JesseVFX
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Author: Chieh-Hsi Ma

Categories
Design for Animation

Week 3 : Film Analysis

I decided to analyze ‘Killing Them Softly’from 2012, directed by Andrew Dominik.

Characters

Hero: Jackie Cogan (Brad Pitt), the protagonist

Mentor: Driver, The protagonist’s partner, a lawyer who cooperates with gangsters.

Threshold Guardian: Markie and Frankie, As casino owners and robbers, they involve the protagonist in this conflict.

Herald: Frankie

Shapeshifter: Markie

Shadow: Mickey, As the killer hired by the protagonist, his partner was almost arrested because of his negligence.

Trickster: Driver

Allies: Driver, Mickey

8 Archetypes:

Stasis: Jackie can’t get business in a recession.

Trigger : Frankie robs Markie’s casino.

Quest: Anyone with inside information must be killed

Surprise: Russell’s arrest may lead to robbery exposure.

Critical choice:

Whether to kill other gang members involved in the case.

Climax:  Markie and Frankie are assassinated by Jackie.

Reversal: Driver refuses to pay Jackie the full amount.

Resolution: Jackie seriously asks Driver to pay up.

Categories
Nuke

Week 4 : Behind the Scenes -RunningMan 

Running Man Roto

This week we learned how to use roto in Nuke to set the keyframe at a specific number of frames. For this exercise, make the running man roto a separate layer. The picture below is my working file and the complete video.

Categories
Nuke

Week 2 : Short Video – Corner of Home

Corner of Elephant and Castle

This week’s work is to edit the clips of life into a film. I made a conceptual short film using several memorable places in Elephant and Castle, using my understanding of camera movement.

Categories
Nuke

Week 1 : Practice Work – Time

Time

This week’s homework is to use a few pictures to express time. I think fabric and time have many similarities. They are often unpredictable, and their patterns are easily changed. Everyone’s perception of time is also different.

Categories
Maya

Week 4 : Behind the Scenes – Hot air balloon Final

Hot Air Balloon

The fourth week of practice is the modeling of hot air balloons, material production, and keyframe settings. I used MAYA to model and export to Substance Painter for textures and finally imported those into MAYA for rendering.

Categories
Maya

Week 3: Behind the Scenes: Bottle & Hot air balloon

This week we are divided into two parts. In the first half of the class, we learn about the production of wine bottles and glass material in Maya. By modelling different bottles, we use the curve tool. In this work, I used Maya to test the texture of the glass material, showing leisurely afternoon time.

Next, we started modelling and texturing the hot air balloon and learned to find inspiration from references.

Categories
Maya

Week 2 : Behind the Scenes – Lego man

LEGO MAN

The third week of practice is modelling LEGO man by MAYA. After the class, I independently built a scene and rendered it.

Categories
Maya

Week 1 : Tesla Cybertruck

Cybertruck – Tesla

In the first week, we had a basic introduction to Maya and practised using functions to make cubes into Tesla’s Cybertruck. Furthermore, we learned to use the upward HDRI for lighting to make the light look more realistic. Finally, I have a basic understanding of the shader and try to add metal and rubber materials to the model we created.

Maya Basic Hotkeys

Reference image of Tesla Cybertruck

Categories
Design for Animation

Week 2 : Film Language and Research approaches

The application of VFX in film: the case of ‘Blade Runner 2049’

‘Blade Runner 2049’ won Academy Awards for Best Visual Effects and Best Cinematography in 2018; this proves the perfect VFX technology in this work. In this week’s homework, I will analyze how Blade Runner 2049 uses CG technology to blend and shoot virtual scenes. In the film, composition, camera movement and colour correction has an outstanding performance.

VFX, Cyberpunk, Memory Implant, Concept art, 3D formats

references:

King, G. (2020). Blade Runner 2049 and the ‘quality’ Hollywood film. Science Fiction Film and Television 13(1), 77-96. https://www.muse.jhu.edu/article/750564.

Ransom, A.J. (2020). The director’s cut: Denis Villeneuve before Blade Runner 2049. Science Fiction Film and Television 13(1), 119-127. https://www.muse.jhu.edu/article/750558.

BLADE RUNNER 2049 – Official Trailer