Technical Journal ( Logo Design)

It's quite fun to create logo for our product. And I also got some more new knowledge and ways of thinking from it. Well, before I started making logo for it, I went online and make some researches for logo designs. Most of the logos  for mattress I found on net are simple blocks. But for me, I would like to give softness of our product via seeing through our logo. Therefore, I decided to give a floral like design look to my logo. Another thing is that I also wanted to make sure that's a mattress logo. So, I created this one to give a softness of our mattress by using curvy look.

 It's a bit challenging to me and plus I also want to put a wing as we are using a dragon to advertise it. Here is what I did for this requirement.

 At the end, I got this logo by combining these two concepts. Another thing what I got here in it is our product's name (Le reve) which means the dream in French language.

I used solid yellow before as I want to say that is our golden mattress which is the most valuable one on the top. And then, I put some more color gradience to make it look nicer and softer instead of using solid yellow color. Yes, here we go.This is my final logo for our mattress.

Technical Journal ( Compositing part - 03)

 Here is another steps for me to go. Yes, putting background for outside parts of the cave. As I mentioned before our cave is locating at a quite high of a mountain. So I want to gave it a feeling of heaven like. That's why I put just only clouds and the moon. Ok, now I would like to talk about how I done so far. I used some clouds and the moon layers of png images what I downloaded from google. And I put all of these layers under the footage layer by putting a solid back layer underneath.


    Then, I turn on 3D mood to make depths between each of these layers.


 
After that, I started animating these clouds to give movements by keying one by one. Yes, that is how do I prepare for scene 01 before I start color correcting.

Here is my final outcome.

Technical Journal ( Compositing part -02 )

After removing out all the tracking markers from footage, rotoscoping time is coming here. I roto out all the background outside of the cave as usual.

 
 
And then, what I had to do for scene 01 is  that I need to make the dragon is coming outside. So, I need another one more layer of background footage.

However, if I put it on top of the dragon layers, there will be covered up some parts of the when he came in to the cave. That's why I made this layer by roto out other parts what I don't need (look the pic below).



 And here is the result when I put this layer on top of the dragon and it also work well even when the dragon came in to the cave just because of I roto out others parts which will covered up some part of the dragon when he came in.

 

Technical Journal ( compositing part - 01 )

Yes, one more step to go. I am doing final composite here. There are so many things what I tried to make it look nice. Among them, the most challenging thing to me is removing all the tracking markers from footage. Of course, this is my first time as well.

Firstly I tried with roto tool to roto out all of these markers. However, I doesn't work well because if I roto out all of these markers, my footage will get holes on it and give me a question of how to refill with corrected one. So, here is the another way what I tried. I used clone stamp tool instead of roto out all of these. So, it will allow me to refill whatever parts I want from same footage. And I thought that I did it.




Unfortunately, it's not work either. The problem is my footage got camera movements and whenever the camera move, the positions of clone stamp where I refilled are also moving along with camera. And then, it's quite obvious that these particular parts what I removed out are moving themselves like hell. That gave me another challenge to solve it out. It seemed like troublesome to me before I found out the clone source in stroke options of the clones I did. This is how I solved it. I just simply put a single jpeg image (which was corrected well in photoshop) under my footage layer. And then, I change the clone source to that image instead of placing on footage itself. The result is good enough and all the clone parts are stopped moving around because their source image is only one and stable. Yes, I did it.




But not yet, because it just only work on where the camera is not shaking too much if it shaking too much, the parts where I removed out are still moving themselves although the clone sources are stable on background. Another problem is coming again and I got a way to solve it out again. Generally speaking, I make some trackers to hold the parts what I removed out.


After that copied and paste the positions of trackers to the clone positions. That's is so painful to track every single parts I want to remove out one by one in short amount of time. Finally, I made it happened.

Technical Journal (Matchmove)

I was working on matchmoving for scenes ( 02, 05, 06, 07). And I was using Autodesk MatchMover as usual.

I just used 2D tracking tool and some manual tracker points for some reasons in it. After that create new coordinate system and I need to set the coordinate system in correct position what I want by playing around with X,Y,Z axises. Then, I was done with that by exporting to maya. There are not much problems here for me except some points are not working well because of low resolution result from footage and color blur between markers and background. However, we can fix it by giving more contrast to footage.

Technical Journal ( BlendShapes)

I am doing blendshapes for eyes in this projects. It's quiet simple as usual. Now what I would like to talk is that a faster way to do eyes closed shape which mean you will not suffering from moving vertexes or edges one by one. Actually, it may not be so new to others. But for me it's new and I just learnt from Hillary.

figure-01

As I shown in figure-01, after I selecting the edges of the eyes to make it close, my pivot point is just centre of my selection. So, when I tried to make it close I need to readjust every edges around there. how do I solved? So simple, just changing pivot point to behind a bit what can give me more convenience to rotate.

figure-02

figure-03

It's a quite simple technique and of course I already know about that how to change pivot point. However, I didn't tried to move it while I selecting vertexes or edges before. So, it's a new and useful technique what Hillary show for me.

Reflection About Sound Design in Film

Have you ever watch a movie by making mute to the sound? If so, I am so sure that how you see on this movie will definitely change like you are watching a film by closing your eyes. Yes, of course sound design in a film is very important. In some cases, the movie comes alive just because of the sound design.

I would like to share a short thriller film named "The open door" which was directed by Dan Allen.

This is one of the awesome short films with great sound design. Firstly, the establishing shot is quite simple as a girl is walking toward the camera. This scene can't give any moody feeling to the audience without sound design because everything is normal except that she is alone in it. However, some thriller sound effects on the background by supporting her foot steps's voice make it a scary moody scene.

And then, the beat around 0:56 is really telling that something scary will be happened for sure. After that the scene she walk in her compound look scary by supporting the sound effects of wind blowing behind.

Another scene what I want to mention is after she came in to her house, she push back the door to close. But the door was not closed completely and the common thriller sound effect give scary feeling to the audience and raise up the curiosity of the audience what is happening next. (check around 1:23)

One more thing what I want to talk about is starting 2:45 and end at around 2:50. It's the climate of this short film. She tried to wake up as soon as she realized that the persona next is not J-me( according to her speaking out a named before this scene). Kinda like a girl's soft scream coming out the time she tried to wake up and then a beat of sound appears and black out everything for a second while the beat disappears slowly. Then reveals that it is just a dream by showing she just waking up from a nightmare. At the same time, a thunder bolt sound came in and shows flash lighting on her face All of these continuous scenes, sound effects are the keys to get such a great climate of this short. End of these shots, you can only hear the breathing voice of the girl. So, what I have learned is that when you make such kind of film, you just follow on nature for the sounds by adding some supportive sound effects which can give a certain feeling to the audience. (For example: by using wind blowing, knife chopping, breathing, door opening voices, etc. while some certain sound effects are in and out depends on story requirements.)

Overall, the main key what made this short a thriller film is sound design for this short film.