Technical research

I'm continuing to do my technical research. This week, I managed to finish reading a few books that really are must-reads for thesis projects.

Story, by Robert McKee
The Art and Science of Digital Compositing, by Ron Brinkmann
Inspired 3D Short Film Production, by Jeremy Cantor and Pepe Valencia

I can honestly say that Story has changed my life, in terms of how I think about films, how I write, and even how I live. Anyone who is interested in writing screenplays is not qualified to do so until he or she has read this book.

After reading The Art and Science of Digital Compositing I have come to the conclusion that After Effects is not a compositing program. It's really more of a 2D effects program and motion design program, but doesn't really get into the kind of compositing that Ron Brinkmann describes, at least not in depth. I've decided that I'm going to have to learn Shake and/or Fusion and/or XSI sometime in the near future.

I'm not sure why anyone would attempt to do thesis project without reading Inspired 3D Short Film Production. We really should have covered everything in Chapters 1-11 in thesis previz, and I feel like we only covered chapters 2,5, and 10. In any case, story and design points are still up in the air, at least for me.

I've been doing more research into fluids and its turning out to be a major pain in the ass. I thought there might be some tweakable out-of-the-box solution for "creature bursting out of bubbling liquid" but apparently there isn't. THis is going to take some major R&D, which means I'm going to have to fly through the modeling, texturing, rigging, and maybe even animating stages. My focus, therefore, is going to be on the lighting and visual effects. The problem is, I don't see how I can fly through modeling or texturing unless I make it pretty simple. I know from experience that it isn't possible to fly through animation, so that's just something I'm going to have to muscle out.

Between working on my reel, donqui xote, and getting ready for my ICT internship in LA, I will be working on character design and ironing out that story once and for all. This means another animatic, hopefully one that is completely dreived from my other versions.

Stuff to get done before June:
-finalized story beats
-finalized 2D animatic in story reel form
-character design sketches
-model the well
-model the final ingredient vial
-fluid test: ingredient pouring liquid
-fluid test: ingredient pouring just a drop
-fluid test: bubbling liquid in well
-fluid test: splash
-fluid test: mixing two fluids of different viscosities

New beats yet again

In changing my focus, I've also essentially had to cut out as many shots as possible. Shots I am intent on keeping:

-Billy looks at the dragon picture and smiles
-Camera pulls out to reveal well in an establishing shot
-Dragon comes out of the well shot
-Billy and dragon are in the same frame, audience realizes dragon is small
-Billy's face is huge and changes from surprise to a smile

I don't really need most of the beginning stuff with the multiple ingredients; Boaz suggested I make it only one ingredient, sort of like sea monkeys. I don't really need the embryo shot, it kind of gives away the punchline anyway. The shots that are currently on the fence:

-Billy gets frustrated when the first drop doesn't work
-Billy pounds the well and the whole vial falls in
-Billy gets a scared face ("what have I done?")

-Billy sees the picture of the dragon a second time and gets disappointed
-Dragon sees what Billy sees
-Dragon breathes fire and destroys the manual
-Billy gets a mischievous face, which the dragon mimics

So, the entire piece, hopefully one of the last version of my beats:


-Camera fades up from black on the manual. The title of the manual is the title of my piece
-Billy (his hand) opens the manual to the first page, which shows the dragon picture. Opposite is the thank you for buying the PRO-QUEST Instant Dragon kit! message
-Camera shows Billy in medium close up, smiling warmly at the dragon
-Camera shows the manual again, and Billy turns the page. Step 1, find the well.
-Camera shows Billy, and pulls out to show the well environment
-Billy turns the next page, which asks him to add the ingredient, but, warning, only a few drops. The light flickers, and Billy looks up
-The light is shown flickering
-Billy adds a few drops to the well

-(optional) Only a slight ripple and glow, but otherwise nothing happens
-(optional) Billy gets pissed and adds more drops
-(optional) Larger ripple and glow, but nothing else happens
-(optional) Billy gets really frustrated and pounds the side of the well
-(optional) The whole vial falls into the well
-(optional) Billy gets a scared face

-The light goes out

-(optional) Camera shows the vial sinking, and liquid coming out
-(optional) Camera pushes in on dragon shape forming

-The well is glowing and bubbling furiously
-Billy watches, kind of scared
-A dragon bursts out of the well, filling the frame, camera has a fisheye lens, low shot. Dragon is roaring, perhaps breathing licks of flame
-Billy looks on in wonder, the dragon reflecting in his eyes
-The dragon is shown again, but this time still. The light clicks back on
-Billy and the dragon are shown in the same frame, the audience realizes the dragon is small
-The dragon lands on the well, and Billy's face is huge in frame. Billy's face goes from surprise to a smile
-Billy pulls the dragon up on his shoulder

-(optional) Billy sees the last picture in the manual
-(optional) It says, enjoy your new mighty dragon!
-(optional) Billy sighs
-(optional) Side shot, the dragon looks down to see what is making Billy so upset
-(optional) Close up of the dragon, gets an angry face
-(optional) Dragon burns the manual
-(optional) Billy's face of surprise melts into one of mischief, dragon mimics it

Maximum amount of work: 32 shots
Minimum amount of work: 17 shots

Does this mean I have to do yet another 2D animatic?

Change of focus

First, I'll quickly go over some of the research I've been doing over the past week or so. With the last week of previz hanging over my head, I tried to squeeze in as much research as possible. My main areas of research:

-psychology and motivation for wanting to make a dragon
-fantasy as a genre
-dragon physiology

This research will probably continue into the next few weeks or so as I continue to prune my story and develop my characters. These next two weeks are slated for character design, and I'm going to try to stick as closely to my production schedule as possible. At least until the animation part, that is.

Because, as the title of this entry indicates, I have had a change of focus. I talked to Boaz Livny and he flat out told me my story was too long, character animation or otherwise. I told him I was more interested in the effects and he said, as an extreme, I could even just have the final ingredient drop go in and the dragon come out, and keep my thesis to those four shots or so.

The next day I had my Previz presentation to Myles Tanaka, Mike Cushny, and Gavin Guerra, who echoed that my story was long (although I indicated I was looking for ways to prune the story). Myles suggested I didn't even have to show my Billy character, but I think Billy is needed to connect with the audience. I don't think my effects will be strong enough to capture the audience from start to finish, and even if they are I do want the audience to connect to the piece on an emotional level rather than purely a sensory level.

Gavin directed me to choose my focus, specifically the effects that I wanted to show. At this point I have the bubbling cauldron effect, the drop effect, the embryo forming effect, the dragon out of liquid effect, and the fire effect. The most difficult, I feel, will be the dragon out of liquid effect, and I feel like I want to rise to the challenge and take on that as my main money shot. In that spirit I have begun to research Realflow and other possibilities for fluid simulation. It's too bad I probably won't have access to something as advanced as the PhysBAM algorithm that ILM's Zeno uses, and in any case I don't really have the processing power for it either. Realflow seems like a good solution, as I've seen some decent simulations from Realflow pieces. Realflow, however, like Maya Fluids, tend to look very syrupy, but that's a problem of most fluid sim programs. Zeno is the only program I've seen overcome that problem; the waves in the remake of the Poseidon seem realistic enough to me.

Gavin told me to avoid the ocean shader for my well since there wouldn't really be a current / waves on the surface. I will need ripples instead, which means a lot of softbody dynamics. Boaz also suggested that the dragon's wings might need softbodies and/or cloth to look correct.

The drop effect that Billy has (pouring the final ingredient into the well), was problematic to both Boaz and Gavin because it was a big effect for almost no payoff. Boaz suggested that I hide Billy's hand and just have a sound effect and a ripple in the overhead shot.

The Enemy

So thesis previsualization is done, and though it doesn't seem like it we are halfway to completing a thesis project. Previz should take about half the time, I think, even in real-world production. The problem is, I don't feel I've really completed previsualization for my thesis. The first part of previz is brainstorming for ideas. The second part is cutting and shaping the idea into a manageable project, and setting up a carefully thought out plan of how to execute. Simply put, we did not do this second part of previz during our class.

That leaves summer to come up with our ironed out idea, and it's worse for me since I built a lot of my production schedule into summer. Our main task should be to figure out exactly what we want to do in our thesis project, and focus on R&D for that specifically. My main complaint in previz is that Mitch never really impressed upon us the true enemy we will be facing in the next 7 months. I only realized this after seeing some of the thesis critiques and watching person after person end up with an incomplete when I'm sure they all felt they had a passable project. But first, a few things that I learned from the critiques:

1. You can get an incomplete for poor documentation.
As trite as it may seem, Raj had a fantastic piece, better than many others I saw that passed. Yet he still got an incomplete because of an incomplete paper. At the very least, it can help convince any family or friends who look at your piece and say, "What? It took you a whole year to do that?!" that you did in fact work your ass off.

2. Just because your focus is one thing doesn't mean you can ignore the rest. Just because you're a modeler doesn't mean you can ignore camera movement. Just because you're an animator doesn't mean you can ignore lighting. I want my focus to be visual effects, but I still want to be relatively competent in all areas of production. A generalist as well as a specialist, as it were.

3. It's gonna get worse. Both Gavin and Boaz have hinted that the panel was not nearly as tough on people as they would have liked. Boaz especially says he's going to push for tougher critiques, both on applications into the program and critiques on theses.

So, after getting that out of the way, the enemy. The enemy we will face during thesis is time. Not enough time to model. Not enough time to rig. Not enough time to animate. Not enough time to render. I've seen everyone's work, and I have no doubt that given as much time as needed everyone will come up with fantastic projects.

Procrastination is synonymous with failure. Well, maybe not exactly, but it might as well be. The lesson of the day is don't wait. Start today. Start this very instant. Plan to be done with the whole thing a week before we actually have to hand it in.

The second part of previz, coming soon ...