FINAL PROJECT. FULL CREDITS AND TITLES.

     The time has finally come.  The project is finished.  "Mr. Cupcakes" is now equipped with a delicious set of credits and titles.  It was a lot of hard work and time spent in those dark editing rooms, but I think it turned out alright.  I reviewed with the director last week and touched base with her yesterday to iron out the last details.  The music is by Monk Turner, you can check him out at http://www.myspace.com/monkturner.  Kinda cute, kinda cheezy, & kinda funky.  

     While working on this project, I realized I really loved doing titles.  After Effects can make things super convenient, but it is also all about timing.  Working with textures made the project more appealing to work with, constantly figuring out tricks to making things seem more authentic, or convincing.  The birds are flash animations, and every layer is on a mode with a texture effect.  I especially enjoy hearing the story of a film first and then finding a creative way to playfully introduce it.  For this storyline, a chunk was shot in New York, hence the NYC Skyline, Subway Map, etc.  The other part of the script is a story about a baker, hence the cake, dripping eggs, and of course, the cupcake!  

I hope you guys enjoy it, it has been an incredible semester and I've learned so much.  So thank you class, thank you Maru, and thank you Ben Bays!  Feedback on this sequence is totally welcome, there is always room for improvement.  

FINAL SCREENING FOR "MR CUPCAKES" (2009) DIRECTED BY ANGELA CHEN WILL BE HELD AT THE ALAMO DRAFTHOUSE (S. LAMAR) THIS SUNDAY FROM 1PM-4PM with the other undergraduate thesis screenings.  More Info: http://rtf.utexas.edu/eoss_spring09.html

Final Project on Vimeo:

"MR. CUPCAKES" TITLES & CREDITS by Candace Lau from Candace Lau on Vimeo.

Click HERE to see  the FINAL PROJECT in full resolution

(You may have to stretch your window out, it's rather large)

Farewell!

Final Project Update

I am 50% done and pushing through the rest.  We had a change in the script and I had to rework and resketch an entirely new project for the Mister Cupcakes titles sequence.  However, the change in script has given me a lot more to work with creatively because the opening scenes will now be filmed in New York City.   

Out of about 7 scenes, I have completed 4.  Most of it is coming out really nicely, and I am finding all sorts of cool things just playing around the effects tab in After Effects.  I am predominately creating layers from scratch or looking at pictures and composing them in Adobe Illustrator.  I've been importing the project into AE.  

To Do List:

1) Last three scenes

2) Better transitions between the two

3) Audio and Formatting

4) Review with Director

FINAL PROJECT UPDATE #1: MISTER CUPCAKES OPENING TITLES

(I drew this mock up in Adobe Illustrator)

Pitch - A VERY brief, opening title sequence to Angela Chen's "dramedy", "Mister Cupcakes". Titles must be under 45 seconds, we do not want to make the viewer wait too long. The short film was beautifully done on 16 mm. I’d like to preserve this quality and integrate animation on top of this background to avoid an overly “flash animation” aesthetic. 

Proposal - The opening title sequence will take you on a baker's journey-incorporating three splattered eggs, spilt water, a whisk, and a mustached cupcake freshly baked out of hot oven.  This may be layered above camera pans of the competing bakeries’ “war plans” that I drew for the set:

Asset List - Mister Cupcakes Voice Audio (to be recorded with the director), Mister Cupcakes Music (currently being composed), Clips from Film, Dimensions, Frame Rate (23.98 fps), Adobe Illustrator Mister Cupcakes Character Layers, Adobe After Effects CS4, Flash CS4, Mister Cupcakes FONT (Tweedy_ERC_01), Actors and Actress Names, Producer and Director's Names, etc. (in order of importance)

Storyboard - a skeleton storyboard currently residing in my sketchbook:

Scene 1: Silhouette of rising cupcake in a hot glowing oven. Camera zooms out from cupcake wrapper fibers to bring the outside of oven into frame.

Scene 2: The oven door swings up and slams, and the Mister Cupcakes Titles manifest into the oven window (written in steam)

Scene 3: 1st cracked egg falls and splatters on the stage and actor 1’s name rolls over

CRACKED EGG REFERENCE FOOTAGE:

http://www.wonderhowto.com/how-to/video/how-to-crack-an-egg-with-one-hand-147717/

Transition: War plan, treasure map dash marks…lead to next egg

Scene 4: 2^nd cracked egg falls and splatters on the stage and actor 2’s name rolls over,

Scene 5: 3^rd cracked egg falls and splatters on the stage and actor 3’s name rolls over, submerge Mr. Yo underwater. (luma matte, opacity effect)

Scene 6: Written, Produced, and Directed by Angela Chen.

Scene 7: Insert “DING” audio to indicate the cupcake is finished baking, reveal dressed Mister Cupcakes. Close up on eyes, mouth, and mustache on Mister Cupcakes character, camera follows each body part.  Ends with Mister Cupcakes wiggling his nose and mustached, fades to black. 

A more refined storyboard that I just completed:

Schedule - Class Project Due Dates: Wednesday, May 6^th.  Must be done by May 9th (Mister Cupcakes Deadline)

Got two weeks to crank this baby out:

Week 1: Acquire assets, finalize storyboard, finalize character design, begin animation

Week 2: Sound, camera angles, incorporate footage, meet with director another time before we send it off!

Assignment #9: Green Screen! And Little Men at Breakfast.

    

     Green screen is fantastic, however it can get pretty arduous at the same time.  I combined a good amount of the footage we gathered in class to create this little man breakfast scene.  The background and scene objects were all tweaked in photoshop and then imported into AE.  Using Keylight and the Matte Choker, I adjusted the 6 videos and synched them up so that they could be relatively believable together.   

     I definitely had to sketch out the setting and pacing in my head a number of times because at some point in time in each video, the subject leaves frame and I didn't want the subject to walk out in mid air after it was keyed out (unless I put that video in between two objects, like I did with the video in between the toaster and the ketchup bottle)  There are so many more things I'd like to learn- especially some settings that could help keying out hair, skin tones, lighting, etc.  

Here is it!  Little Men at Breakfast.  The file was very large so I had to export it at a lower quality setting to upload onto Vimeo at its 500MB limit.  Beware, it's a lil' grainy.

Little Men at Breakfast from Candace Lau on Vimeo.

The next couple of posts until the end of the year will be devoted to our final projects...until then!

Assignment #8: Motion Tracking/Stabilizing on a Tomay-toe Farm

Motion Tracking is super useful.  It took me a couple tries to track the unstabilized footage well.  I tracked the big, red bucket full of tomatoes, and it began tracking the man's red hat next to it instead a few seconds in.  The tracker also freaked out a bit when the man passed by the car window, and began tracking the window instead when the bucket and window crossed paths.  However, through trial and error, I changed the feature point and tweaked the options settings (RBG, Adapt Every Feature, Enhance, Adjust X and Y, etc.) a bit and finally got something to work with!

The unstabilized footage - walking while filming, rocky, hand held camera on a Tomato farm:

Unstabilized Footage - Tomay-toe Farm from Candace Lau on Vimeo.

The stabilized footage- stabilized, smoother, color corrected. It is pretty smooth in the first couple of seconds, hiccups a little bit towards the end:

Stabilized Footage - Tomay-toe Farm from Candace Lau on Vimeo.

Assignment #7: Particles. And Jellyfish.

This particle assignment was created from a Jellyfish photo I shot this break from the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago.  I took it into Photoshop for some color correction, brought it into After Effects, added a custom Distortion Effect to wiggle the Jellyfish, and added a wave-like feature.  There is also a camera zoom in addition to some water/bubble audio.

As for the particles, I added the snow particles on a solid layer to mimic sea plankton or sea sediment.  I turned down the scale, speed and number of particles, and set an opacity because they looked rather artificial.  I did the same with the bubbles, and tweaked the settings for this underwater effect.   

Jellyfish from Candace Lau on Vimeo.

Assignment #6: Text. And Crabs.

     I text animated the first scene from my new piece, "Murphy The Crab" in After Effects. It is a story about an algae-afroed, adolescent crab named Murphy who can't walk from side to side like every other crab. The fact that he can walk forwards and backwards may possibly save the entire day...or just himself.

The first video is the opening scene done with TEXT in After Effects:

Murphy Text Teaser from Candace Lau on Vimeo.

The second video is the final product in Flash:

Murphy The Crab from Candace Lau on Vimeo.

Feedback for improvement is more that welcome.

Assignment #5: Mister Cupcakes 3D and Cameras

     I must say that I grow fonder and fonder of After Effects the more time I spend with it.  Although that probably sounds like something  someone wearing love googles raving about their new significant other would say, I've nevertheless felt more motivated to learn something or ask more questions.  Even though my laptop is as slow as a dinosaur while After Effects is running, I was able to create a mock title sequence for one of the student thesis films I am working on entitled, "Mister Cupcakes".  Check us out on our Flickr page.  

     The character design was done in multi-layers in Adobe Illustrator, exported as a .psd file, and then imported into After Effects.  I added one camera, and the bouncing cherry squishes a little when it hits the ground before it bounces to dot the "i" in "Mister".  And, don't forget to turn up the volume.  

Mister Cupcakes from Candace Lau on Vimeo.

Assignment #4: Masks and Stencils

     I have two mini projects this week because I wanted to try both - masking split screen and stenciling.  The short popcorn piece is a mini-stop motion that I made with a motion text layer on the stencil luma mode, sound included.  

     The split screen piece of Fatima and I in our classroom was filmed by the handy dandy iSight camera in my Mac right after Ben taught us how to do masking. The two movies used had different lighting and made it difficult to match convincingly, so I desaturated both of the layers to smooth the divide even more.  So far I am a big fan of the masking technique and aspire to do a more substantial project in the future (no that I am aware of lighting, framing, and placement issues), like this time freeze mask.

Pahp - Kawhn from Candace Lau on Vimeo.

Rookie Split Screen from Candace Lau on Vimeo.

Assignment #3 Curves and Eases

The McHippie

     A hippie bus swoops into town for a midnight snack at the local Mickey D's when they think there's no one around.  Before they can sneak inside, they are met by a squirmingly savage hamburger... 

McHippie from Candace Lau on Vimeo.

I photoshopped and tweaked a scene in photoshop before I imported it into AE.  Here is a breakdown of the layers and the effects applied to it.  

Layers from front to back:

1. Hamburger - Glowing, Puppet Tool, Scale, Rotation, Position, Easy Ease In

2. Hippie Van - Drop Shadow, Scale, Rotation, Position; Curves, Easy Ease In and Out, Time Hold

3. McDonald's Building

4. McDonald's Sign - Glowing, Opacity

5. Buildings behind McDonald's - Glowing and Opacity Change

6. Clouds - Opacity, Position

7. Moon- Opacity, Rotation, Position

8. Night Sky - Opacity

Hippies and hamburgers.  Will the two ever get along?  

Assignment #2 After Effects Introduction

I present to you, Earthquake Granny.  Can she escape the quake?  

Earthquake Granny from Candace Lau on Vimeo.

Layers:

1. Photo Frame

2. Granny in a tire

3. Wasteland background picture in photo frame

4. Wallpaper and hardwood floor

The granny and her tire (layer two) along with the wasteland background photo (layer three) are parented by the photo frame (layer one).  This was done so that they could move together as the frame swung from side to side during the earthquake.  I also created a motion path for the tire to roll to the side and then to the foreground while I scaled her and the tire to size.  After all the scaling, rotation, and positioning was completed, I applied the "quaker" effect to all the layers for that earthquake visual.  This was an effect that I downloaded offline and inserted into the Effects and Preset folder in After Effects.  

All in all, I enjoyed navigating around After Effects for my first project even though I felt that the interface was a bit intimidating at first.  After playing around with all the settings and controls through trial and error, I'm beginning to see how powerful this software can be.  

Question: How can you apply an effect over a certain period of time with a start and end?  I initially wanted to apply the "quaker" effect to all the layers from the beginning up until the frame fell.  Is this where an adjustment layer comes in?  

Assignment #1 Photoshop

The finished product.  A magical school bus on its way through a field of oversized dandelions in this cheesy, mystical scene.  Mrs. Frizzle and the kids haven't been here just yet.

And here's the recipe and ingredients on how i did it!:

Introduction

My name is Candace.  My friends call my Candy.  Or Cancey-pants.  Or more recently, "Schmandy".  I'm a Senior in Radio-Television-Film, Psychology, and Digital Arts and Media at The University of Texas at Austin, and I just can't believe I am actually re-entering the world of blogging after my high school Xanga days.  However, I feel blogging for this class is a very practical idea and convenient way to share our work.

I have an online portfolio where you can see some of my work that includes my stop motion videos, my graphic design work, my animations, and some of my illustrations and paintings. Check it out at http://candacelau.carbonmade.com

In the midst and foreboding tension of figuring out what I'd like to do "for the rest of my life" since I will be graduating this May, I feel that it's safe to say that there is a substantial range of creative production areas I'd like to dive into with regard to my future career.  Anything from animation, design, video, editing, art direction, and to being a starving artist pretty much floats my boat...just as long as I am enjoying it, and I am doing it with a purpose I believe in.  

Quick! Ten Facts About Me:

1) Cinco de Mayo is not only a Mexican holiday, it's also the day of my birth.

2) I was born in the Friday Night Lights town of Odessa, TX.  

3) My parents were set up thirty years ago on a blind date by a blind black man.  They've been together every since.

4) SPAM (meat in a can) makes me gag, including ALL other processed meats such as hot dogs and bologna. Tuna Fish is next on my gagging foods list.

5) I am what you call a "miracle child" according to my roommates- the ultimate culmination of the "goodie too-shoes, by the book, smarty-pants asian kid" by day, with the "hardcore sign throwin' gangster" by night. 

6) I am the youngest of three children.  I loved my childhood and I love love love my family and my pet turtle, Sunshine.  I also  have asthma.  So yes, I was the kid that brought her inhaler outside for recess, yet I still love the sunshine, the water, and being outside.  If I could wear shorts year round, I would.

7) I am a relentless gigglebox.  Laughter is by far the best medicine.  And I hate tickle monsters.

8) I have never received a detention or a driving ticket in my life.  I've somehow, by the grace of God, been able to sweet talk (or cry) my way out of of a driving tickets on FOUR separate occasions. 

9) I love spicy and hot food.  Really, I love all aspects of food- from finding good produce, tasting something new, cooking it, the presentation, and finding the next hole in the wall restaurant.  Martha Stewart indubitably keeps it real.  

10) I'm a believer!  

Now I leave you with a few videos of my work, but please don't forget to visit my portfolio at:

http://candacelau.carbonmade.com

1)The Story of Creation in Stop Motion, and under 3 minutes!

The Seven Days of Creation in Stop Motion from Candace Lau on Vimeo.

2)A Dark, Romantic, Comedy about a Piece of Toast, "Toasted":

Toasted from Candace Lau on Vimeo.

3)My Rookie Stop Motion, "Don't Play With Your Food":

Don't Play With Your Food! from Candace Lau on Vimeo.

4)And Lastly, a Silly Lip Sync Animation with Dwight Shrute on Periods:

Dwight on Periods from Candace Lau on Vimeo.