Week 4 – Getting there

A lot of stuff has been going around this week – from getting approvals to re-filming our mock shoots, it has been hectic! We learnt a lot from our mistakes and are doing our best to get back on track, although it is not too easy for me!

I was ready with my character concepts for approval when I received some constructive feedback on detailing the character a bit more. It is true that the structure may seem well but it doesn’t look believable without panel lining. Panel lining is not something I am well versed with so I had to dig into some research for that. I looked up image references but also paid more attention to some studies from the book “Gundam Pro Panel Lining Technique”.

I looked up reference images from the book that teaches how to create variations of panel lines to make sections of a metallic object look believable. I experimented with these on my own and here’s what I got after the suggested feedback from my lecturer.

Added panel lining to the blue robot, changed the paint job on the red and yellow robot. Added the tattoo on the female robot but I'm still working on the leg design. Backside of the robots are still work in progress.

Apart from this, I needed to do the following changes:

So far, I am still struggling with creating the backside of the robots as it is not very easy to conceptualize it from my head. I am still working it out but I have managed to cover most of the feedback given.

(Edits done by my lecturer for feedback purposes - on the left)

Moreover, we were supposed to finish the new mock shoot by last week and send it for approval but due to some miscommunication and group friction we weren’t able to. This week, however, we made it our top priority to complete it. We filmed the shots based on the storyboards I drew last week and I edited it like so:

It was my teammate’s duty to insert the CGI elements and re-render it into a video. We had a basic version ready for the client meeting on Wednesday and received feedback on it. This was the feedback we needed to work on.

Accordingly these were the shots that need to be changed.

From the previous shoot, this was way better but we need to change up a couple of shots. Due to everyone’s schedules clashing (actors and us), we have rescheduled for a new shoot this Sunday. Hoping that goes well.

In addition, we learnt a lot about filming and cameras this week. This helps us understand what frame rate we need to go with and accordingly what shutter speed to film at. The detailed explanation of how the camera works from the ISO to the shutter speed to the various lenses, I feel a lot more confident in how to film our shots. For our film we have certain shots that will be filmed in slow motion and so we need to set that to 60 fps, with 1/120th shutter speed.

In class we did a couple of test shots with the gimbal and filmic camera app that our lecturer demonstrated for us. Since our shoot, in particular, will be an outdoor shoot, we need to look into getting filters for our lens. We listed some requirements needed from the film side of things and are currently looking out for good film students to collaborate with on this.

We also learnt about color grading and color correction – two very different aspects of post-production edits. Learning a little about green screen also came in handy as we did some edits of our own. Below is an Iron Man edit I worked on in class.

So far, I am enjoying the content being taught in class but as for our production progress I’m not too confident. With a lot happening in other aspects of my schedule, I hope to balance things out well this week and get back on track with the pending and upcoming tasks.