This is it for my Animation class guys.

      Well Guys this is my final project for Animation. It was a great project and I am very proud of how this turned out. Now before I tell you all about the process I wanna talk about some very important people to this project. These two awesome girls Jessica Love and Greta Lundy. They made the whole process go smooth and those two girls did an excellent job with everything they did.I like to call this team the dream team 2K15 and it truly was the dream team. We got along really well and we all divided up the work so that everyone had an equal job. I will definitely miss this class and all the things I have learned. Not let's start talking about what this project took. 

It all started with an idea.

       Now I don't exactly remember who came up with the original idea of a robot but we all kinda liked the idea of it. We then decided to cheese the entire project by making the theme first contact. This project all started with the idea to make the fist contact with humans and robots. We then storyboarded the project out in six simple shots so that the amazing Greta could start designing the robot. Since she is so awesome she offered god easing the entire robot on her own this gave me and Jessica a chance to green screen and design the intro sequence. Jessica started not he grid while I search for the best background. I found an image that I likes but it needed to be lighter to fit the lighting behind Jessica so I lightened the photo up while they both started their main job. Next up, since none of us wanted to act, we played nose-goes for who had to act. Jessica lost and she got ready to film. Jessica and I headed downstairs to set up lighting and get the camera set to film. 

Now to get rid of all that green.

We set up the lighting of the green screen to avoid shadows but it didn't work too well. So after we filmed all of her shots I took the footage upstairs and started my main job. I started to key out the green screen background from all three of the shots of Jessica. I first started with a simple color key and selected the darkest color I could see. I then would edit that color out. I repeated that process about 4-6 times. I then added a simple chocker around Jessica to make the background and her flow better. I then used Key-light 1.2 to get rid of the green. Looking at the image I realized that my friend had become see through and I needed to fix that problem. I adjusted my black and white levels to make her image sharper while keeping the details around her to keep the images realistic look. I then repeated this process on every one of the green shots and this took me quite some time as each one turned out very transparent and Jessica started to vanish more and more. I finally got to add in the background and it started looking more like a realistic thing. Around this time Greta had finished the robot and it was time to combine our projects into one project.

Let's work together

Greta had made the background for the robot transparent and after a long rendering session the images were ready. We made a jpeg sequence and then added in my background as well as the clips of Jessica from earlier. This was actually pretty quick we just had to make the shots line up and render yet again. The next step for me was to add the shots to Final Cut Pro and edit together a video. I edited all the shots so that it flowed and then added in a background music to fit the theme. Finally I rendered out a video to both a flash drive and YouTube. I was finally done. Now lets reflect a little bit on my year in Animation with Netterville and this final project.

Reflect on the year and the project that has been.

The scope of this project was to mix real life with 3D animation and add in the green-screen effect to create a project. Now in less technical jargon that means mixing a real shot with something created on the computer and also adding in a different background. The first thing we did was reunite the dream team and started brainstorming our ideas. Someone mentioned a robot and person having the first encounter between the two. Someone else suggested that we cheese the entire thing up about 100% and started storyboarding. We only used six shots and then the teams divided up to do their individual projects. Greta moved towards designing the robot, Jessica started the intro sequence, all while I designed the background and keyed out the chromakey to add in the edited background. The next step was rendering out videos from After Effects. Next we added the finished robot comps to the videos of Jessica and rendered out yet again. Finally we edited the shots in Final Cut Pro and added in the background music. I learned a lot about lighting green screens and keying out robots to fit in an already created comp. I learned a lot professionally speaking about dividing the work out and communicating on who's doing what in order to get everything done in a timely manner. Next time I would spend more time editing the lighting to make Jessica look less orange and spend more time to make the green screen edit look more realistic and clean. I really liked how we divided the project up and would definitely do that again. I can draw the usage of green screen and After Effects as well as all of the techniques that I have learned this year to continue on into my future years in video. I will really miss this class and all I have learned from it