In this project, I was tasked to create a 25 second short film with a 3D model in a real environment to fit an “invasion” theme. My idea was to use a robot model to rampage through my street. I thought of this idea because i could use the buildings on the left of my raw footage as a way to express the size of the robot.
I created a small small and simple storyboard to outline roughly what would happen in my film. The robot was at first only going to simply appear around the corner but later in production, shortly after making the storyboard, I thought of the idea of having the robot loom over the buildings. Originally, I intended to include a zoom in on the robot’s upper body, but in development, I felt it was unnecessary.
I animated a walk cycle of the robot using a project I have learnt in my own time called “Source Filmmaker”. This is because the model I was aiming to use was in the software by default. I used a motion editor to move various body parts as a rig to create the walk cycle, and rotated the pelvis midway through the animation to create the illusion of the robot turning a corner in my recording. I feel as if this animation turned out to work successfully overall, however, my one nitpick is that the small turn I animated was a little too acute, so at the end of my final video, the robot was walking a little too far to the left in proportion to the street.
In order to mix these two sources to make a video, I needed to first add them to my scene. All I needed to do was drag the files into the composition and After Effects automatically created the dimensions to fit my videos. Next, I needed to mask my robot animation to separate it from the green screen. I also needed to mask the houses in the foreground of my footage, as I was planning to have the robot walk from behind the houses and come into the foreground. This proved to be very difficult at first because the recording was very shaky. At first I thought I would have to animate the mask frame by frame to move with the shaking, but I came across a tracking tool that automatically animated each frame roughly relevant to the colour scheme of the sky and the house, which turned out to work perfectly.
In order to add an extra layer of realism, I decided to add some sound effects. I found a sound clip of a small crowd screaming and panicking which was ideal for the setting, so I converted it into an mp3 file and placed it in my layers. I also attempted to look for robotic stomping sound effects but I struggled to find anything fitting enough to use. Finally, my recording came with natural sounds of various things such as wind and birds chirping.
I also added a shadow for my robot to project on the floor. To do this, I created a copy of the animation, rotated it to the floor and added colour correction and a blur to create the shadow. To accompany the field of view in my video, I also needed to extend the shadow the closer it is to the camera using an effect called “CC Power Pin”
Overall, I think this project was successful. I planned to create a short video of an “invasion” and the final project turned out to be just that. The sound I added seemed to fit well along with the intimidating atmosphere I created. My one gripe I have with the finished product is that the 3D model I imported did not fit the angle of the setting (I.E: the turning of the robot is not aligned with the angle of the road).
Jackson Hinkler Portfolio 