Week One

My favorite title sequence – Baby Driver

I am already a fan of driving and music, so this movie having driving synced to music got me really interested. Due to it’s clever use of camera angles and music, it quickly became my favorite title sequence – along with a good portion of the internet.

The yellow lines on the building are also a very iconic feature of this film now. The title sequence is very effective for how simple the graphics are.

007 Bond Circle Sequence

I used key frames in order to get the dots to move across the screen, selecting two different X values for the dot to move between.

I was able to create these longer columns of dots using compositions to join everything together in one sequence.
To position the dots, I edited the X values for each dot.

Week Two

Rotating cards

Using this image of the cards and these colour settings, I flattened out the colours – through use of the “Curves” tool – and turned the image black and white by lowering the saturation down as low as possible to remove any colour. This allows for a clean alpha which can be used in this next part:

Here I used mattes to take a solid black layer and cut holes into it using the cards I just created as a guide.

Here is where I animate the spin, the first image showing the settings, the second showing the timeline, and the third showing the placement of the cards.

Final Outcome

Using Masks

Skull Mask

I used two pictures of Daniel Craig for this. For the first image, I cropped out his hair and the white background he was stood against.

For the second image, I cropped his eyes, nose and mouth out so that they would stand out a little more against the rest of his face.

I then masked out the background of this skull and used a Matte to place his face onto it.

After playing around with the fire for a bit, I realised I could use it to reveal a skull under his face, which I thought looked pretty cool.

This idea meant that I had to get more flames into the middle of the screen. Unfortunately, the video provided mainly has the flames on the left of the screen, so I duplicated it and flipped the video. It doesn’t look amazing because of this but as it is only a technical test I think this works fine.

Final Video

 

Week Three

Green Screen Session

In this session, we took the time to film some shots that we can use as silhouettes in our own Bond-style title sequences. These will be keyed to remove the green in the background, then we will lower the brightness in the shots so that all we can see of the people are their silhouettes.

Week Four

Week Five

Tracking

This picture shows how to get the tracker open, all you need to do is go to window then toggle on the tracker tab.

This is the final look that I’m searching for.

Here, I move the anchor point of this PNG into the circle. This means that, when I apply it to the tracker, it will move around the circle instead of the center of the PNG.

In these pictures, I show the tracker settings and the final tracking points for the image. Under “Motion Source” is where I add the PNG to the tracker. This applies the image to those grey points in the first image.

Here is the finished product, with the label tracked onto the video.

To track faces, all you need to do is mask around the face. Then in the tracker settings you will get an option to switch it to face tracking and will adjust your mask to fit the face over every frame. With this, you can add an effect. This is done by simply searching it up then double clicking on it and adjusting the settings as you need.

Here is the finished product for the face tracking. I added a blur to the main child’s face.

In order to add text to a 3D environment, you need to use a different setting on the tracker called “Track Camera.” This will create a bunch of crosshairs on the video that you can use as individual tracking points, you can select one of them or multiple to achieve the effect that you want.

In this image, you can see the menu that is brought up when you right click on a crosshair. Through this, you can create anything that you need and it will be automatically applied to any crosshairs you have selected.

This is the finished product, with all of the text applied to the image.

For the next type of tracking, we are using the “Content-Aware Fill” tool to remove a sign from a building.

Here are the settings that will be used for the fill.

In these images, I show the before and after of what the AI creates to fill the space where the sign once was.

Here is the final video. As you can see, the sign is removed in every frame and has been replaced by a fake part of the wall.

This next technique is called “Perspective Corner Tracking.” In order to do this, you change the settings of the tracker to project the tracking that you do on the logo on the left into a space on the right of the cardboard box. Shown below:

These are the settings used in order to achieve this tracking type.

Here is the finished result.

Week Six

3D Space

This is what I will be creating to showcase 3D Space in After Effects

Here are the layers I will be using to create this image.

This is the layer list, highlighted in red is the setting that turns a layer 3D. This will convert the object from 2D to 3D, adding the Z axis to the already existing X and Y axis.

These are the settings for the back wall, nothing too special here.

Here are the settings for the text, the top image shows the transformation settings, while the bottom shows the settings for the text itself.

These two pictures are for the solid base colour of the floor. The first image shows the transformation, and the second shows the Hue shift settings I used to create the purple colour shown in the picture.

This picture shows the settings used for the grid. I used a lighter purple so that the grid would stand out against the darker purple solid below it. This makes it look almost lit similar to a neon sign, which is an effect that I like.

In these pictures, you see the settings for the spot light and the point light in the scene. The point light just adds some purple to the atmosphere so that the orange spot light can gently throw some orange in there to add a warm glow.

Lastly, these are the transformation settings for the camera.

Here is the composition I created with the settings shown above.

Week Seven

AOVs

Maya Settings

 

After EffectsAfter exporting the EXR file with the AOVs from Maya, you start a new AE project and import the EXR into the new AE project.

Here is the first layer we will be working on.

Into this first layer, I will be adding the EXtractoR effect. This allows me to apply a Z axis into the space.

Moving on to the second layer now, we just duplicate the first layer and delete the effect that was added originally.

Into this second layer, I add a Camera Lens Blur. This will then add a 3D blur to the first layer that can either act similarly to fog, or something similar to capturing motion in a still image.

Here is the black and white Z Depth pass

 

This is the final outcome with the blur and full colour.

After this pass, I then added a solid layer and used the black and white depth pass to attach to the solid as an alpha layer. This allowed me to add fog to the image, which I demonstrated in bright pink below.

You can adjust the distance of the fog using the settings on the black and white layer.

Assignment 01 Showreel

Assignment 02 Bond Sequence