ProjectTimmyTipton Mock 005 - Thom Lu - For Blog Preview - WIP -

"The Shadow Problem"

For Scene 3 Lighting, I encountered the largest obstacle, which was the “Shadow” Problem.

My animation technique was to hide the extra movements and pieces changes outside of the frame so it would flow well and transition well between pieces, however, as my Key spot light shines over my room, it casts the shadow on to the background wall, which reveals my transitions.

I came up with couple solutions at first, I tried to turn off cast shadow on either light or cutout itself, and cast another individual shadow on Timmy’s cut out, but that did not work because the overall visual for shadow looks wrong. It turned out extremely unnatural. Even my animation style is very forgiving, yet the shadow looks very unpleasant and fails.

So I came up with the best solution, “ta-da”~ SHADOW DIFFUSION ! , I crank up the shadow diffusion when it comes to the transition, It will not affect any existing lighting, but only blurs out the shadow, and I set the diffusion timing along with the camera movement to co-exist both movements smoothly, and essentially hides the blur within the camera movements. An extra surprise I noticed, is that the “blurs” during the camera movement also act as a field of depth illusion, so its a win-win technique. However, one thing I noticed that is crucial is the key framings for the shadow diffusion points. It takes time to adjust it one by one, and shuffles around different pixels to get the transition looks natural.

ProjectTimmyTipton Mock 003 - Thom Lu - For Blog Preview - WIP - sneakpeak

Emily Carry University of Art & Design Grad film 

This is Mock 003 , the film is not completed.

Film by - Thom Lu - http://www.thomluthegreat.blogspot.ca/
Narration by - Tim Chisholm - https://soundcloud.com/greatpipes
Music by - Aldon Baker - http://www.aldonbaker.com/

Schedule

What I planned - 

- Scene 5 Animation 

- Overall Animation 

- Update Blog with latest link 

- Lighting and Final Look concepts / Reference / And tests. 

What is done - 

- I finished Scene 5

 * Fixed Camera Movement

 * parents animation 

 * kiss scene added 

 * Parents flip refined

- I finished Overall Animation 

 * Fixed ship with Timmy 

 * fixed camera 

 * added parents hug 

 * parents flip added 

 * shadow drawing updated 

 * knock knock shrink 30% size 

 * Character darken 

 * mermaid mom updated 

 * outlaw dad shrink and tweaked 

 * Timing locked  

- Narration fixed and added to the film. 

-  I've done some testing and I built a Test Scene to experiment on Lighting, because the file I am working on is too slow to experiment. So i built a smaller scene to try testing faster and more efficient. 

- And the results are pretty interesting, with what I am seeing from the testing, I will be adding a background and will solve the empty space problem, you can see from the testing room image, so the overall Vignette is not added yet, only lighting tests. 

 - Note the testing images are still pretty crappy, they are just some initial testing, I havn't figure out how to layer them properly yet. 

Ambient Light Test 

Spot Light Dim Test 

Spot Light Mix

Parallel Light 

Tonal change on single Piece Test

Point Light, Works well creating contrasts

SpotLight Extreme. 

- Spot_2_3 is a test right now with the center spot light, I have not light the other pieces yet so please ignore the sides for now.

Last note, I have sent my latest version to my composer and is going to be discussing music and sound effects with him on Tuesday Afternoon, he is aware of the lighting, and knows the film is not black and white. Therefore on Tuesday, the film still does not have sound and music yet. 

ProjectTimmyTipton Mock 001 - Thom Lu - For Blog Preview -

This is the First Mock Draft with animation set and Locked Screen.

Lighting Test 1

I am experimenting from Spot light, Parallel Light, Ambient Light and Point Light

I find Spot Light is the most promising so far with the result I envisioned

My settings are generally around

Intensity - 80 %

Cone Angle - 90 - 180 degree

Cone Feather - 50%

Falloff: Smooth

Radius: 250 - 2000

Falloff Distance: Usually the same with Radius with little offset, or cope with the visual distance

Casts Shadow: On

Shadow Darkness: 100%

Shadow Diffusion: 0% , turn up when its needed. Mostly don't

Colour -

I started from the basic Yellow, Blue and Red, and red is too extreme and gives off a horror feeling, and orangish yellow is the best so far with individual lightings and to bring up the single item pieces within the visual.

The Shadow Problem - Controlling shadow is extremely difficult for me at the moment because I start by focusing on the angle of the surface lighting result, yet it could lead to a undesirable shadow cast in a undesirable way. So right now I am solving it by creating spot lights with larger Cone Angle, and shorter Falloff Distance to only light the surface without projecting a shadow for the item. And if I do need a shadow I will use a less intense % and longer distance with larger cone angle on top to create the shadow effect. Note the colour for spotlight for shadow is lighter in order to not affect the colour on the surface.

Shine - without going to the Glow setting, I lit glow for small areas with a smaller spot light yet brighter colour. This way is slower and not really efficient, but I really do enjoy the result.

Dim Background Problem - When the overall colour light is lit, it really brings out the emptiness of the background and I need to fix it soon.

I am planning to apply different colour for each scene base on the mood and the over tonal feelings.
- blue from Timmy and orange from parents
- gradually Timmy will start to warm up.

The Method I am learning right now is really time consuming as in I am adjusting light and position one by one base on the visual item amount. And would be challenging for me to do a clean up on transitions.

Overall colours will be blue and orange to create a bed time story like feeling.

And here are some early test results with

Spotlight 2 , 3 at scene 2 (blue + yellow lights)

Spotlight 2 , 3 , 7 at Scene 3

Spotlight 2 , 3 , 7, 8 at Scene 3 with close spots on Foreground, Mid-ground

Spotlight 2 , 3 , 7, 8 at Scene 3 Test 2 with shines

My next task is to create more spots to light all the items to complete a final look for a scene and see how it goes. 

TimmyT Animatic Scene4 V2 THOM LU