F&T episodes 8 & 9

I finished working on Fang and Talon a few months ago, but realized I hadn't posted the last bit of work I did for it. Technically I didn't work on episode 8, but seeing its a two-parter I thought I'd share both. I only worked on the magic blasts and didn't have any influence on clean up or anything else.

F&T Episode 6

Because of scheduling conflicts I ended up doing a lot more help with on set than with the special effects for this one(mostly carrying stuff and holding up reflectors). However, I was responsible for the floating text effect in this episode, which funny enough was the only filming I wasn't present for. Boy was that annoying to try to track. I would have liked to have been able to do some clean up, but it just wasn't in the  cards.

In other news: I'm still working on art for the Language Sprout Learning Center to help teach small children foreign language. I've done over 30 small illustrations over the last few weeks for that, and I'm hoping to get some discarded sketches and things up soon. I'm trying to squeeze in a Valentine's day project too, but not sure if it will make it on here. Oh yah, and I have to do the effects for the last 2 episodes which are two-parter.

F&T episode 5 out!

New Episode of F&T is finally out! Tracking those eyesockets for the smoke effects was a huge pain and took forever. If I had known about  the effect sooner I would have put some sort of markers on the mask to help with that.

Here's the storyboards I did for this episode, which didn't really get used.



Fun fact: Someone decided the pixie puke bottle should have something that looked gross in it, so they put in crazy bread marinara and water. It apparently tasted really gross too and caused lots of hilarious gagging off-screen.

We've already finished the effects for episode 6, so hopefully that will be out soon too. I don't believe the are having me do any work on episode 7 because it is so light on effects, but we'll see if I get asked to do some touch up work on it or something.

In other news: I have a new job making images for a language school and materials for children, Language Sprout; teaching them body parts, family members and other vocabulary. Later I might be working on some books for them as well as a couple of other projects. Loving it so far, but it will probably be a while before I can show any of my work.

F&T Episode 4

Episode 4 of Fang and Talon is up! I wish I could have worked on this more. I wasn't able to be on set for this episode and I think my input could have been put to use on the invisible shots if anything else. Also because of the Kreo rigging problems and funds, I only did the few blasts. However I am kind of proud that my idea that Selvig has school loans to pay off got used.

Here is a link to a few of the boards I made for this episode. 



Most of my work for the next episode has been done for a while, so I'm excited for the next one.

Progress on the Get the Diamonds Kre-o short is going faster than ever. Lighting is a bit tedious as always but hopefully I can get some screenshots up around Halloween if I don't get too distracted by festivities. Halloween is my favorite!

F&T Episodes 2 & 3 up!

I've been working on F&T the last couple of days and realized I hadn't mentioned the new ones were out. Oops.

Episode 2 was originally screened a few weeks ago at the Cinema Lounge Bryant Lake Bowl before being released to youtube. Here's a link to my previous post showing some of my proposed storyboards for the episode. Most of my work was putting in arrows and fixing makeup issues, but there is a tiny bit of sky replacement and magic effects too.

Episode 3 was released this week. If you look really hard you might see my 2 seconds of acting. Again most of my work was in trying to fix Vance's ears, but there is also a silence spell and teleport. I did some prop work making the scroll on the signs.

Because of some slight confusion I've finished the effects for episode 5 instead of episode 4. I'll be trying to catch up on Episode 4 in the next couple of days so it can be released according to their current schedule. Episode 4 was the first episode I couldn't be there for shooting, so its a bit more difficult deal with as well.

Its a weird feeling that we shot all of this exactly a year ago. Being on set was very interesting.

First Episode of Fang and Talon up!

It's taken way too long but, here's where you can see the first episode of Fang and Talon and view some of my visual effects work!



Here's my previous blog post showing the process for some of the effects.

A brief look at my clean up work. And more here.

Hopefully more will be up next week. As for everything else, I've finished and handed off Glitter Girls. I have some hand drawn sketches for a new game concept I want to put up eventually. And I'm making progress on a few other projects I don't want to talk about quite yet. I'm hoping to have more time next month to make some better posts.

Ow.

 Another effect I did for the first episode of Fang and Talon is the good ol' crotch shot. Selvig takes his staff and blasts poor Steve right in the jewels. For the wind up I tracked the staff and added the same glow onto its tip as usual. And then here's what I was given for the actual hit shot.

I took a some keyed footage of a fire cracker, scaled it up and tinted it. It was a bit fast, so I also had to time remap the firecracker footage. To add a bit more omf I precomposed the firecracker with a few frames of semi translucent white over it. Then, I had to rotoscope a matte to separate Steve's legs from the effect. To give the blast a bit more direction(and speed things up) I used another matte on the top with a lot of feathering.

Here's a finished frame. Poor Steve.

I just go my hands on the second episode! Also my origami fish project will be making an appearance again soon. And maybe another one of my illustrations, on page 8 now.

Nothing But Blue Skies

When shooting film outside in shadows it is pretty common that the sky gets blown out to white. That doesn't look super good, so for some shots of F&T I replaced the white sky with a nice sky blue or a picture of a blue sky with a couple clouds. Different shots need to be done different ways to get the same effect, but it usually starts by keying out the white sky. If the camera is moving then the camera has to be tracked and the sky image attached to it so it moves how it should.

 In this example I choke the bottom of the sky image with a feather to it and layered it with a blending style over the footage. The key pulled out too much info from the hanging leaves and the character's head barely move into the sky are so they aren't effected because of the feathered choke. (There was also an airplane in the shot that I animated a small matte over.)

Pop!

Time for another blog about F&T effects! This one is a simple teleport. The director was really specific about what he wanted and even did one of the other teleports in the first episode so there was unfortunatly not much creativity with this one.

Basicly the teleporting is the result of an edit. Selvig(Tom Lockman) is holding a bow, the director yells "FREEZE". Everyone in frame doesn't move and some grabs the bow from him. Then the director yells "GO!" and everyone continues with the scene as if the bow just disappeared from Selvig's hand. Seems pretty simple yes?

(Here's the two frames that make up the edit.)

Well it would be.... if the wind and leaves would also freeze and everyone could actually stay perfectly still. But the truth is, people move even when they are trying not to and leaves are always moving.

The area away from the bow could be masked out, but a combo of leaves and Tom being a human being makes the effect rather noticable. My job was to add an effect over it that not only looked magical, but also obscured the changes between edits.  The director wanted a warpy effect, so I simply animated a ripple effect on the edited footage big enough to mask the differences.

 I masked out Selvig's hand as good as possible to give some depth. That's all there is too it really. (tee-hee, silly faces)

The schedule says this episode is to be released before the end of the week, and I still have a couple more effects from the episode to share so stay tuned!

I hate digital smoke.

I do. It can be pulled off, but I don't have the time to make all the masks to make it look right, which is extremely irritating. When Fang and Talon was shot I begged for a fog machine or some dry ice and some foam board to fan it.. but I didn't win. So, I've done my best to create a fake smoke effect(more like a haze) for the first episode of F&T.

The context is that the wizard, Selvig, played by Tom Lockman creates a large amount of smoke in order to facilitate a good get away from some soldiers. The effect consists of three shots.

NOTE: This footage is not color corrected.

In the first shot, Selvig casts the "Smoke" spell. Here's the base plate.

Here show the tracking I've done so that the effect spawns from Selvig's staff.

I used that tracking data to attach a simple particle system to the staff. I made my own smoke sprite to use as the particle. You can see it trailing staff after Selvig has swung it in an arc.

I then added a glow on top of the staff's end, using the same tracking data and a blending mode. It brightens as he swings the staff around. I did this by changing the glows opacity.

As Selvig's staff hits the ground off screen, the smoke come in big puffs around them. I used some keyed stock footage of some smoke and matted out Vance(played by Max Savage) in the foreground to give the footage more depth.

 The second shot was the real troublesome one. There are four moving people and lots of detailed plants that would have taken far too long to mask out like I did with Vance.

I sort of pictured the smoke seeping up from the ground, so I placed video of keyed ink drops in different places in frame. It also puts SOME depth to the smoke with smart sizing and placement. Whenever a character walks in front of one of these smoke/ink drops, I simply faded out the opacity.

Knowing that Selvig would be obscured mostly by the smoke, I did a quicker job of the smoke trail on his staff and glow.

 I used some more keyed and tinted footage of smoke with a blending layer on the top of everything to show the smoke spreading and saturating the frame.

Then, I added another layer of keyed dust footage in the same fashion to add more variety and again, help fill the frame.

The last shot was pretty simple. Just a close up of one of the effects soldiers.

I layered some keyed footage with blending layers and tints.

Instead of using a thick smoke puff, I time warped some keyed ink in water. It looks a bit more like cigarette smoke, but gives a smokey look without obscuring the actor much and fits the close up more. Also, the next scene is a fireside scene and this smoke transitions with the fire smoke better than the others for the fade the director/editor used between scenes.

And that is the nightmare that is faking smoke on a quick deadline. Glad that's over. Nothing can be worse than that... wait? What? What's that? I have to do cg arrows hitting the ground and people in the next episode!? Oh..  
...   
 Challenges are good right?

I did do more effects for this episode, but as this post is super long I think I'll talk about those later.

FT Title Sequence Done

Finished! They didn't like the green glow so now its brown. :(  And I tracked footage they shot so the tree fits in better.

Fang and Talon Title Sequence

As mentioned earlier, I'm doing digitial fx for the webseries project Fang and Talon. And I'm just about ready to finish the title sequence, as soon as they get me a background plate of some footage they took. Here's some images of what I've done so far.

I started out by making my own tree out of a free stock tree texture.

Then I created the effect of their title logo sort of exploding out of the bark using a few shatter effects along with another free use wood texture.

The text was still hard to read. So I had it's color sort of  fade/soak into the title after it explodes. I also added a bit of a glowing green edge to it to make it stand out from the wood even more and give it some extra liveliness.

Here's what it looks like at the end right now, with the glow and the colors completely into place. Nice and legible.

Staff Glow

Working on my friends' webseries project. Did some special effects in AE for a shot to make a magical staff glow(its a fantasy). Here's an image.

Here's a link to the their fan page. This is specifically for the trailer. A kickstarter for the series will be up later this week!