Final Project Update #1

The Leaf

Pitch: A peek into the life of a falling leaf. The audience will watch this leaf and become a part of its story as it flies throughout a series of scenes and events, eventually coming to rest upon the ground. I would like to make the leaf’s movement through the air as realistic as possible, and transitions between scenes will be seamless. The entire piece should be between 1 and 2 minutes in length.

Proposal: The sequence will start with the leaf detaching from an autumn branch. This leaf will swirl through 5 separate scenes. I will shoot each of these scenes in HD, so they match the image quality of the leaf animation. In order to create a ‘seamless’ transition between scenes, I will have each scene slide to the left as a new scene slides into place; the leaf will fly continuously over the break between the images. I intend to use animated masks to allow the leaf to fly behind and swirl around certain objects within a scene. The leaf will fly around people, trees, and even hover over our Thanksgiving dinner for a little while. Eventually the leaf will wind up resting on the ground in front of the tree from which it detached in the first place.

In order to make the leaf’s movements look more realistic, I will first take a maple leaf image into after effects and rotate it in x, y, and z space using the 3D manipulation. Once I have created a variety of rotations for this leaf, I will export the composition, and bring it back into After Effects as footage. I will then use the puppet tool to make the leaf look more flexible, like it is being blown in the wind. After that, I will export the puppet tool leaf as it’s own composition. Finally, after I have created a motion sketch throughout each of the scenes, I will bring the puppet-tooled footage of the leaf into the final composition.

Here is some footage of falling leaves that I will refer to:

http://footage.shutterstock.com/video.html?id=276880

I hope to maintain a similar aesthetic to the opening scene from Forest Gump:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7voy1vit6Y

Asset List:

1. Jpeg image of leaf masked in Photoshop (2 layers)

2. After Effects: 3D rotation of the leaf, puppet tool manipulation of the leaf, motion sketch of the leaf

3. Theme music (to be found at: http://incompetech.com/m/c/royalty-free/index.html?genre=Classical)

4. Footage from 2 Thanksgiving parties

HD, 29.97 fps

5. Particle Effects: tree “sparkles,” snow

Storyboard:

Scene 1- CU of leaf attached to branch blowing in the wind, eventually detaches and swirls away

Scene 2- WS of a couple standing & looking at a sunset, 2 trees in the shot, leaf swirls in from the left and flies around the first tree, flies back to where the couple is standing, and, as the leaf swirls around them, the man puts his arm around the woman, leaf flies away and off the screen

Scene 3- MS of a kitchen, Grandmother is cooking Thanksgiving dinner, leaf swirls in from the left side and hovers over the food, flies behind grandmother and off to the right

Scene 4- MS (tilted up) of 2 brothers looking at a Christmas tree, leaf enters the scene, older brother points up at the star as the leaf flies between them and around the back of the tree, leaf makes a loop around the tree 5 times before flying out of the scene

Scene 5- starts out as a WS of the original tree and a children’s swingset, leaf flies into the scene and around the tree once, leaf glides closer to the camera as the camera tilts down to follow the leaf to its final resting place upon the grass, end with CU of leaf on grass

Schedule: Class Project Due Date: December 3^rd

Week 1- preproduction, finalize storyboard, plan out motion of leaf, acquire assets, begin animations of leaf

Week 2- finish 3D leaf rotations, finish puppet tool leaf manipulation, shoot Thanksgiving footage, begin integration of leaf into footage

Week 3- finalize leaf motion within footage, finalize masks, create and perfect additional particle effects, set music to composition, and be sure to polish it all up!

Assignment #9

She Vanished into Thin Air

She Vanished into Thin Air from Marcy Elliott on Vimeo.

Hi guys!

So for this project I actually made my friend disappear......just kidding!

I filmed some footage of my friend, Karen, standing in the middle of a field and pretending to be a witch. Then I filmed the same exact frame/scene without anyone standing in the field.

I captured both of these clips into Final Cut and cut them down to take them into After Effects. Then I placed the clip of Karen in the field at the beginning of the timeline, and shifted the empty field to the last half of the timeline. I then drew an inverted mask over Karen at the moment when she was supposed to disappear (the mask is offscreen before this moment). This mask is keyframed to follow Karen's movement, and eventually grows to cover the entire screen. I expanded and feathered this mask to make the transition more natural.

After I was done masking and putting the two clips together, I created two new shape layers for my particle effects. I applied CC Particle World to these layers. The first particle effect I worked on was the red smoke. The very first thing I did was to line up the floor grid with the actual ground plane in the scene. I changed the particle type to faded sphere. Then I played with the birth and death colors, longevity, birth rate, velocity and opacity. I keyframed both the birth rate and the opacity throughout the scene.

The second particle effect I worked on was the sparkles. I copied over all of the ground parameters (X, Y, and Z space), as well as the emitter parameters. I changed the particle type to star. Again, I played with the birth and death colors, longevity, birth rate, velocity, and opacity. I keyframed the birth rate, velocity, and opacity of the stars throughout the scene. I also added a bounce effect to the stars when they hit the floor.

I then rendered out the animation and added both the music and credits in Final Cut.

I like particles a lot!

Assignment #8

Where is Stitch hiding?

Where is Stitch hiding? from Marcy Elliott on Vimeo.

For this project, I captured some footage that I had from a trip to Disney World into Final Cut, and cut it down to a 9-second clip. I then found a picture of Stitch on the internet and cut out a mask for it on photoshop. Next, I took both the clip and the Stitch into After Effects. I created a motion tracker linked to a null layer for the Disney World clip. Finally I used the null layer as a parent to the Stitch picture. And I wound up with what you see here.