DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY AND IMAGING - PROJECT 3
DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY AND IMAGING - PROJECT 4
June 2nd (WEEK 10) - June 28th (WEEK 14)
NG VEYHAN (0349223) / Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media
DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY AND IMAGING
PROJECT 4
Instructions:
Practical:
As with starting most other projects that I have completed this semester, I went onto Google and Pinterest to find some reference posters that I could get some inspiration from. As the main topic was centered on us as an individual, there was a already a clear target subject and searching for something that I could work with was a lot easier.
(Fig 01-03, Poster References)
For the poster I wanted to go for the cityscape as it best represents a busy atmosphere, which conveys the fast-paced lifestyle that I envisioned. The surrealism presented on the third poster is something that I wanted to include in my work, while in the second poster, the idea of incorporating external elements in the portrait of myself was appealing but eventually I had to omit it as it would make the composition overly busy.
Then, I had to begin sketching the composition. As I felt that I was able to stitch together multiple images to create a landscape to my liking, I didn't limit myself to sketches of existing pictures.
(Fig 04, Sketch 01, 10/6/2021)
I wanted to incorporate elements of my hobby into the composition, and therefore the squares labeled 1-3 were to be filled with animated "collages" of sorts. The sketch only contained the basic shapes of the composition that I wanted and the specific elements that would be added later on would be subject to change.
Before I worked on a photoshoot and other physical steps, I decided to construct the background and the foundation for the animated parts of the composition. I couldn't go out and take pictures of a city due to circumstances, so I had to use pictures that I would obtain from the internet.
(Fig 05, Cityscape, 10/6/2021)
(Fig 5.1, Image Stitching, 9/6/2021)
Using this image, I stitched together different parts of the image to create an arrangement similar to the composition that I had sketched initially. The lighting of the image was also too saturated, and therefore I used a curve adjustment layer to help darken the image and give it a "cooler" blue colour scheme.
(Fig 06, Stitched Image, 10/6/2021)
Planning for the colours of the billboard that I would add onto the composition later, I added some soft lights to create a glow of the appropriate colour to help blend the billboards into the composition later on. Afterwards, I would also duplicate a layer and flip it horizontally and turn it into a reflection layer or the windows of the opposing building.
(Fig 07, Adding Reflections, 10/6/2021)
(Fig 08, Glow Dodge Lighting, 10/6/2021)
For now, that was all I could do to prepare the background of the composition. I would decide to tackle another easier portion of the composition, which was the creation of a looping text GIF to be used in the yellow tape in the foreground.
(Fig 09, Banner Design, 10/6/2021)
The basic logic that went behind creating this GIF was to create two instances of the text and crop the canvas to the size of one instance. The text would then pan to the left or right until it reaches a frame identical to the first and looping the GIF would create the illusion of a constantly rolling GIF.
(Fig 10, Animating Banner, 10/6/2021)
(Fig 11, Banner1.gif, 10/6/2021)
Now that the background and foreground banner was completed, it was time to move on to the most intensive task of the project, which was to create self portrait animation that would be keyed into the green portions of the poster.
First, I wanted to crop all of the images that I would be using before beginning to animate any of the three billboards instead of going back and forth for each step. Using Adobe Illustrator, I cut out the pictures of myself from each of the pictures but left a larger space around the hair to be cropped in Photoshop afterwards.
(Fig 12, Cropping Out The Guitar, 19/6/2021)
(Fig 13, Cropping Image 01, 19/6/2021)
For most of the pictures of myself that I cropped, I also had to work on cropping the hair properly as there were a lot of small details for that. Instead of going to the conventional select and mask method brush refining, I tried to create an additional high contrast colour channel and selecting the contrasting regions to select the hair, which was successful for the most part.
(Fig 14, Hair Mask and Cropping, 19/6/2021)
After the cropping was complete, most of the pictures were taken in fairly poor lighting conditions, thus I used a level adjustment layer to create minor contrast from the lights and darks of the image to make it "pop out" more.
(Fig 15, Level Control, 19/6/2021)
As I wanted to add the guitar amp that I had taken a photo of beforehand, I added it into background at this phase. Adding some shadows and soft lighting, I managed to make it blend in rather convincingly with the rest of the image.
(Fig 16, Adding the Amp, 19/6/2021)
(Fig 17, Basic Setup, 22/6/2021)
Largely utilizing the position, scale and opacity keyframes, I was able to create some simple transitions and animations. When switching into scenes with my appearance, I used transitions with a film grain and distort effects to create a glitchy effect.
(Fig 18, Background Design, 22/6/2021)
For some of these animations, I had also created a quick, simple background in Photoshop. The text overlay what was used in these animations were also designed there. I would then import these assets into Premiere Pro and continue. Keying motions that occur simultaneously proved to be rather difficult until I found out to set identical keyframes to both elements at the same time and edit the other afterwards.
(Fig 19, Keying Motion, 22/6/2021)
After animating all three boards, it was time to insert them into the final composition. Loading the PSD file of the composition into After Effects, I used the color key function to remove the green from the image and feathered the edges to give a smoother appearance. I then imported the rendered videos into the composition.
(Fig 20, Keying Out the Green, 25/6/2021)
Rendering a square 2D video meant it didn't fit with the perspective of the image, I then used to corner pin effect to shift the perspective of the video to fit the billboard in the composition. A little scaling was also done to help better fit the video into the keyed out sections of the composition. Using a glow filter, I added some lighting effects to the video to make it look more like a billboard.
(Fig 21, Adding Glow, 25/6/2021)
The final step was to add the banner in the foreground. As one cycle of the GIF only lasted a second or two, I needed to make it loop instead of playing just once. It was surprisingly complicated as it required keyframing outside of its proper duration and some complicated inputs to set it to loop.
(Fig 22, Looping the Banner, 25/6/2021)
Once that was completed, the composition was finally done. I felt that this composition was a little less challenging technically than it was for its supposed complexity, however it was still very intense with the amount of work that had to be put into it.
(Fig 23, Completed Poster, 25/6/2021)
(Fig 24, Buzzing With Life (Animated Poster, 26/6/2021)
Title: Buzzing With Life
Artist Statement:
When considering the atmosphere that I wanted to portray in this composition, I wanted to highlight the newly found sense of motivation that I have for my hobbies that I have found these recent years, almost to a point of obsession. I like to keep myself busy and dislike being idle, therefore I went with a cityscape as the setting of the composition.I really like seeing a colourful arrangement of billboards as it gives a sense of liveliness as well. I thus opted for a dark background contrasted by striking, neon-coloured billboards. I also snuck in a picture of my guitar amp as a representation of how music is something that I’m devoted to it becomes incorporated into myself. All in all, I’m pretty happy with the design direction that I took for this poster, but fairly unsatisfied with the execution itself as I know that there is a lot I could’ve done better.
Feedback
Week 10: When Mr. Yusoff reviewed the sketch that I had made, he basically gave me the green light to go ahead and proceed with the basic digitization as I already had a clear idea of the direction that I wanted to take the poster.
Week 11: I presented the complete static background of the composition this week. Mr. Yusoff commented that the rendering of the lighting on the buildings was good, however in the composition additional elements can be added to cover up certain areas with poor quality in the photo.
Week 12: At this point, I had also completed the foreground banner and was ahead in progress. Mr. Yusoff instructed me to work on the billboard animation soon as it was the portion of the project that would have taken the longest.
Week 13: Mr. Yusoff said that the execution was pretty good, but the levels of the images that I have taken could use some fine tuning. Also some additions to the billboards could be made to make it look less "superimposed" onto the composition.
Week 14: Mr. Yusoff said that the composition is generally complete, but I was still free to add anything extra should I feel the need to.
Reflection:
Week 10: Sketching the composition of the poster wasn't terribly difficult. As I knew what I wanted to portray and how I wanted to execute it, the parts that I had to consider thoroughly was the placement of each element and how I wanted to time the animations in the poster.
Week 11: Stitching together multiple pictures of buildings wasn't as easy as I thought it would be. Sometimes the lighting wouldn't match up and create an uncanny appearance. It took me a few hours to make the image come together into a somewhat cohesive composition.
Week 12: I put a little less work into this project this week as I only had to animate the three billboards. However, for what I did this week was quite interesting. I never had tried to make a scrolling text GIF and the logic behind its creation was simple, but something I might never had though of myself.
Week 13: I was quite happy with how the poster turned out this week. It still needs quite some polishing that's for sure, but I think that it could come out as quite a good looking poster by the time that I am finished with it.
Week 14: It was crunch time for the e-portfolio and focused my efforts there. If I were to get some free time I would go back and revise the levels of the images that Mr. Yusoff mentioned, however I was still satisfied and didn't mind if I am unable to.
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