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!