weird blue stars when moving to the
lighter part of the planet.
To solve this issue, I looked up for tutorial and applied "extract", "shift
channels", and "remove color matting". These effects help to reduce the dark
background as much as possible but still preserve the light source of the
stars. The results in the figure below look more natural.
Figure 2.2, Results (applying some effects), Week 13 (26/6/2023)
I decided to overlay it with other video footage that I took by myself. I
added the night scene that I took in Taylor's. I then removed the planet
because the movement is not that obvious.
Figure 2.3, Re-compositing, Week 14 (9/7/2023)
I applied puppet tool to the strings and dragged it down. I planned to make the entire hourglass shattering when all the strings fall into the lower bulb.
I applied "Shatter" effect and adjusted a few settings to get the desire results. I selected "glass" pattern and adjusted viscosity to add a slow-mo to the shattering.
Back to the first scene, it was the most challenging scene of the entire project. I tried using motion tracking so that the melted clock can be placed on the table. Moreover, I wanted to reverse the video clip because I wanted to show the entire scene first before zooming into the melted clock. Although I could straightaway reverse the video in AE, it made my editing process even more tedious because of the elongated pre-rendering time. Hence, I animated the elements in a reverse way and only reversed it in Premiere Pro. Things did not go smoothly as the melted clock did not sit still on the tracking spot (as you can see in the animatics). I re-tracking it a few times and reduced the keyframes and still, the results were not satisfying.
Figure 2.6, Motion tracking, Week 13 (26/6/2023)
After trying for multiple times, in the final week, I decided to change the video clip into a still frame. Two melted clock remained on their spots and the moving particles still in the reverse motion. Then, I exported the clip and reversed the entire clip in Premiere Pro, and applied zoom to the melted clock. It looked much better without the jiggling of the graphical elements.
Scene 2 is the book flipping part. I added a few adjustment layers to tune the color to become yellowish, like an old film. I animated the glowing particles in Procreate and imported the GIF file into AE. I also overlay with a dust particles video to enhance the overall visual impact.
Figure 2.9, Color editing in AE, Week 15 (14/7/2023)
The people walking scene was also quite challenging. Initially I applied motion tracking to each passerby, but it is pretty unstable. The passerby's eyes, nose or ear might be covered by other passerby, making it harder to track. In the end, I found that manually adjusting the position of the scribbles (graphical elements) would be much easier. I animated the scribbles in Procreate to be imported into AE.
Figure 3.0, Animating the scribbles, Week 15 (12/7/2023)
I drew a newspaper in Photoshop and used it to cover up the screen to act as a transition.
Figure 3.1, Animating the newspaper, Week 15 (12/7/2023)
The three characters were drawn in Photoshop and puppet tool was used to make them move.
Figure 3.2, Animating the three characters, Week 15 (12/7/2023)
For the Scene 5&6 (MRT and iPad), I used Mocha to replace the screen on my Ipad to another video. Mocha AE is the award-winning planar tracking and masking plug-in bundled
inside Adobe After Effects. Mocha AE is designed to solve difficult motion
tracking shots with ease.
Figure 3.3, 3D MOCHA, Week 13 (30/6/2023)
I added moving strokes coming out from the iPad screen. I used trim path and adjusted the start and end length of the stroke.
Figure 3.4, Trim path, Week 13 (30/6/2023)
Figure 3.5, Adjusting start and end length of stroke, Week 13 (30/6/2023)
In the next scene, I applied various video overlay to the transition. I added ink splash and changed the blending mode to screen. I also put the fire particles to place against the water scene.
I drew the water layer in Photoshop and imported into AE. I used puppet tool to make it moves like a wave on the surface. Then, it is transitioned into a stroke and outlined the flower in the following scene.
Figure 3.7, Creating water asset in Photoshop, Week 14 (9/7/2023)
To make the stroke outlines the flower, I redid three times because I wanted the timing to be just right and the placement of each anchor has to be manually adjusted. The first two times I made the stroke moves too fast and the audience will not able to capture the movement. I struggled in this part because it took awhile to pre-render the scene in AE. That's mean I couldn't view the results immediately while working on the keyframes.
Figure 3.8, Keyframing the stroke to outline the flower, Week 14 (9/7/2023)
I added the flower petals moving for the transition. The video pace is slowed down at this stage to let audience take a look at the little movement of the slime thingy in the cup.
I exported multiple layers that I drew in Procreate to animate in AE.
Figure 4.0, Space drawing, Week 13 (30/6/2023)
I did it in the manual way to keyframe the stars and planets. I also used puppet tool to make the space moves inside the cup. To make sure it doesn't move out of the border, I drew a mask according to the shape of the cup.
Figure 4.1, Masking and animating in AE, Week 14 (9/7/2023)
The following scene shows the bookstore. I drew a character frame by frame in Adobe Photoshop.
Figure 4.2, Character landing on the board, Week 15 (14/7/2023)
I adjusted the original clip to bottom left to match the focus of the previous scene. I applied motion tracking to the letter "S" and placed the character on top of the board.
Figure 4.3, Motion tracking, Week 15 (14/7/2023)
I added the butterfly footage to the clip. These flying butterflies help to guide the audience eye to capture the message.
Figure 4.4, Butterfly, Week 15 (14/7/2023)
Similarly, I drew the character in Photoshop and imported to AE to puppet it. I was trying to make the character falls from high place, and then runs to chase the butterflies. It is a bit tricky because the movement is limited when using puppet tool.
Figure 4.5, Character in Photoshop, Week 15 (14/7/2023)
Figure 4.6, Animating the character runs by using puppet tool, Week 15 (14/7/2023)
I didn't add much graphical elements in this scene because I wanted to preserve the texture and embrace the unique shape formed by the shadow. I filmed this scene in a shopping mall where they displayed Hari Raya statue that have some hollow patterns on it. The light shines through the holes and leaves a unique shape on the carpet ground.
Figure 4.7, Animating the character runs by using puppet tool, Week 15 (14/7/2023)
In the next scene, I lowered the brightness and added some sand particles after a few seconds.
Figure 4.8, Adjusting the color, Week 15 (14/7/2023)
Figure 4.9, Animating the sand particles, Week 15 (14/7/2023)
Figure 5.0, Animating the sand particles, Week 15 (14/7/2023)
Then the elevator door closed up. I used rotoscope to remove the view of the elevator scene of the original clip and reversed the clip to make the door closing.
Animation
In this project, I applied a mixture of mediums to make the animation. Majority of the animations were done in Procreate. Some of it were done in Photoshop while some were using puppet tool/pen tool.
Figure 5.1, Animating the glowing particle, Week 14 (7/7/2023)
Glowing particle animation, Week 14 (7/7/2023)
These scribbles represents the inner thought of each human.
Figure 5.2, Animating the scribbles, Week 14 (7/7/2023)
Figure 5.3, Animating the scribbles, Week 14 (7/7/2023)
Figure 5.4, Animating the scribbles, Week 14 (7/7/2023)
Figure 5.5, Animating the scribbles, Week 14 (7/7/2023)
Scribbles 1 animation, Week 14 (7/7/2023)
Scribbles 2 animation, Week 14 (7/7/2023)
Scribbles 3 animation, Week 14 (7/7/2023)
Scribbles 4 animation, Week 14 (7/7/2023)
Color Correction
I added a few adjustment layers and applied color correction. I darkened
the border of the video by applying masking and adjusting the curves. I also
adjusted the brightness and contrast, tint and added unsharp
mask.
Figure 5.6, Before color correction, Week 13 (30/6/2023)
Figure 5.7, After color correction, Week 13 (30/6/2023)
Rendering and Compilation
Rendering took more time than I expected (8 seconds clip took around half
an hour). I think the main reason is because of the setting of rendering in
60 frames per second so that it can preserve the video quality.
Figure 5.8, Rendering part by part, Week 15 (14/7/2023)
After I have rendered all the parts, I imported all the parts into Adobe
Premiere Pro to compile and made any fine tuning to the entire
video. I compiled the video footages and synced it according to the beats of the music.
In the final stage, I added some sound effects. Some sound effects are taken from Internet while some of it are from the raw footage that I filmed.
Figure 5.9, Sound Effects, Week 15 (14/7/2023)
Final Submission
Final Submission Abstract Motion, Week 15 (14/7/2023)
FEEDBACK
Week 11 :
That's a cool concept. The contents might be random, yet it have to portray
the meaning of "Elapsed".You may have some kind of typography or subtitle on it to explain the
"Elapsed" on every scene of your storyline. You may take any related video to support your concept, but you need to do
some kind of edit process (masking etc.) or remix the video in order to
overwrite the existing contents.
Week 12 :
You can start working on the video editing to ease the process later when
adding VFX/animation. Can play with the morphing technique (using Adobe
Animate) to create a good transition, or the flipping object/camera
movement.
Week 13 :
That's a nice cinematography you've captured. But some of it is a bit
dizzy. You may remove some of it and it will shorten up your video length.
The most ideal is to make it in between 1 minute to 1:15. As for now, we can
see your work is more on video editing. The next step you need to apply more
on motion graphics elements. Thus, to have a shorten video, will lead you to
have less work in the motion graphics part. You may come out a script, so
that people will have an idea about your footages. Here's some good subtitle
that you can refer:
https://youtu.be/8JUm4epLpxI
Week 14 :
Good progress. For the clock scene, just do your best using motion tracker.
If it still does not look good, try using puppet tool to manually adjust the
perspective of the clock. Sometimes the frame rate of video that we film and
the settings in After Effects need to be the same. In your case, render in
60fps would be better to avoid the jerkiness. I like the scene where the
video clip is transitioning to be displayed on the iPad.
REFLECTION
In this final project, I had the opportunity to explore various techniques that truly elevated my project. The theme I chose was "elapsed," aiming to create a slow-paced video accompanied by upbeat music. Throughout the journey, I learned and implemented several techniques, including rotoscoping, motion tracking, shattering effect, color correction, gas particles, and many more. Rotoscoping was one of the fundamental techniques I used. It involved tracing over footage frame by frame to create animated masks or to separate elements from the background. This technique allowed me to isolate specific objects or characters, giving them a distinct appearance and enhancing the overall visual impact. Motion tracking played a crucial role in synchronizing the movement of graphical elements with the footage. By tracking the movement of specific points or features in the video, I could attach graphic elements to them, creating a seamless integration between the real-world footage and the animated components. However, this technique has some weaknesses which is difficult in tracking a scene that doesn't have high contrast object to attach on. Sometimes the manual way can solve the problem easily. I also incorporated the shattering effect in the hourglass of the final scene. This effect involved breaking an object or text into multiple fragments, simulating an explosion or a shattered glass-like appearance. By learning through the YouTube tutorials, I was able to create the visually impactful effect, contrasting the slow-paced nature of the overall project. Color correction played a significant role in enhancing the visual mood and atmosphere of the video. I experimented with different color grading techniques to achieve the desired emotional impact and ensure consistency across all the clips. I also incorporated floating particles to create a dreamy and ethereal atmosphere in some scenes. Due to the pack schedule, I did not be too detailed in animation, instead, I spent more time to arrange the clips and synced it to the background music. I also added some sound effects to enrich the experience. I have tried my best to make sure the transition is as smooth as possible. All in all, I struggled a lot, and learnt a lot. I wish to apply the knowledge I have gained in this module and implemented more 2D animation in the future projects.
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