Shot008 _completed

Shot008 is a shot we shoot in an alley, this is the original plate cleaned below:

 We can only see a narrow sky in this scene, we want more scifi feeling. To get the result, I deleted the right part of the walls,Michael added some 3D scifi buidings in it. Here are the layers of the 3D elements:

This is the completed version of the pure 3D shot008:

 It already has the feeling of depth,but if we see through it, there are some perspective issues that coudn't be ignored.The most obvious one is the white elevator in the right side , I did some perspective lines to help us to find the problems.

The vanishing Point of  the elevator is totally different from the buidings' which will make the scene never looks right. And the Burj Dubai in the left bottom increased the burden of the whole scene again, it's unnecessary and destroyed the depth.

The matte painting version of shot008:

 As we can see , i corrected the perspective issues which appeared before, also added different lights to make the style uniformed，I gave a spot light in photoshop to highlight the depth also covered some details in the corners to emphasise the character.

I havn't modofied the colours a lot of the walls in the concept art stage, I guided the comp team modified the colours and added several warm lights out of the windows in the comp stage.

Here is the final comp result, the matte painting I created has been used directly in the final movie .

This shot is for the second part that people could recognise that the character is falling down, so or the depressive and sad feeling we discussed to make the scene darker and bluer.

SHOT001_completed

The original tunnel plate for shot001:

For this shot , I contributed the idea of making different kind of lights in the tunnel to decorate and also illuminate it.
The work I need to do in this stage is fill up the little square space with matte painting background.


The first early time matte painting for this shot:

 

Unfortunately, this painting is in the daylight before I decided to make the whole movie in the night, so it doesn't match our project well, but it was a good practise of the making of buildings in matte painting also a valuable space and colour control parctise.

 

The layers I got from team member Michael:

The final version :

I corrected the colours into red and blue ,also used the red light to highlight the scend,make it looks more myserious.

The final comp result:

SHOT004—completed

First early draft of shot004:

The problems I can see now after I tried alot of way to improve my environmental design are:

1. There's no contrast among these colours, we can't really tell which part is infront and which is behind.
2. Although the purpose i used different angles of the buidings is want to confuse people , but it also confused me, all the spaces are messed up in this scene.
3. No focus.

For create the scifi feeling and destroyed city as well, I modelled several damaged pillars in MAYA to take place of the original ones.

The 3D pillars:

 With texture:

 The completed version:

Final version with the golden ratio test:

I used some fog to cover some unperfect part of the texture, and also make the balance of the buidings.

First 3d elements version of shot003 &004

 shot003

shot 004

SHOT005_completed

Since we have two shots of the postoffice in Dundee need to be done, I began to do with shot005 after 006 is done.
Shot6 is a shot which has strong perspective angle,I found two ways to create the space for it.

The original plates for this shot:

The first version of shot005:

 I've got the inspirations below:

For this version ,I created a space with different angle, deleted most of the 3D elements and filled up with matte painting. But when I tried to comp in Nuke ,we found it's unable to use matte painting for the background, the camerais moving, even just a little bit, but still could cause the perspective problem.

The final version:

I used the same colour as the shot006 , and also made a small warm and shiny space in the middle of this scene for the character.

The final comp with character in it:

Concept art for Shot 006_ completed

From the matte painting handbook I learned that several high quality matte painting are based on the 3D basic elements.As we moved to the final modify stage, cooperation became the most important point in this period of time, we need the 3D buildings to be basic textured as soon as possible, and also, every team member has his or her own thought of each shot that we all decided to let Jack and Micheal do the placement of the 3D buildings and passed the clear layers of the front, middle ,back part of the scene to me to create the atomosphere and correct the colours.

This is the seperated layers of the shot006:

                                          FRONT

                                      MIDDLE

                                  BACK
When I applied all of the layers together in photoshop, the scene is like this:

And also we need to add the liveaction things in it:

(the liveaction part 's colours 've already be modified )

As we can see , no one can tell where is the focus of this scene, the only thing we can tell is there are just amazing elements filled up the whole screen without a place could breath or point.

Our character is in the yellow area below:

but so far, obviously the main element and the "focus"is the huge round building in the middle, it covers most of the area in this shot ,unfortunately, this shot has been called the most tough shot in our object.That's why i began with this one.


To creat the atomosphere , i did some research and checked different artist's matte panitings to learn how to make space for people to breathe and how to create the space.which is the most valuable thing i learned from this shot.

The reference of this shot:

To create amazing atomosphere, we need to know:no matter how detailed , how amazing the original 3D elements are, we still can't use all of them, we need to choose which part should we keep and what we should throw away, if we not willing to delete or cover some unessecary things, we'll never going to make it.

The first step I did is deleted the huge round building layer in the middle.

and left enough space for the space creation and the character.

The considering of colours:

1. Warm colours make the elements stand out ,and let people feel more nearer.
2. Cold colour tone make the objects far away ， has air feeling also weaken the objects sometimes.
3. To emphasise the character, the warm colour tone around him should be better.
4. The liveaction buidings are too flat in this shot which are not perfect, I will use cool colour tone to cover their details and push them away.

The considering of space:

• The left corner is a little bit empty and flat after I deleted the middle layer, i rendered out a 3D bridge which is created by Michael .I don't want to cover the corner with solid buidings again, I chose the bridge because it 's made by steels and it's just a structrue which will still keep the space feeling of the secen after I added it.

The first draft for SH006:

 The Second version without the bridge:

Final version:

Final version with golden ratio test:

The first try of matte painting for shot009

SH0T009 is my first try  for the conceptual design and matte painting, it requires the style exploration, I need to decide which time is this movie going to be happen, what mood we want to express to our audience and also how to keep the fresh feeling in the entire movie to avoid people feel bored.The feeling we want to make in this short film is sad， away from the noisy city .

For making the city looks colorful and gorgeous， I decided to use different colours of lights.Our liveaction maerials were shot in the daylight, it's a challenge to make it into the nighttime in colour correction and also the feeling prodution,we want the character fly far away from the world which is not belonged to him, and also make the feeling that he is in the thousand inched sky ,it 's high, dangerous and also mysterious, so ,the feeling of depthe became the most significant one in our project.

I did a lot of research in the space making, for example :the film "Total recall", "upside down", the concept of the cities and the complex spaces gave me huge inspiration .

Here's the original cleaned plate of the shot009

it looks grey and lack of contrast,not much space in the plate, so what i need to do is take the full use of the right corner to make the space as obvious as possible.


This is the first version of the matte painting for this shot. I made a daylight version in this one, which looks nice but the elevator is not suitable for our entire movie,also the quality of the matte painting is not high enough for a realistic film, it still looks like an illustration.

At that time  , I stell didnt find  a right way for the realistic matte painting, which made me really confused and stressful, I dont want my stuff couldn't be used in our project.I searched amazon and found a really helpful book called"The digital matte painting handbook"which has amazing tutorials for the beginners.

This is the final version of matte painting and colour design for the shot009:

I changed the time to night and added some high contrast colours , made the lights for highlight some area to make it more layered.Fog and smoke also be used as one neccasary element which makes the scene mysterious.

At this stage,the main colours of this film have been decided as red and blue.