Week 10 – Tasks for Studio and Independent Study for Week 11

• Based on your story-boarding to date, start modeling in max, developing After Effects and Premiere projects and combine your content into rough scenes. Creating your main scenes compositions and animations intentions, setting the timescale and animating test cameras that can be refined at a later stage for the final renders.
• Concentrate on elements that you think may be tricky to model or animate, so you can get help with modeling solutions and effects solutions from the tutors.
• As you capture footage, model your scenes and put together your films you may have different ideas about the details of your narrative. This is fine, and expected, as this is a fluid process between your narrative, storyboard, models footage and final animations. As your ideas develop, you can go back and edit your narrative, and storyboard to align with your ideas, and refine your final animations.
• Complete your 30 - 40 image storyboard!
• When creating your storyboard, consider coherent styling across the range of images, visual progression from one frame to the next and a logical ordering device (such as discreet numbering for each frame).
• Post your storyboard to your blog in a logical and clear sequence. Post high quality images, so each individual frame can be easily scrutinised. You can post each frame as an individual image or post in groups of frames, but all frames should be clear to see, and cropped well in photoshop.
• Your storyboard also comprises an element of your Assignment 3 grade, so it is in your interest to make your images visually attractive and convey a clear understanding of your narrative.

Week 9 – Tasks for Studio and Independent Study for Week 10

• Revisit your 150 word theme outline, and using concepts, and ideas raised in your chosen article, expand and develop on your initial words to make it into a 300 word defining piece of writing, that clearly outlines your intended narrative.

• Consider this like a creative writing exercise.

• If you haven't started to storyboard your ideas yet, start with 10 expressive images of important "moments" from your intended video. These images can be digital montages or sketches, but should be attractive images that can stand scrutiny in their own right.

• Begin creating an extensive storyboard for your intended animation, concentrating on beginning, middle and end, highlights and exciting moments of your narration, a climax, and resolution to your video. Also include storyboard elements for titles, scene transitions and credits.

• You should generally have a story board image for around every 5 seconds of your video, depending on the speed and complexity of the scene. So if you intend a 3 minute video, then you will need around 30 images in your story board.

Independant Study

• Finalise the concept for your video, and refine your 300 word narrative, using feedback from your tutors. Ideas drawn from your article, and summarised in your 200 word review/synopsis should be evident in your narrative.
  

• Using your 300 word narrative as a guide to help you define your "story", continue producing your 30-40 images for your final storyboard (generally one image for around every 5 seconds of intended footage). Use rough sketching and quick 3D modeling to express the feel of each frame of your storyboard, thinking about the feel of your video, and how visual language will be used to convey your ideas. Any models you create at this stage can form the basis for your refined models in your final animations.

• Consider the overall flow of your video, being sure to include a beginning, middle and end, and incorporating ideas such as suspense, excitement, interest, surprise, climax, resolution and catharsis, using camera work and scene transitions. How do you keep the audience captivated, and how do you produce an emotional involvement for the viewer using visuals?

Week 8 – Tasks for Studio and Independent Study for Week 9

• Read Through the Assignment 3 Brief from Blackboard.


• Think of a concept for your Final Video.


• Decide on a subject area and direction for your final video.


• Write an initial 150 words outlining a theme, or visual direction for your video. This will begin the idea generation process for your final video.


• Find a minimum of one online Journal article, using Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals, CuminCAD, or similar database, that interests you, and helps inform the direction you would like your final video to follow.


• Read through your article and write a 200 word synopsis/review of your article. (If you have chosen more than one article, write a synopsis for each one.) Include a full reference on your blog.


• Create a rough visual outline, or storyboard comprising of around 10 sketchy images, that begin to define your video. You can either use physical sketches, or digital sketches (models, images, montages, etc.) as your rough visual outline.


• Obtain some "real" footage, and produce a "test" showing the successful integration of digital and real content.


• This can be as short as a few seconds, this is just to get you familiar with Camera Tracking for 3D integration.


• When obtaining "real" footage, the more controlled the camera is, the better. If the footage is too shaky, or combines rotation with panning too much, the tracker will have a hard time estimating the camera properties. Also "feature" points are very important! These are objects in your scene that have a clear quality to them (such as a high contrast to the background, or static geometry that is distinct, etc.), that the tracker can use as reference points for estimating the camera.


• You may have to attempt your tracking a few times to get the best result. If the footage is proving too difficult to get a good track on, breaking the footage into shorter clips can help.