Director Statement

Production of Aztec Escape: The Forbidden Cake is now complete and burnt to dvd. As Director of this film project it was my role to oversee and direct all areas of the film (both creative and technical aspects). Its been a hard but enjoyable three terms of solid work and organisation. Taking on the role of director was challenging at times, always knowing that you make all the final decisions for the group and on the film creatively can on the one hand be a benefit but on the other you always know that if anything goes wrong , you'll be the person it lands on. I have seen myself change for the better because of this pressure and character building experiences. I have been more than happy throughout the year to take plenty of time out to review work and to give positive feeback.

When i first began as director i seemed to make decisions very openly to the group, allowing too much discussion and i tried too hard to make compromises when making key creative descisions on character design and story. As the terms have progressed i have realised that to be a successfully director you need to know what u want, and must be able to communicate these wants/needs to the team clearly. I have always taken a very professional approach to the role, I learned that it is hard to balance productivity and quality within the BA course time frame. I always strive for perfection in my work and in the film which can become a weakness as I want to spend too much time on one part of the production process, I have learned that when on tight deadlines quality must be lowered so that productivity is increased and the film is finished. Having direct creative control on a project is a great experience, that you must stay focussed and positive no matter what problems you may come accross throughtout the production process. I have learnt that a good story needs to be told well, through use of cinemtography, developing edits and creating clear and strong camera work. Let the camera work tell the story rather than relying on great animation and rendering. My overall thoughts on the finished film are very positive, im so happy with the outcome and the way we all worked effeiciently, professionally and effectively throughout this year. There is still alot i would want to change if i had the time, scenes i would replace and parts of the script i would re-write, but you just have to learn to walk away and start a fresh project, learning from the mistakes made in previous projects. Im most proud of the edit and energy created when watching the film, its not slow or boring in any place, the audience is taken on a short journey, that is what film making is all about. I look forward to directing many more films to come!

The future of Aztec Escape? Well since completing this one i feel as though the overal concept has a lot of potential for future film projects, the next film would be slightly longer and dialogue would be essential. In a week or two i will start to write another original film script using Aztec Escape as its foundations. I would like to give a special thank you to Alistair Primrose whos talents and professional score really makes our film stand out and memerable. As well as to Kev and Gareth, whose cinematography advice changed our edit and helped us to produce the film we're all so very proud of. Thank you to my whole team for your ideas, deadication, laughs and for putting up with my perfectionism, its made it an amazing experience working with you, all the best of luck!

Jonathan Pryce (Director)

Sound, Film Score and Rendering News

Following the successfull meeting with Alistair on Monday and a brief meeting with Becky our sound designer today, the music and effects are slightly behind and so to give them enough time the deadline has been set for late wednesday/early thursday morning. This will give Myself and Rob enough time to create a credit sequence, finish dropping all of the finished rendered files into the final edit and output the film to Quicktime at a pixel aspect ratio of 16:9 so that our film can be played on widescreen televisions. Alistair took on borad all of our productive comments and we worked for a couple of hours on the score with him, detailing correct timings, emotions/feelings, desired atmospheres, etc. Alistair put a huge amount of his own creative input into developing the score for the final final edit. When i suggested possible changes he started writing brand new original music on the spot to fill the gap in the score! Im really happy with the progress of the final score and cant wait to mix it with the sound effects and hear it all together. Becky has also asked for a day extension on the sound effects, plus i asked her to remove some sound effects as they could possibly clash with the film score.

The latest news on rendering is that we have completely finished every section of the film! Im so happy that its actually all done! Though recently we're encountered a few minor problems where textures havent been successfully applied in a few render sequences, therefore resulting in having to re-render some camera shots. Due to the strict schedule that we created, rob and myself built in time for such problems, so we're not actually losing any time.

Lastest Film Score and Sound News

Following sending the new precisely timed animatic to the composer and discussing score ideas over the phone and meetings in London, Alistair sent me the newest version of the Aztec Escape film score. Myself and Rob immdedialety placed the score over our latest film edit to notes any changes that might be needed. The overal score was great, but there were large areas where the music just didnt fit the animation, the feelings that we want to create and share with the audience weren't being emphasied. The actual written music is very impressive, it just needs to be moved around and areas cut. The only way of being able to discuss emotions, timing ideas and problems would be to arrange a meeting as quick as possible as the music deadline is in two days. The meeting is now set for tomorow morning at 11:00am at Alistair's house in Brixton. I have also recieved confirmation that our sound deisgner Becky is well on her way to completing the sound effects for Tuesday night.

Lighting in the House and Hallway

After completing the animation for the last scene of the film, i decided to move onto finalising the lighting in the hallway and kitchen scenes. Giles had already lit these scenes, but due to file problems the lighting had to be developed and replaced. The main idea behind the way i lit the set was that i wanted to create a strong and obviuos contrast between the exciting, colourful dream world and the dull, dark and lifeless real world. I kept the lighting very simple, and just chose to place the lights cleverly in the set. Overall i used x1 spot light in the hallway coming from the direction of the landing window (i find that its best to work out the main light source of the set i.e. the moonlight, so that the lighting seems more believable), x1 ambient light for the entire hallway and ketchen set, x1 ambient to subtley highlight the characters face when viewing the cake close up (this ambient was only linked to the characters polygon mesh through the relationship editor), this meant that the facial features could be lit while not affecting the rest of the lighting in the set, x1 high intensity spot light over the cooker/cake/oven hood source (highlighting main audience focus), and x1 spot light with a subtle intensity to create the illusion that the oven hood light slightly lit the opposite kitchen wall. The rest of the set has been left dark as there are no other sources of light effecting the scene, plus helps to highlight desired props. The render images below show some of the finalised renders of the hallway and kitchen shots:

My Finalised Hallway Lighting
(Focal Length 35, Widescreen 16:9, resolution 1204 x 576, Maya Software Rendering).

My Finalised Main Kitchen Lighting
(Focal Length 35, Widescreen 16:9, resolution 1204 x 576, Maya Software Rendering).

My Finalised Kitchen Close-up Lighting
(Focal Length 35, Widescreen 16:9, resolution 1204 x 576, Maya Software Rendering).

My Finalised Oven Area Lighting

(Focal Length 35, Widescreen 16:9, resolution 1204 x 576, Maya Software Rendering).

Small Pieces of Animation

The next area to start rendering after the temple cameras have rendered on Giles computer, will be the hallway and kitchen sets. The lighting still needs to be deveolped and finalised but the last shot of animation needs completing - the sleep walking character passing out and falling back after he blew up his kitchen. So far the animation that i have completed is the ornate stone slab, large stone door animation and posing and animating the characters and cameras for the edits/3D animatics. The sleep walking guy colapsing only needed to last 300 frames, the idea is that he falls over very stiff and ridgid after igniting the cooker flames in the gas filled room. I added secondary animation to his figures and nose while the character blinks several times looking shocked. This seems to add life and emotion to the chararcter. The kitchen cupboard and cake animation was completed by Jenny after i animated the character. Im not overly impressed with my animation, its was made more difficult as part of the character rig wasnt responsing (left wrist weighting problem) and no one in the group had the time to sort it out. The rig worked well on Giles computer, but somewhere along transfering it from pc to pc the file maybe faulty. This must be sorted for the degree show so that animation can be a lot smoother. This is the last scene of the film and must reflect the high level of quality produced throughout. The avi playblast of my animation, together with Jenny's is shown below:

Playblast of My Character Animation

The other small parts of animation i have completed for the final film are shown below:

Playblast of My Stone Skull Slab Trigger




Playblast of My Falling Stone Door Animation

Extra Temple Set Dressing

Just woke after only having 3 1/2 hours sleep and decided to finish dressing the enterance corridoor, rock chamber and add small bits to the main chamber so that the entire sets are ready for importing the animation and final rendering later on today. Alot of the heavey amounts of temple plant and shrub dressing was undertaken by myself a couple of weeks ago. The plants used were the same ones from both the jungle sets to keep vegetaion and general style continuity. Example render pictures shown below:

Rock Chamber Enterance Dressing

Enterance Corridoor Dressing

Rock chamber Exit Doorway Dressing

Temple Interior Lighting

The whole temple interior is now complete! And we managed to complete it within the time given in the schedule (10hrs sleep over four nights). For the past two days Rob, Dan and Myself have been constanlty developing the lighting, we first started with the main chamber early thursday morning. My initial idea was to use flame lit torches as the temples main source of light, but due to time constraints and lack of technical knowledge in creating the desired effects, it was easier to use the time of day change featured in the canopy establishing shot (day to moon lit night). With this idea in mind i wanted to make the temple very dark and shadowy, creating a mysterious and dangerous atmosphere. This type of lighting would contrast the lighting from both jungle sets effectively. To decide on a main source of light we used the illusion of moonlight passing through holes in the temple ceiling, this created a similar highlighting effect used in the jungle. The ambient lighting needed to reflect the time of day outside the temple, so we decided to use similar colour swatches i.e. blues, purples, silvery greys. Even with the ambient light and directional (moon) light the temple still lacked the dramatic feel of the jungle. I decided to use spot lights to focus the audiences main atentions to areas like the altar set, rock platforms and entraences. One lighting method adopted from the jungle was the environmental fog, this created a much more mysterious and misty atmosphere, camera compositions gained depth and took the attention away from the bottomless dark pits around. The fog almost takes the harsh polygon edges away from distance areas of the set, the saturation is distance set up so that audience focuses more on the action happening in front of them, rather than into large areas of dead space and vast chamber structures of the background (provides a balance). The total number of lights used in the main chamber was x1 ambient, x1 EnviroFog, x5 Spot Lights (two of them stronger in intensity to highlight enterance and altar set, one of them to highlight the explorers face at the altar set and the other to highlight walkways and actiona areas), x1 directional light to create purple/silvery gray moon lit pockets of light. With the spot lights we used a higher Penumbra angle to soften the drop off/harshness of the lights, but doesnt effect the overall intensity. These same lights were then duplicated and imported into the rock chamber and trap corridoor, the spot lights tweaked to highlight rope swing, broken walkway and entrances.

The following renders show some of the lighting tests that we created whilest lighting the temple interior:

Lighting Test Render - Single spot light at 0.4 intensity, trying to produce a very dark and gloomy set, dramatic highlights, etc (Maya Software Rendering).

Lighting Test Render - Three main spot lights, all at 0.8 intensity, very high penumbra angle and slight drop off, highlights main focus points within the set, lighting still not balanced, needs ambient lighting (Maya Software Rendering).

Lighting Test Render - Addition of EnviroFog and a strong ambient light intensity, colours used in lights are blue, purple, silvery greys. Saturation distance must be increased and fog height needs to be lowered. Very dramatic so i like it, but completely takes the focus away from the altar set area (Maya Software Rendering).

Lighting Test Render - First person camera shot lighting test from trap corridoor. Really like the darkness of the corridoor, the way it contrasts the main chamber set, keeps the focus on the chamber (end goal for our character). The main problem is that you proberly wont be able to see the explorer character running and jumping around the traps (Maya Software Rendering).



Lighting Test Render - We started to adopt the same directional lighting idea ultilised in the jungle, this time using the moon light as the main source of light. Lighting must always be justified with a main source(s) to ensure it makes sense (linking correctly to the day to night canopy shot earlier). A stronger ambient, less fog and the use of the original spot lights from the previous tests were used. Very happy with the lighting development, perhaps the ambient needs to be increased so that the rest of the set is slightly seen more. This render is close to being the lighting i would like to go for.

The final render shots of the main chamber and the rock chamber worked really well, they provided the adventerous atmosphere that i have been striving to achieve throughout the film project. The textures looked even better when lit, some textured walls were lost to large shadows, but the dark effect over ruled the need to see every texture i created. The only problem we encountered when lighting the temple sets was the ability to keep areas of the set quite dark whilest keeping the set light enough to see the explorer character. But as we had to stick to a tight deadline we all agreed to lighten up the temple sets and spend time after the hand-in using post production effects to dark areas like the rock chamber and trap corridoor sets in order to achieve a more dramatic effect.

My favourite lighting in the temple interior has to be the enterance corridoor start section, this lighting idea has survived through from the first 2D animatic we created at Christmas, the idea of a dark, merky corridoor, overgrown with plants and tree roots, and a strong source of light producing a dark outline of the explorers body on the floor. The way the shadow moves up the corridoor to rest over the skull carved into a stone slab. Below show some of the lighting tests for the temple interior, including a few final renders:

Finalised Establishing Camera Lighting for Main Chamber

Finalised Lighting for Enterance Corridoor

Finalised Establishing Camera Lighting for Enterance Doorway to Temple

Finalised Tracking Camera Lighting for Rock Chamber

Finalised Dutch Angle Running Walkway Camera Lighting for Main Chamber

Finalised Lighting for Main Chamber Jump

Finalised Establishing Camera Lighting for Main Chamber Altar Set and Steps

Temple Texturing

The past three days have probably been the hardest, but most productive of the the entire film project, Myself and Rob have kept this weeks schedule incredibly tight and what myself and the group has accomplished over the three days has been amazing! Well done! It started late Sunday night when rob and i were disccussing final sets to complete, and even though the lounge, jungle and house areas were complete, the biggest area of our film still had only been modelled and dressed, but not textured! We deligated the work by splitting all the areas of the temple interior between Rob, Jenny, Dan and Myself. I took all eight of the main chamber walls, the chamber ceiling, all five rock chamber walls, rock chamber ceiling, the ornate stone slab and falling stone door from the enterance corridoor set. I had seventeen textures to complete within a couple of days. We all stayed up untill 5/6am each day to keep on schedule, my laptop corrupted photoshop and needed to be restored on the first day, luckily giles went a away for a few days so that the majority of my texturing was completed using his desktop. We all finished our textures about 3am this morning and Dan, Rob and Myself decided to start the main chamber lighting. As stated by our schedule, all the lighting for the temple needs to be completed by friday afternoon ready for rendering at the weekend.

Im really pleased with the result of my finished textures, i was slightly unconfident as i havnt textured in a while, but once i designed the first enterance the rest followed naturally. My photoshop skills are rapidly improving as the textures i created below didnt use any internet stock photography. All the effects were created using overlays, filters, effects and hand drawings (Aztec Blocks and Stones). I have found that by creating my own textures that i have more creative control over noise, shadows, texture patterns, etc, therefore producing more realistic and believable textures. As we had four peolpe textuing it was important that we kept communicating colour changes, effects, patterns, etc as it was crucial that the colour schemes all matched and successfully contrasted each other. (Wall and floor colours/patterns not to clash) e.g. Rob used my base colour swatches for the walls to adapt the floor and statue textures. Once we had collaborated and textured the temple it was clear to see that colour schemes matched and the varying texture styles created a more natural temple feel. The true extent of the textuing success will be tested as we start to develop the lighting in the main chamber. The lights from the main chamber will be duplicated and adapted to create consistant lighting effects in all areas of the temple (similar to lighting method in Jungle Sets 1 and 2). Below show a small taster of my texture maps from both chambers and the enterance corridoor:

Final Altar Wall Texture - Fully created and painted in Adobe Photoshop. The small stones were individually drawn, overlayed and strokes added to the inside and center areas of the shapes, this created the embossed effect. The stone aztec blocks were designed by myself and painted from sctrach.

Final Falling Stone Door Texture - Fully created and painted in Adobe Photoshop. This is one of my favourite textures, im really pleased with the final result as it looks very realistic. The moss was created by painting a basic colour and ive then experimented with fx layers and filters.

Final Rock Chamber 1 Texture - Fully created and painted in Adobe Photoshop.

Final Ornate Stone Skull Texture - Fully created and painted in Adobe Photoshop. This model was the hardest to texture as i had to paint in a lot of the shadow and carved stone detail. Again the texture was created from scratch and as i didnt have much of a design or any colour swatches to work from, i used my initiative and produced the design and colour scheme from images i visualised in my head, im incredibly happy with the final outcome.

Final Rock Chamber 2 Texture - Fully created and painted in Adobe Photoshop.

Final Rock Chamber Ceiling Texture - Fully created and painted in Adobe Photoshop.

Final Altar Right Corner Texture - Full created and painted in Adobe Photoshop.

All Animation Completed - Edit Now Final

Today Dan the Animation Lead fanalised the enterance corridoor sequence, Yemi and Ben also met the animation deadline with ease as we had all the animation sequences by 11:30am this morning. With finishing the final edit in mind, Rob, and Myself sat down together and worked solidly so that the final edit was completely finished and timing concrete. After reviewing the animation, particular camera angles for the jungle, corridoor and rock chamber scenes had to be adjusted so that we got the best out of the really great animation that was recieved. Im very happy with the end result for the trap corridoor animation, Ben also took the anititive by animating a forward roll, first person camera and possible camera positions for his animations, one important idea he had was to establish the stone doors closing before the explorer was to try to dodge the traps, this creates a great level of tension and excitement. These shot compositions were then reviewed and tweaked by myself and rob to ensure that camera conventions and edit timings were kept, these cameras have replaced the boring tracking camera that used to follow the explorer into the corridoor.

Another change was Dan's forward tracking camera, instead of viewing the explorers run through the jungle face on, ive moved and composed the shot slightly diagonal from the character, allowing us to see all of the animation and frame the explorer and jungle nicer (framing the path the explorer is travelling from, gives the tracking camera more distance and depth). The shot is still a 3/4 body composition, keeping the audience closer to the character (more personal/connects us with the explorer).

I also adapted the animated tracking back camera framing the explorer running through the rock chamber, geting closer and more personal to the character, it seems to really bring the action closer to the audience, the idea is to feel and experience what the character is going through. Now that the edit, including fades, additive dissolves, cut timings is complete, the premeir file will now be rendered and given to Becky (Sound Designer) and Alistair (Score Composer) so that they can accuratley develop the music and sound effects further, ready for the music deadline on Friday 6th June. The conclusion of the final edit has helped me to view the film as a whole with no gaps or unfinished areas, its given me the chance to really nail down the final look and feel for the film, assessing cut speeds and cinematography. It had to be finalised today so that the process of importing animation into their relavent scenes and render/frame planning would mean a much smoother final couple of weeks. Dan's input on the edit its really appriciated, his fresh eyes on the edit allowed him to spot areas myself and rob had potentially over looked.

The animatic/film edit has been a large focus for myself and rob, by continually revising plot structure, cameras, cuts, key adience focus points, atmospheres, energy, composition. For the past three days we have been up untill 5am thoroughly combing over the edit and cinemtography of the film, changing large areas to ensure that the audience fully understand the story, allowing the camera to tell the story rather than just placing random cameras. To ensure camera cuts and shot composition create/enhance the excitement and adventure in the story. Myself and Rob, as well as great input from Dan (Animation Lead), have just finished finalising the story structure and camera work. We asked for some professional input from cinematographer Gareth Munden and camera man Kevin Williamson who visited us last week and spent some time reveiwing our previous edit and giving productive advice and feedback (possible camera angles, camera conventions to follow, etc). With these notes in mind we have largely increased the number of cuts within scenes to emphaise the pace and action in the film, more cameras added, the addition of close ups and more frontal shots of the explorer so that the audience feel closer to main chararcter, experience the dangers from his view. We also spent alot of time working on the camera cuts, how the character would move in and out of shot, making the movemnet comfortable and less confusing. As the animation is being completed we are continually dropping it into the edit, moving away from blockout to final animation and lit sequences. Below is the final edit completely finished and timed out:

AZTEC ESCAPE FINAL FILM EDIT

Panning Shot/Canopy Establishing Shot Finalised

Finally finished the Jungle Environment! And its completely ready to render! The rendering schedule that Rob and I disscussed says that we have to be renderng the jungle by tomorrow night, so a day early isnt so bad! This section was hard to nail down, my methods for creating the panning shot and establishing shot worked really well, but they still needed finishing off. So Myself, Rob and Jenny sat down this evening and decided to get it done and out of the way. The tracking camera and bushes were already created by me last week, Jenny had finished her background painting and set up more of the alpha channeled planes to create the canopy, the only thing needed was to light the canopy and tweak areas in the painting using photoshop. We worked on Rob's computer and disscussed possible colours for the day to night transition part, added trees and extra mountains to the background painting (to create depth), dulled down the foggy areas and placed it into the edit. I thought the day to night transition could be done in photoshop, but Rob worked out how to key the colour changes in Premier Pro. The final colours used for the night shot were referenced from my colour tests/montages created in pre-production. The render pics below detail the final rendered panning shot and the day to night canopy establishing shot that we just finalised:

Render Shot from Panning Camera - Lighting finalised by Rob and Myself, Explorer runs into the distance as camera pans upwards through dense canopy.

(Focal Length 30, Widescreen 16:9, Resolution 1024 x 576)

Render Shot from Panning Camera - Lighting finalised by Rob and Myself, shot of leaf detail as camera starts to move out of the canopy, camera pans upwards and stop to establish temple.

(Focal Length 30, Widescreen 16:9, Resolution 1024 x 576)

Render Shot from Establishing Camera - Daytime Lighting finalised by Rob, Jenny and Myself

(Focal Length 28, Widescreen 16:9, Resolution 1024 x 576)

Render Shot from Establishing Camera - Nightime Lighting finalised by Rob, Jenny and Myself

(Focal Length 28, Widescreen 16:9, Resolution 1024 x 576)

Finalised Lighting In Jungle Set - 2

Myself and rob finally finished the lighting for the main jungle path run animation, the only bit left to do is to finalise the lighting for the Jungle canopy establishing shot. Apart from that the seven camera shots including the two tracking cameras showing the front of the explorer running are ready to be rendered. And the final lighting result is amazing! im so pleased with the way we completed the lighting, it tooks some very late nights but the result has been well worth the effort. My idea using the ceiling plane and directional light really creates a dramatic look and feel in the set, together with the leaf shallows on the floor, a stylistic but in a way, realistic effect is created. The bump maps on the tree bark highlighted by the directional light above, the dark foggy shadows really help contrast the pockets of light.

The same lights that myself and rob created when lighting jungle set 1 were imported into the jungle set 2 file. Two spot lights, ambient with EnviroFog connection, and 1 directional light, we tweaked the spot lights, highlighted specific areas and modelled loads of extra holes into the new ceiling plane. The ambient really helped lighting the explorers facial features when the lighting got too dark in places, infact for the tracking run we parented the ambient and fog node to the tracking camera, so that the lighing on his front and the fog saturation distance from camera stayed consistant we travel thoughout the set. A large amount of time was spent positioning the light pockets so that the explorer would run between them creating splashes of sunlight accross his face as he runs. Below show some of my favourite lighting compositions that Myself and Rob worked on for the second Jungle Set:

Final render of Static Camera 3 - Lit, Composed and Framed By Myself and Rob
(Focal Length 28, Widescreen 16:9, Frame Resolution 1024 x 576)

Final render of Static Camera 4 - Lit, Composed and Framed By Myself and Rob
(Focal Length 28, Widescreen 16:9, Frame Resolution 1024 x 576)

Final render of Tracking Camera 1 - Lit, Composed and Framed By Myself and Rob. When we were test rendering the tracking shots, we found that the explorers face would be visible and then move into complete darkness, to balance out the effects of this dramatic lighting we created a low intensity ambient light, changed its relationship with the set off and only affect the character. This created a sublte highlight on his face. And another trick we devised was parenting the main ambient and EnviroFog node to the tracking camera. This meant that as we moved throught the set, the fog saturation distance remained a constant distance from the camera nad character. Therefore removing the problem of the explorer travelling into denser fog.

(Focal Length 30, Widescreen 16:9, Frame Resolution 1024 x 576)

Final render of Static Camera 1 - Lit, Composed and Framed By Myself and Rob
(Focal Length 28, Widescreen 16:9, Frame Resolution 1024 x 576)

Final render of Tracking Camera 2 - Lit, Composed and Framed By Myself and Rob
(Focal Length 30, Widescreen 16:9, Frame Resolution 1024 x 576)

Final render of Static Camera 6 - Lit, Composed and Framed By Myself and Rob. We decided to add the fallen tree to match Dan's run cycle and small jump over some bushes, the environment was slightly too plain and needed something extra, proberly one of my personal favourites.

(Focal Length 30, Widescreen 16:9, Frame Resolution 1024 x 576)

My Canopy Shot and Panning Camera Idea Tests

All the cameras and jungle sets are nearly complete and ready for lighting. For the past two days Myself and Jenny have been working on the last camera (nicknamed the 'the panning shot') and the final part of the jungle set, the canopy establishing shot. These were the hardest shots in the film so far, it was only hard because you need to think of a way of producing a canopy that looks great and vast, but build it in a way that minimises ploygon counts for rendering and general file size. After some planning I came up with two methods that successfully worked.

The first method was to create the illusion of the camera tracking through a long, dense, leafy canopy. For this I asked Jenny to send me a file with all of her flower and bush leaves seperated. I first animated the panning camera, so that i knew the distance that the camera would travel and finally stop to establish the entire jungle canopy a small distance above the trees. Using Jennys seperated leaves and flowers, I built layers of mixed leaves in front of the camera, doubling the thickness of the slowly forming canopy bush to create depth. I extended the bush upwards until the establishing camera shot was just framed with leaves. The playblast below shows one of my panning camera tests, though the speed is way to fast, the canopy bush idea was works really well, for the final rendered film i will add to the leaves at the bottom of the canopy and place vines reaching into the jungle path, this will then nicely result in the camera following the vines upwards into the dense canopy.

Playblast of Canopy Panning Camera Test

Screen Shot of Canopy Bush Area Build - My idea is that the camera will pass throught this area, the leaves have been placed, composed and layered to create the sense of a dense jungle canopy. I added large branches to finish the look.

Canopy Build Detal With Panning Camera Positioned

The second method was for the production of the jungle canopy establishing shot. The only way i could think of was to build rows of canopy bushes similar to those created for the panning through the canopy shot, but then take a lit rendered picture of the canopy bush, import into photoshop, alpha out the bush part of the render and apply the new .tiff to a polygon plane in Maya. Then layer up the planes, slightly varying the heights and types of the canopy bushes, as they stretch into the distance the illusion of depth and an endless jungle environment should be seen. After starting this I have now passed on the job to Jenny so that she can add a nicely painted background and create more variants of canopy bush. The job was passed to her as i need to carry on lighting the second jungle set ready for rendering on friday. Once this part of the set is fully lit i think it will produce a believeable dense canopy look.

Screen Shot of Canopy Establishing Shot Build - My idea was that the camera would leave the dense canopy and break open into a sunlit establishing shot of the tree tops and characters destination of travel, the temple. Using Jenny's alpha channels bushes i fgramed and composed the shot featuring the background landscape and temple (important audience focus point).

Jungle Layout Revision - Set Building

After completing the edit four days ago, alot of the main camera changes effected the cameras in the second jungle set. Following Gareth Munden's and Kev's advice this sequence needed alot of work, 90% of the shots were from behind the chararcter, a large majority tracking behind him. They mentioned that it did not connect the audience with the character and made the start of the film very unpersonal. Plus with the fast speed and energy that i wanted to incorporate into the film, there weren't enough cameras or cuts to produce it. The cameras were placed either side of the explorer which made the flow of the scene and travel of the explorer confusing and uncomfortable.

Therefore a major rework of the cameras was needed, and this was what we nailed down in the edit. The camera now cuts from a frontal tracking camera, to side shot of the explorer running away from the camera, then running towards the camera, but due to the cameras being placed all on one side of the charactrer, the flow is consistant, comforable, fast paced and his direction of travel within the jungle makes sense. During the film i wanted the camera work to feel natural, just like industry films where the audience doesnt even notice the camera change. This helps the audience focus on the action, story and animation, rather than an odd camera angle. But because of these drastic camera changes, the Jungle set that i built weeks ago needed to be re-worked. I built the set from the view of the previous tracking camera, now that we're veiwing the environment from in front of him, there are huge areas where vegetation didnt need to be built up but now there are huge gaps. All of the shot compositions for all the cameras need to be planned and the set re-built.

Plan View of Completed Jungle Set 2 Built by Myself - Includes main path and river sections
(AutoDesk Maya Screen Shot)

3/4 View of Completed Jungle Set 2 Built by Myself - Includes dense canopy and establishing canopy shot build (AutoDesk Maya Screen Shot)

Over the past three days I have been composing all the shots using Jennys modelled plants and trees, ready for the animation to be imported and the set lit. The jungle environment was the hardest set to build as it needed to seem naturally full and believable as a dense jungle. I wanted to make sure that a good level of depth could be felt within each composition, framing cameras with plants and vines. I found that some of the camera compositions over lapped, which meant that as i changed one composition, it would effect another. The addition of Jenny's vines that i asked her to model gave the jungle added character. Below shows renders of some of the cameras featured in the second jungle set:

Camera 1 Completed and Finalised Composition (AutoDesk Maya Screen Shot)

Camera 2 Completed and Finalised Composition (AutoDesk Maya Screen Shot)

Camera 3 Completed and Finalised Composition (AutoDesk Maya Screen Shot)

Camera 4 Completed and Finalised Composition (AutoDesk Maya Screen Shot)

Camera 6 Completed and Finalised Composition (AutoDesk Maya Screen Shot)

Myself and Jenny created background plates with pre-rendered images of other parts of the jungle set so that it successfully gave the illusion of a deeper, extensive environment. The renders were taken using the basic lighting from jungle set 1, placed into photoshop, alphas created and then placed onto large polygon planes. To cover the large gaps in the set and due to the height needed, the background renders had to be rendered at the size 4096 x 4096.

Background Plate Test Render from Maya - Basic Lighting utilised from first Jungle Set, masked plane hitting jungle floor texture with Jenny's modelled plants, the method works very well and will be adopted into the second jungle set. The illusion really works well, making it look like the hazey jungle stretches behind the television/lounge props.

Background Plate Render for alpha channel creation in photoshop. Final output of these plates will be 4096 x 4096 so that detail isnt lost when picture is re-rendered in Maya and more importantly gives the illusion that the modelled plants and trees extend into the distance (trying to remove 2D look and feel from background areas). The final plates will be renders of the jungle set with the added pockets of sunlight and environment fog, this should improve its look of depth.

Another example of the Background Plate Render Method - alpha channel creation in photoshop. Final output of this plate will be 4096 x 4096 when placed into Jungle Set 2.

Im very pleased with the end result, it took so long to build the compositions, but it was well worth the time. To emphasise the life within the jungle I've asked Jenny to animate some butterflies she's modelled, this should just give the set some life and movement other than the character travelling through it. The hardest part of the set build was the frontal view (tracking camera x2) of the explorer running along the path, it took the most time out of all the shots because it isnt a stationay camera, to compose a moving camera with plants, trees and vines takes a great deal of planning, the background plates worked very well filling in exposed areas behind the tree and bush lines.

Tracking Camera Playblast - Known as Camera 5 in the film edit. Animated by myself, sequence will be chopped in half so that we can have quick cuts between the static and moving shots. No lighting as of yet, the panning shot is to be completed first and then we will move onto developing the lighting for the section jungle set.

Animation Deadline Problem

After deligating the final animation scenes to Dan the Lead Animator, we realised that there were four scenes left animate and only a week left untill the deadline we set, Dan approached us this morning and said that i would be very difficult to have all the scenes done to a high standard by next friday. Dan reassured us that he could confidently get two of the four scenes completed but would apprieate the any extra help, perhaps another two animators to finish the rest. The only problem was that we have no more animators at our disopsal, luckily our Concept Artist Ben wants to get into the animation area, but with no previous animation experience, apart from a few minor scenes he animated for us, his euthusiasm and well timed animation, we have decided to hand the less of the challenging scenes to him. The last scene is quite animation intensive, intailing a rope swing and a lengthy run cycle (while dodging falling rocks), after an hour ringing around we hear Yemi, an animator from a different group has finished his group animation early, and so offered a weeks worth of animating help. With three animators working towards the deadline i am confident that we will be ready to render the following week. Plus Dan will be available to help with texturing the main temple chamber and corridoors.

The project so far is going well, we are all a bit stressed, been working untill 2/3am for the past week, just trying to tie up the loose ends so that the next couple of weeks go alot smoother, geting the edit nailed down has helped to organise the the final bits of animation, we've been able to give more precise timing within specific scenes and for desired shots, plus means that all we have to do is drop animation into the edit as the structure is aready present. Anything drastically wrong is highlighted quicker and can therefore be rectified sooner, which is great when it saves us time!

Final Edit/Animatic Re-Work

Though not all of the animation has been completed, Myself and Rob have deligated to the Animation Lead that all animation must be finalised and handed in by Friday 30th May next week. Once we have the final animated shots we will have all the scenes in the film timed out ready for the sound designers to start at the end of next week. The fine tuning of the final edit is key to the success of the film. My contentration has always been on the story and cinematography, making connections to the audience, enjoyable and easy to watch, rather than spending hours studying global illumination and dynamics. Below are some of the new cameras that we created using the advice of Kevin and Gareth (cinematography), ive placed a clip of the older cameras for the same section so that the differences are easier to contrast. Ro and myself also felt that it would be a great idea to add lighting to gain a better feel for the final edit:

Film Old Cameras

Film New Cameras

Though the cameras are developing, theres still an aspect of rigidness and slow paced action. I still feel that the camera work has a long way to develop, and rob and myself are more than willing to put a lot of extra hours into bringing this story to life. The rest of the camera work will be finalised once all the animation has been handed to me to be signed off.

Character Texturing - The Wrap Problem

Its been a hard couple of days since the lighting was completed for the first part of the jungle set, it was nearly ready for rendering as i have been working on the textures for the explorer character, the basic colours were blocked in photoshop (using my main character photoshop painting produced in pre-production as a colour swatch reference) and i started adding detailed clothing textures to the t-shirt and jacket. Then we hit a huge problem...

The problem started back in March when i had completed the Explorer model and it was ready to be UVed, due to many dissertation problems i didint have the time to UV my modelled character, animation and more importantly rigging needed to start so we decided that we could wrap deform a UVed explorer mesh to the rigged and animated one, proberly close to rendering time. With this in mind i left it to complete my dissertation. But the problem crept back on me yesterday, the wrap deform mesh that i UVed last week wouldnt work, every computer in the house crashed when applying the wrap, the method would work successfully but the computers couldnt handle it. As these are the computers that we will finally render on the wrap method cant be used. Which leaves us with a fully rigged, weighted and animated character not UVed! And so cant be textured! Myself and Rob discussed it and we have decided to block colour the polygon faces of the main character in Maya. The same colour swatches i designed in pre-production are to be used. So for the past day ive block coloured three explorer characters and placed one into the jungle scene.


Screen Shot of my block coloured explorer character in AutoDesk Maya - The desired poygon faces were highlighted, a quick set selection saved (reduce selection time later on in colouring process) and then block coloured using my pre-designed colour swatches.

Another two screen shots of my explorer character in AutoDesk Maya - swatches are fully finalised, character posed and smoothed.

The end result.... was actually really surprising! Aztec Escape has a simple artistic style, the sleeping character was more or less coloured in the same way, and so the character fits into the jungle environment and looks great! I had worries of the quality deminishing due to the wrap problem, but infact it works better than having a realistic and detailed character texture. Every piece of Explorer animation done will have to have its chararcter block coloured, this will take time, but is far more quicker than re-rigging, weighting and animating.


Final Render Shot of Coloured Explorer in Final Lighting - Jungle Environment Set 1. The primitive block colour texturing actually suits the style of the film, which is a great relief as i really wanted to texture the charcter properly.