Due to this being my last week before my deadline, I have been finishing my essay and editing any parts that needs it. The parts that have been completed were the conclusion and just a general spell check.
Practical-
I have finished my practical work from the questionnaire that I created about which emotion relates to which weather. I have had troubles with the practical due to a technical issue with my computer, but I managed to fix it.
This week I have been focusing on pulling my essay apart to make sure everything is correct and in the right order. The problems that I have been having is trying to find the correct words to explain what I mean, but with help from study support I have been getting better.
I have also found another paper called 'Empathy, film and Brain" for my essay. I believe that this will help to backup my essay.
Practical-
This week I have been focusing on my writing so haven't done any of my practical
This week I have been making sure I have enough research into my final case study 'Anger' from inside out.
This series of clips on Youtube are about the making of inside out.
(Part 1)
(Part 2)
(Part 3)
(Part 4)
"Insides Out"
"Growing up can be a bumpy road, and it’s no exception for Riley, who is uprooted from her Midwest life when her father starts a new job in San Francisco. Like all of us, Riley is guided by her emotions – Joy, Fear, Anger, Disgust and Sadness. The emotions live in Headquarters, the control center inside Riley’s mind, where they help advise her through everyday life. As Riley and her emotions struggle to adjust to a new life in San Francisco, turmoil ensues in Headquarters. Although Joy, Riley’s main and most important emotion, tries to keep things positive, the emotions conflict on how best to navigate a new city, house and school."
"Anger
Anger feels very passionately about making sure things are fair for Riley. He has a fiery spirit and tends to explode (literally) when things don’t go as planned. He is quick to overreact and has little patience for life’s imperfections."
"Sadness
None of the other Emotions really understand what Sadness’s role is. Sadness would love to be more optimistic and helpful in keeping Riley happy, but she finds it so hard to be positive. Sometimes it seems like the best thing to do is just lie on the floor and have a good cry."
"Joy
Joy’s goal has always been to make sure Riley stays happy. She is lighthearted, optimistic and determined to find the fun in every situation. Joy sees challenges in Riley’s life as opportunities, and the less happy moments as hiccups on the way back to something great. As long as Riley is happy, so is Joy."
"Disgust
Disgust is highly opinionated, extremely honest and prevents Riley from getting poisoned – both physically and socially. She keeps a careful eye on the people, places and things that Riley comes into contact with – whether that’s broccoli or last year’s fashion trend. Disgust always has the best of intentions and refuses to lower her standards."
This clip is going to be the one that is used in the essay because it is a good example of when 'Anger' gets angry and uses his flame visual effects.
Practical-
For this week I have been looking at fog and how to make it realistic. I found this one a bit harder than the rain and lightning, due to trying to find the correct consistency for realistic fog.
"How to Create Realistic Fog in After Effects"
"Step 1: Create the Fog Layer
Create a simple white layer (Command+Y) and label it ‘Fog.’ Next, using the mask tool (Q), create a quick circle mask in the center of your composition. I prefer using this method to creating a shape layer because you can easily change the shape of the mask layer if you desire. Feather out the mask significantly (see example above).
Step 2: Add Turbulence
Apply the turbulent displace effect to your shape layer. You probably won’t see a big difference with the default settings. Try bumping up the values until you begin to see some interesting effects. For my example, I have ‘Amount’ set to 205 and the ‘Complexity’ set to 2. All the other settings are default at the moment.
Step 3: Animate the Fog
If you scene calls for fog to remain still, then you can skip this step, but if you want to give your fog an extra level of realism, you probably want to add a little movement to it. How much movement all depends on your frame. To do this, simply set keyframes to both the ‘Offset (Turbulence)’ parameter and the ‘Evolution Parameter’. In my example, I have the fog moving to the right at 30 pixels a second and the evolution progressing at an amount of 20 per second.
Step 4: Duplicate the Turbulence
If you want simply fluffy fog, then you can skip to the compositing process. But if you want your fog to look more wispy or have wind effects applied to it, you should follow the next two steps.
Duplicate the turbulent displace effect. In the new effect, simply increase the amount by around 50 and reduce the size by about the same. Drop the complexity to something around 1.5. All of this depends on the look you are going for, but, for our example, these are the settings we are going to use. You can also cut down on the wispiness by applying a gaussian blur as needed.
Step 5: Simulate Wind
Now comes the fun part. If you manipulate both ‘Offset (Turbulence)’ and ‘Evolution’ with new values, you can simulate wind! It’s a really simple and cool effect that can produce some interesting results if you mess around with it. For further control, you could even parent the ‘Offset (Turbulence)’ layer to a null object or even apply a wiggle effect to simulate swirling winds.
Compositing Fog in After Effects
Step 1: Adjust the Position and Scale
Simply put, move your fog layer to the correct position in your composition and use the scale feature to scale your layer. Don’t worry — your effect shouldn’t pixelate.
Step 2: Set an Adjustment Layer
Create a new adjustment layer (Option+Command+Y). Next, position your adjustment layer under your ‘Fog’ layer and set the track matte to ‘Luma Matte.’ Your ‘Fog’ layer will disappear. Don’t worry… this is supposed to happen.
Step 3: Apply Effects to Adjustment Layer
In order to create realistic fog, we will want to make sure that the fog is not only colored, but also that it affects the layers underneath it. In order to do this we will probably want to desaturate, blur, and slightly color the background layers where the fog overlaps.
In our example, let’s apply a quick Hue/Saturation effect to the adjustment layer. Let’s turn the saturation down to -50 and the lightness up to 20. You should now begin to see your fog layer showing up. Now let’s add color.
My favorite effect to use when compositing is the curve effect, so let’s go ahead and add it. Now, it all depends on your color grade, but in most circumstances you will only want to affect the blue channel. Switch to the blue channel and grab the bottom left point and bring it up to [.9,1.2] (see image below.) Your fog should now have a little bit of a blue tint in the shadow areas and less in the highlights. This is exactly what we want.
The way you color will all depend on your scene, but in general you will want to always bring up the shadows and potentially bring down the whites if the scene is darker.
Lastly, add a gaussian blur to your adjustment layer. A value around 5 should do.
Step 4: Mask the Adjustment Layer
Mask out areas for the fog to sit behind. In our example I’ll go ahead and simply mask out the hill in the foreground.
Step 5: Duplicate as Needed
For the best results, you can duplicate your ‘Fog’ and adjustment layer multiple times to create more realistic effects. A great way to sell your composite is to create a parallaxing effect where the foreground fog moves faster than the background fog, but it just depends on your individual scene and time constraints.
Step 6: Track If Needed
If your footage has some movement in it, you can track it and apply the information to your ‘Fog’ Layers. You don’t need to apply the data to your adjustment layers, just the ‘Fog’ layers."
I have finished my practical work from the questionnaire that I created about which emotion relates to which weather. I have had troubles with the practical due to a technical issue with my computer, but I managed to fix it.
This is my fog scene. I found this one relatively easy and enjoyed creating it using the tutorial above.
For this week I have been looking at Te ka from Moana and how pathetic fallacy is used within the character. I have been looking at articles and interviews to find the information.
"The Effects Tech Behind ‘Moana’"
"An often unheralded part of feature animation is the effects animation, and Walt Disney Animation Studios has continually ramped up its effects technology with each new release. A series of new interviews look into the latest developments made with water and fire simulations for Moana, which opens in U.S. theaters today."
" In terms of water effects, Disney had to tackle both ‘at sea’ simulations and shots where the ocean acts as a playful character. Additional simulation techniques were required to bring, Te Ká, the living volcano, to life."
By looking into both the water and fire simulations used in Moana, a I have now got a greater understanding of how they both interlink to make both visual effects interact with each other. This information can be used in my essay and potentially my practical.
"Te Fiti" and "Te Kā"
(Te Fiti)
(Te Kā)
"Te Fiti is a major character in Disney's 2016 animated feature film Moana. She is a goddess with the power to create life—an ability used to create the islands of Polynesia. After her heart had been stolen by the demigod Maui, she became Te Kā, a demon of earth and fire who serves as the main antagonist. With Te Kā in her place, the islands that Te Fiti created are slowly consumed by a life-killing darkness. Only by restoring Te Fiti's heart can the darkness be vanquished."
By having this information, I will be able to understand the character and its alter ego more and why the character becomes so angry. This information will therefore be useful for the essay.
With this week I have been looking at rain and lightning in after effects and how to make it look realistic. I found this pretty easy to do and had no troubles.
This was the YouTube video that I used to know how to create it.
For my research work i have been watching interviews that have happened with staff who worked on frozen. By watching these, I'll have a better incite to how the film first started, what software was used and the main character 'Elsa' as she is going to be one of my case studies within the essay.
"Disney’s ‘Frozen’ to Warm Hearts This Week"
"The haunting tale of Hans Christian Andersen’s Snow Queen has been kicking around Disney since the 1940s, when Walt Disney himself was considering a full-fledged animated feature based on the story. The problematic fairy tale, which was first published in 1845, has lots of great imagery and is really about the healing power of love against a cold-hearted villainess who separates the story’s hero and heroine. But the story’s characters are not really fully developed and the plot doesn’t exactly lend itself easily to the demands of modern moviegoing audiences."
"As visually astounding as the movie looks, the directors tell us that finding a way to tell the story correctly and getting to the real heart of the tale were two of the movie’s biggest challenges."
"A key scene in the movie involves Elsa building a dazzling ice palace using her special magic. Members of the production team visited Quebec City to see an Ice Hotel to take notes on how light reflects and plays off snow and ice. “We had at least 50 effects artists and lighting artists working together to create that long shot,” says Lee. “It took about 30 hours to render just one frame; that’s 4,000 computers rendering one frame at a time. That’s why that scene is one of my favorites. It really represents the journey all of us took on that movie.”"
"“Frozen” Story Head Paul Briggs Talks About Truth in Storytelling"
"Paul Briggs, story department supervisor at Walt Disney Animation Studios and the Head of Story on Frozen, sat down with Cartoon Brew to talk about the importance of finding a place of truth when developing an animated film and the different paths that must be explored in order to discover the characters. In his role, Briggs is part of the studio’s story trust, and “keeper” of the “safe room,” which is the nickname for the Disney’s writer’s room where artists and writers feel safe to share personal things from their own lives to help inform the stories they are telling."
"One of the biggest changes that Chris Buck brought to the production was turning Andersen’s distant, abstract character of the Snow Queen, and Gerda, the protagonist trying to rescue a loved one from the curse of a frozen heart, into the sisters Elsa and Anna. This fundamentally changed the dynamic of the story to something more grounded and relatable."
"“Chris started with the simple idea of love,” says Briggs who has four sisters of his own. “The strength of familial love vs. romantic love.” The concept was then expanded to “love vs. fear,” which provided clearer guidance for the motivations of the principal characters. “Elsa lives in fear because she’s afraid she’s going to hurt the ones she loves, while Anna has so much love in her, but is never able to give it to anyone.”"
These articles will be quite important in the essay because it will help to have reliable information about why and how the animation was made. This will then be used in the essay.
Practical-
This week I will be looking at how to remove backgrounds in a video by looking at a number of different YouTube videos such as:
The reason for wanting to learn this skill is due to wanting the remove the background in a something that I have filmed. However, I have been finding it quite hard to remove.
I have been talking to Matt and I have decided to switch to after effects instead of Maya due to struggling to get to grips with the software. I know after effects quite well, and can pick up how to animate in it quite quickly. Therefore, I believe that this will be a more effective way for me to animate.
I have also been filming again for the visual effects. This time I have used a different camera and the outcome has been better compared to the previous camera. I have also had to use a different actor, however I don't believe this has massively impacted the clips.
When filming, I did have some issues with lighting due to it getting dark early, but I am hoping that I will be able to edit this to fit the weather animations.
This week, I have been focusing on psychology theories based on empathy and whether they could help support my idea of using visual effects to mirror a characters emotion can help the audience to empathise with the character more. The research that I have found is:
"Cognitive Empathy
By definition:“Simply knowing how the other person feels and what they might be thinking. Sometimes called perspective-taking” - Daniel Goleman, renowned psychologist and author of the 1995 book Emotional Intelligence.
What it’s concerned with: Thought, understanding, intellect.
Benefits:Helps in negotiations, motivating other people, understanding diverse viewpoints.
Pitfalls:Can be disconnected from or ignore deep emotions; doesn’t put you in another’s shoes in a felt sense.
Cognitive Empathy is about thought as much as emotion.
It is defined by knowing, understanding, or comprehending on an intellectual level. As most of us know, to understand sadness is not the same thing as feeling sad.
I suspect that if I came home upset about losing a job, my own partner would respond this way. In the same way that a doctor can look at a sick patient and try to understand the parts of the illness rather than dive into the patient’s emotions—cognitive empathy responds to a problem with brainpower. My fiance, an engineer and pilot, turns his brain into high gear in situations like this. You could say it’s the way some people are wired, to understand emotions in terms of why they make sense for humans in certain situations.
This type of empathy can be a huge asset in circumstances where you need to “get inside another person’s head” or interact with tact and understanding. We talk about this is our blog “Emotional Intelligence and Empathy in Leadership.” On the other hand, cognitive empathy is in some ways like mixing apples and oranges. To truly understand another person’s feelings, don’t you in some sense have to be able to feel them yourself? Those who react with Cognitive Empathy risk seeming cold or detached."
"Emotional Empathy
By definition:“when you feel physically along with the other person, as though their emotions were contagious.” - Daniel Goldman
What it’s concerned with:feelings, physical sensation, mirror neurons in the brain.
Benefits:Helps in close interpersonal relationships and careers like coaching, marketing, management and HR.
Pitfalls: Can be overwhelming, or inappropriate in certain circumstances.
Emotional Empathy, just like is sounds, involves directly feeling the emotions that another person is feeling. You’ve probably heard of the term “empath,” meaning a person with the ability to fully take on the emotional and mental state of another.The quote that comes to mind is: “I have a lot of feelings.”
This type of response might seem disconnected from the brain and thinking, but as Goldman points out, emotional empathy is actually deeply rooted in a human’s mirror neurons. All animals have neurons that fire in a certain way when they see another animal acting, making them relate to that action in their own body and brain. Emotional empathy does exactly that with the feelings someone experiences in reaction to a situation.
When your partner—or anyone you deeply love—comes to you in tears, it’s a natural response to feel that pull on your heartstrings. Like crying at a wedding or cringing when someone stubs their toe, it’s a deep-seated, gut reaction that often feels like a visceral human response. Connecting with another human in this way is intimate and can form a strong bond.
Like Cognitive Empathy, Emotional Empathy has its flip-side. “One downside of emotional empathy occurs when people lack the ability to manage their own distressing emotions,” writes Goldman. “[This] can be seen in the psychological exhaustion that leads to burnout.” Feeling too much can make even small interactions overwhelming."
"Compassionate Empathy
By definition:“With this kind of empathy we not only understand a person’s predicament and feel with them, but are spontaneously moved to help, if needed.” - Daniel Goldman
What it’s concerned with:Intellect, emotion, and action.
Benefits:Considers the whole person.
Pitfalls:Few—this is the type of empathy that we’re usually striving for!
The majority of the time, Compassionate Empathy is the ideal. Cognitive Empathy may be fitting for political or monetary negotiations or surgeon’s offices; Emotional Empathy may be the first response in children and for our loved ones; Compassionate Empathy strikes a powerful balance of the two.
Feelings of the heart and thoughts of the brain are not opposites. In fact, they’re intricately connected. Compassionate Empathy honors that natural connection by considering both the felt senses and intellectual situation of another person.
When your loved one comes to you in tears, you want to understand why she is upset and you also want to provide comfort by sharing in her emotional experience and hopefully helping her heal. It’s a lot to handle!
Most of us will skew to one side or the other: more thinking or more feeling; more fixing or more wallowing.
Compassionate Empathy is taking the middle ground and using your emotional intelligence to correctly respond to the situation. Does your partner just need to be held? Does the situation call for quick action? Without either becoming overwhelmed by sadness or trying to fix things with logistics, compassion brings a mindful touch to tough situations.
When I think of empathy I often think of a teeter-totter. Go too far into another person’s psyche and do you risk losing yourself? Avoid diving into their world and are you missing out on an integral part of the human experience? Is too much feeling inappropriate? Too little, hurtful?
The truth is, not all situations are the same just like not all types of empathy are the same."
The papers and information listed will be very useful for quote for my essay.
Practical-
For my practical this week I have been filming in the park for my work. However, when I had finished the filming and was about to edit, I found that the quality of the camera wasn't very good and wouldn't work for the animations that I wanted to put on it. Therefore, I will be having to reshoot the film's. The filming that I am wanting to capture is of someone I know doing "everyday things" and displaying different emotions while doing it to make it look as natural as possible. I am wanting to use a tripod to make sure the audience doesn't get directed with movement when watching this clips. This is because I am wanting to create visual effects that reflect a characters emotional state and I would like the audience to decide on whether by doing this it enables them to understand clearer what they are feeling and therefore feel more empathetic towards the character.
For this week, I have been talking to Matt and study support about how to settle on what I should do for my dissertation. I have come to conclusion that I should look into the importance of visual effects and how it can complement/reflect a characters personality by using personification and/or pathetic fallacy.
How I came about this was due to me watching lots of interviews from the animation team of "Frozen" and "Moana". The interviews are useful as you are able to get a better insight into how their developmental process is done to create their visual effects. Not only that, the interviews from the team of "Moana" were particularly interesting due to the character animation team and vfx team had to work together to create personified visual effects.
Practical-
I have been working on trying to learn Maya still. I have managed to be able to get a hold of where everything is and and the vfx roughly work, but I still need to understand how to animate and control the vfx.
I have also been comparing the difference between realistic and "cartoon" rain to see if there will be a difference in how the audience perceives the character.
The clip below shows how Disney animates rain. I have found that for the most part of their films they tend to keep the environment fairly realistic.
For this clip that Pixar created, they made the overall look of the film realistic, but I believe that they have made the droplets look too over exaggerated.
These are examples of real rain scenarios to compare from in different intensities and environments.
For this week, I have been talking to Matt and study support about how to settle on what I should do for my dissertation. I have come to conclusion that I should look into the importance of visual effects and how it can complement/reflect a characters personality by using personification and/or pathetic fallacy.
How I came about this was due to me watching lots of interviews from the animation team of "Frozen" and "Moana". The interviews are useful as you are able to get a better insight into how their developmental process is done to create their visual effects. Not only that, the interviews from the team of "Moana" were particularly interesting due to the character animation team and vfx team had to work together to create personified visual effects.
Practical-
I have been working on trying to learn Maya still. I have managed to be able to get a hold of where everything is and and the vfx roughly work, but I still need to understand how to animate and control the vfx.
For this week, I have been researching different software's/plugins that have been developed to enhance the overall look and physics simulator used to create a better viewing experience. The software's/plugins that I found was "Matterhorn" used to created the realistic snow in "Frozen" and "Splash", which was used to create the physics simulation of the water. The reason for researching this was because I originally wanted to explore proprietary physical based simulations for my Dissertation, as I am incredibly interested in the behind the scenes of how animations are made to look realistic. However, I have changed my mind on focusing on this topic as I believe it'll be too complicated.
Practical-
For my practical have been experimenting with how to use Maya so I have started with animating rain.
For this week I am comparing the difference between realistic and "cartoon" rain to see if there will be a difference in how the audience perceives the character.
The clip below shows how Disney animates rain. I have found that for the most part of their films they tend to keep the environment fairly realistic.
For this clip that Pixar created, they made the overall look of the film realistic, but I believe that they have made the droplets look too over exaggerated.
These are examples of real rain scenarios to compare from in different intensities and environments.
