Final Project

The Final Project can be seen here:
http://www.danmorella.com/courses/cpsc815_project4.php

Synopsis:
I worked on the Jim the skeleton shot, the lighting to the Kool-Aid man shot, the splash flash intro, took part in filming the scenes, and of course in brainstorming concept(s) and ideas.

Details:
-"Jim the Skeleton"___________________________________________

Here is a link to the source material:

http://www.danmorella.com/courses/cpsc815_project4_f.php

Description:

 I hand animated "Jim" in Maya. I used a background image of the video projected on a plane to line Jim up with the chair. I also used this image plane as a reference for lighting Jim in the Maya scene. With the lighting matched up and the animation complete, I rendered out Jim (without the background plane). I took this movie into Shake, did a bit of color correction, created Jim's shadows over the background (live footage) and blured Jim a bit to blend the digital foreground into the live background.  I rendered this out in Shake. After this it was time to work on the cigarette that Jim had in his hand. Previously I had the cigarette animated in Maya, but it had no smoke and no ember on the end of the cigarette. I went back into Maya and created a plane with the rendered Shake movie that I had created. I brought in fluid effects from Maya and animated a hot glowing ember with a smoke emitter on a 2d plane (2d fluid dynamics) to match with the end of the cigarette. I rendered this out in Maya (without the background movie of course) and brought that movie back into the original Shake tree. I did a bit of post-processesing Shake work to match the digital foreground ember/smoke with background. This completed the "Jim the Skeleton" shot.

-"Kool-Aid Man Lighting"____________________________________________

Here is a link to the source material:

http://www.danmorella.com/courses/cpsc815_project4_g.php

Description:

The model and animation was created by Dan. He already had the Maya scene set up for lighting, so I can in and altered a few area planes and created a point light. One of the keys to doing this successfully is to light the background reference as close as possible to the raw movie file when it is outside of Maya. After this is done I work on lighting the Maya elements (digital foreground). If I create new lights of do lighting work, I make sure to not alter the digital background. New lights are unlinked to the background plane. Once I was able to match up the current foreground with the background image, my work was done. We rendered out the Maya scene and Dan added it to Shake for additional work.

-"Opening Splash Intro"_______________________________________________

Here is a link to the source material:

http://www.danmorella.com/courses/cpsc815_project4_a.php

Description:

I created the opening splash into with Flash and Photoshop. I idea was to create a 2d scene that displayed the joke behind "Promo/Pormo" and give the project an initial unprofessional or dimwitted feel. I think it works.