We start the scene with the original clean background, next the bunny is placed into position and tracked to keep him in place during the camera move. In the 3rd still the bunny has his tones applied and the photo of the tree branch is placed in, the background has been defocused at this point as it is secondary until later on in the shot. We have the 3d box placed in and the branch has been “relit”. We then see the pack is integrated better some cast shadows applied and some subtle colour bounce from the yellow pack onto the branch has been added also.
Archives for June 2009
Composite Breakdown – Nesquik “Tents”
June 17, 2009 by
We start the shot with the clean background of the tent, next we have the animated monster he was matted into the scene using a procedural matte as the shape changed often. In the following image a lamp is placed into the scene (this was shot on green screen). Next we see the clip of the children leaving the tent, you can see the green screen was not lit well and not so much help to me. I found myself keying and treating different areas to try and achieve a matte that I was comfortable with. Unfortunately it was not really giving me the results I wanted in all areas so I dropped back to rotoscoping a lot of this shot where I felt it was necessary. It had much motion blur and feathering which I wished to keep that I was not achieving from keying. Overall though I feel the time spent produced a far more pleasing matte to extract them from the screen. We finish on the final composite.
The Guardian – Great British Walks
June 17, 2009 by
This was a job completed at Tandem Films
Work required
There was a small team of us brought in to rotoscope various shoes. The shoes were animated stop motion style against a blue screen but it was felt that the screen was not going to give a good enough key for our use. The shoes were rotoscoped from there background and some rigging inside the shoes removed. Shadows were also masked out to be used in the final composite. there was some initial colour grading and spill removal on this footage, which was passed onto Chris Gavin who completed the final composite.
Sky One – Domino’s Pizza Sponsors the Simpsons
June 17, 2009 by
Here is a compilation of the Domino’s Pizza adverts. I was involved in various parts of this production. The live action was shot with a motion controlled camera and gives a real crisp feel to the backgrounds. The backgrounds were tracked in 3d as we had trouble getting the motion control data into our 3d application. I built and animated the 3d box and made sure it tracked nicely to integrate into the scenes. During linetest stage with the animation we were preparing all the matte runs and roughly tracking the characters into the scenes. I shared the compositing with another compositor for the final touches after linetest stage. These were played during the popular series The Simpsons on Sky One.
Composite Breakdown – Nesquik “Locked Out”
June 15, 2009 by
We start the shot with a clean background. The window on the left of the door needed cleaning as it was reflecting a lighting rig. From the takes they decided to use one set for the boy and girl on the right of the frame, and a different take for the 3rd boy. The boy and girl were roughly masked out trying to include as much of there shadows as possible and placed into the scene. Next we have Quicky (the bunny) placed in with his tones, a bowl and spoon were positioned to match his animation. The clip following you can see the take that had the preferred shot of the boy on his own. I decided to use a mixture of keying techniques and rotoscoping to extract him from the shot. For example I keyed the white in the hair area and also the sides of him, where as the spoon was rotoscoped to hold a better clearer shape. I knew he would be passing over Quicky often so the matte had to be very tight. You can see the matte that was used to cut him from the shot. The boy was then placed over Quicky. Finally a shot of the fire engine was cut out and placed in and a digital camera zoom added to complete the shot
Composite Breakdown – Nesquik “Locked Out”
June 15, 2009 by
This advert required alot of rig removal due to the fact the wrong kind of remote fire engine was sourced by the film company. It was meant to be a wireless remote control. In this shot you see the red wire leading to the remote control, one on the rear raising it into the air and one on the front to pull it forward as it often did not move very well. To make matters more complicated the shot was not held but free roaming moving towards the shot. The 2nd shot shows the scene after rig removal, next followed another problem. The client felt the cat flap was large enough to fit the children thru and hence not needing the fire engine so the door trap needed shrinking, also the white rope of the fire engine was traced so it could be more visible. Next the bunny had his tones applied and placed in behind the boy. Some rotoscoping of the fire engine was required to place it in front of the bunny. Finally Quicky had his hands placed over the red engine and occasionally over the boy. Various other shadows were painted in to help integrate him better.
Composite Breakdown – Nesquik “Catapult”
June 15, 2009 by
We start with the original shot. On the 2nd slide the 3D box has been tracked into position (the shot originally had a loose movement to it). Next we have a branch that was art worked to fit the scene attached to the tree, the box has been placed behind the branch and integrated more. The earlier scenes of the advert had some really nice artifacts from where the sun was shining thru the trees, we wanted this also in this shot. The 4th slide shows the start of this light being placed in, various masks and colours added to replicate the earlier shot. Following this still we have the 3D ball placed in and also some light painted onto the tree and box. Finally there is a lensflare.
CCTP – Optimum Triple Play
June 10, 2009 by
This was a job completed at BEanimation
Work required
This was completed at 1080p HD (this version is the SD version). Because of the lengths of the advert and the size of the frames it did require a little more planning of time. We had the animator from the guiness hand adverts create some clips for us for the stop motion hand. The “drawn” animation was done by 2 flash artist’s. Myself and another compositer keyed, and rotoscoped the stop motion hands. Whilst the flash animation was being worked on I was able to start to position and occasionally retime various hand clips to match the animation from the flash artists. Later on once the animation had been approved the final details were added. These included adding texture and roughness to the line and also drop shadows on the hands. There were initially two 60 seconds and two 30 seconds adverts, which later followed with a version slightly adapted, this included another 60 and 30 second.
Nesquik – Animal Kingdom
June 4, 2009 by
This was a job completed at BEanimation
Work required
Quiky (the rabbit) was placed into the various shots during linetest stage, and later had his tones applied these are various matte runs for shadows, highlights and also in this advert a shadow pass that gave the impression he was receiving shadows being cast from high up in the trees. Quiky was graded to match the scenes and also integrated (drawn shadows, masking out trees so he walks behind them etc.)
Shot 4 (quiky appearing from behind the tree trunks) required the middle tree to be artworked to look like the others. It was dug up from somewhere else and planted the wrong way round so you could see it was weathered differently, they felt it could do with a little more light hitting it so this was also artworked in post production.
Shots 11 and 12 (Quiky arriving at the tree house), had the outside grass, and ladder created afterwards. During the live action shoot this was just a solid floor. The CDs that the girl is waving in shot 12 were also replaced with clearer artwork and slightly larger.
Shots 13 and 14, had the game footage placed into the computer monitors. This involved tracking and masking. the footage was treated to the clients liking to integrate it.
Most of the shots required some form of tracking to lock Quiky into the scene or to speed up any rotoscoping. They liked the feeling that the live action Director gave with his trademark loose camera work but this did not impact to much on my work afterwards. There were many areas to get a good track from.
Various versions were mastered to Digi-Beta and delivered to the client.
HSS – Elite Athletes
June 3, 2009 by
This was a job completed at BEanimation.
Work required
The animation was roughed out in house as drawn animation, this was scanned in and would be my guide for recreating the piece in flash. The backgrounds were laid out in After Effects 3d which allowed me to light the scene and cast shadows. There were times for example when the character swings his racket that it would of gone through the 3d floor plane so these points needed to be fixed (I used a blank adjustment layer and then the character on top again, the adjustment layer effectively flattens everything even though it is 3d). There were also some cast shadows that I changed so his feet looked planted to the ground but also looked spaced apart from each other (an example would be at 4seconds).