VFX and such with Siege!

Siege

Howdy! First time posting in the forums, but have been reading PA for a long time. Recently, I've been getting into film and special effects/animations, which I realize isn't the natural medium for this forum, but I'm not sure where else I'd put it.

These have all been made in the last month or so, as I first started working with these program After Effects the week of Thanksgiving. Looking for critiques or anything of the like.

First thing a friend and I did with After Effects. Tried making a "holographic" keyboard for him to interact with. I know it's not the best, but it was the first time doing anything really with the program.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImEKE2yGsAc[/LEFT]

This was me dicking around with some animations I got for Christmas.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCZ-F1kDUlM

Based on some tutorials, used for a friend's video blog.

http://vimeo.com/8301226

This was the 2nd attempt at my friend's intro for her video blog (not using a tutorial).

http://vimeo.com/8288998

This, actually, is a part for something I'm hoping to do this year, which is a live action version of PA's Automata. Just a fan made thing. This is the credit reel, as we're getting a new camera that won't arrive till late February. The names are all just stand ins for now, until we actually get people to play the parts. It's also not finished. I plan on adding another minute or so worth of animations if I can. Also considering removing the "pop up" effect and replacing it with the actual animations like the ones seen towards the end. Music is the song made by Christoph for Automata from back in June/July of this year. Lemme know what you think!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBL5J-LYoBQ&feature=player_embedded

worstcase

Okay, so i don't know anything about after effects or whatever, but i love all of this.
Especially the Automota thing, I always dig that "pop up" effect.
I can't wait to see what you post next!

Siege

Thanks! Currently working on adding another minute or so to the Automata credits. I'd like to get as much of the song to play as possible, but I may run out of things to animate. Right now I'm animating the part where Carl steps back and gets hit by the car and I have a few more already planned out, so hopefully I will be able to get a new version of that uploaded soon.

Jake!

You need to work on smoothing the points where you're changing the velocity of your movements. You want to give things momentum. Also its usually better to start with something moving, rather than static.

Good work so far though. After Effects is an awesome piece of software (when it isn't crashing)

Siege

Yeah, it likes to crash on me if I have too many things going on and I haven't restarted in a while. As far smoothing the points when changing velocity, got any tips on how to do that? The main trouble I'm having with animating these things (asides from traditional animation not being a strong point at all) is that I have to take from the comics themselves.

I've gotten the Automata time up to 1:25 or so from :55. Will be uploading tomorrow to see what you guys think of the newer stuff. Thanks again!

Chilly

Siege wrote: »

Yeah, it likes to crash on me if I have too many things going on and I haven't restarted in a while. As far smoothing the points when changing velocity, got any tips on how to do that? The main trouble I'm having with animating these things (asides from traditional animation not being a strong point at all) is that I have to take from the comics themselves.

I've gotten the Automata time up to 1:25 or so from :55. Will be uploading tomorrow to see what you guys think of the newer stuff. Thanks again!

The only major thing I have with these is that the individual reveals on your elements are a bit slow, I noticed especially on elements like the reveal of the name Shannon on the second blog as well as the title of the blog itself.

These are just personal opinions though, if you feel slower is better than thats what you have to go with. Every industry will have different speeds, and all of my work with after effects has been in news, where time is money, so we try to design our graphics and animations to be sleek, quick, and with the biggest payoff available for the time alloted to us.

To my eye it just seems your stuff has an unnecessary slow down to it all. It could be just an issue of pulling your key frames out too long over your timeline. I'm a very visual person though, so I would have an easier time if i got a glance at the timelines themselves :P


Overall though I give your stuff two big thumbs up. You're very creative with your stuff.

Check this site out for resources, its one of the best tutorial sites out there for after effects:

http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/

Siege

Haha, why do you think Andrew Kramer's name is in the "Special Thanks" section of the Automata video? Only know how to do any of this cause of that site. Love it.

Yeah, I got that from a friend. I agree that the Shannon reveal was slow. I don't like how the text ended up in the one with the growing vines. If things seem slow in Automata, that's on purpose.

About to start rendering out a new version of that and uploading it. Thanks again for the feedback!

Siege

Alright, took the length from :55 to 1:29 last night in the Automata Credits. Still want to get it up to around the full length of the song that goes with it, but even though I only added around 30 seconds, it took me a considerable amount of work, heh.

Hopefully these newer animations are a little better. There's already a few things I saw after rendering it that I wish I had fixed, but it'll be fixed in the next upload of it. Anyway, here it is!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UJ9dyvgmRM

Siege

Happy New Year!

Okay, so, I am trying to get into the local commercial market where I live, since it's abysmal. I am proposing an idea to a comic book store here and wanted to make a "proof of concept" video to show them what I was talking about with the idea (it involves a super hero crashing into the ground outside the shop). So, I made that and then wanted to do more with it, so I made a Happy New Years video with the footage and one of my favorite characters.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpAYsbYm_f8

Enjoy!

FoxFanfare

I think he definitely needs to fall faster for that damage, maybe try altering the curve on the position keyframes so that it starts slow and speeds up? Looks good though!

Jake!

http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorial/earth_zoom/

have a look at this tutorial. Should help you with your momentum issues in this new piece.

Siege

Oh yeah, definitely aware that he falls too slow. Wasn't really concerned with it, as I was mostly testing out the impact part. Mega Man was just something ridiculous I added to make it fun so I wasn't showing off a 1.5 second long video of a street blowing up

Siege

Small update. Might have a commercial we're entering into a contest by the end of next week.

This is another intro I made for a friend's vlog. I feel like it's a big improvement, but who knows. Tried to work on the pacing and smoother camera movements. (for Video CoPilots, I didn't use SureTarget).

http://vimeo.com/8776159

Siege

Been a while since I updated anything, but finished my first commercial! This is the only version I have on YouTube right now. Working on another version where you can tell what they guy says as at the end and also so that the voice over at the end comes out of both speakers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKNkHQNp9-g&feature=player_embedded

Agent Coleman

Pretty good stuff, for the white board that is outside, the only way to read the lower half is if you pause it. Also after the superhero runs into the store, why is the man still looking forwards with just a blank face? That's just nitpicking though.

Siege

Yeah, the whiteboard was supposed to be longer but I had to cut it to make the whole thing fit as close to 30 seconds as I could. I'm making him a 60 second version as well where you can clearly see what it says.

Fletcher

yeah if the dude is meant to be doing that "shocked into place" thing, it isn't reading well. His expression pretty much seems like "huh that's a little weird" but he just stares forward; i think you might be better off having him either pull a waaay more exaggerated expression of shock, or just having his head follow the superhero

also the part where the hero flies across from right to left, then appears at the top doesn't seem to be timed right

at the speed he flies across, it doesn't seem like he is going NEARLY fast enough to fly back the the middle of the screen and reposition himself to be standing upright

when i first saw it, I thought the dude at the top must have been a different person to the one who flew past; there just doesn't seem to be enough transition time between the two appearances

and i mean there are small things like the dust cloud dissipating in a second flat, and the plain circular shadow. but i'm sure you're aware of those, and that is the sort of thing that will improve as you get more time/money to work on things in more detail

Siege

Yeah, I am painfully aware of those things, but I do really appreciate the honest criticism and taking the time to respond.

Siege

New stuff!

This is the 2nd commercial my friend and I have done for a local business. This time we were doing one for a store called Gamesboro, which is something akin to a local version of Gamestop, but with more of a concentration on retro games/arcade. After this one, sound is one of the main things we're trying to get better at, since it's our weakest point I feel. We did another version after we we did some audio compression, but have yet to upload that one.

Criticisms welcome!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0o_G6S13wc&feature=player_embedded

Mustang

To be honest with all the craptacular local TV advertising I see around here, you could make a killing doing budget ads in australia.

Siege

Two new commercials. Gamesboro hired us to do a 2nd one that followed up on the first, so they're very similar.

Pladd Dot commercial was something the owner wanted to do. Audio is lacking due to the location and my lack of proper audio equipment (something the owner is helping me fix).

Criticisms welcome.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bupZeCGL8u4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moMcvcXTWCg

Paradise

Great stuff. You get an A+ on the flutesaber commercial.

Scosglen

Music store commercial is almost good. The few things that make it seem firmly "amateur" though are the echo of the dialogue and abruptly changing ambient "hum" between cuts in the store, and the abrupt cut to the logo at the end where the audio static from the store recording doesn't exist. Can't really fault the store guys for being awful actors.

Paradise

With awful laptop speakers, those things Scos mentioned about sound went unnoticed. With headphones, those things became discomforting and obvious. Sorry dude.

worstcase

still though this is wayyy better stuff than the commercials shown where i live. Every local commercial looks like it was by an epileptic seal after ten cases of mountain dew.

Siege

Thanks for taking the time to look at my stuff. I'm new to this (started this year, as you can see at the beginning of this thread), so I'm using the local commercials to kind of get myself some real experience while learning from books and online tutorials. No actual school training involved.

Sound is my weakest aspect right now, I'm aware. Though, did you guys see any improvement from the original Gamesboro ad to the new one? Right now, it's really about giving the client's what they ask for and throwing in my own ideas as we go, but in a very conservative manner while I build a reputation and skill.

I appreciate the critiques. I'll work hard to correct what you guys were saying in the next ones I do.

Siege

New video. Did this for $150 for the bookstore on campus where I goto college. Lemme know what you think.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjYQcUgUZkE

Mabelma

I must say, I love both of the GamesBoro commercials, the sound of the musicstore commercial killed it for me but it's a great idea. The last one was pretty great, professional and fun, my only complain is that when it says Large Array of close I understood Lingerie because it was a little fast there but besides that, it's great. Keep up the great work, you have a bright future doing this.

Siege

Appreciate the feedback! Yeah, unfortunately, audio is just something that isn't coming as naturally to me. It's better than before (like the voice over in this last one compared to the old Gamesboro one), but still needs a lot of work. Hoping to have another commercial done soon that I just finished filming.

I was honestly shocked to have such a positive comment, so thanks.

EWom

It sounds like the same person (you?) narrates every commercial. If your University has a local radio show check out the DJs to see if they will do any voice over on the cheap. Local radio stations DJs also do it, but it's usually not cheap. We got a guy to do voice over work for a historical intro movie we did for our ghost hunting group, and it was great.

Siege

New 60 second commercial I filmed for a local music store (3rd commercial I've done for them) based on an idea the owner really wanted to do.

There's one little bit of audio (you'll know) that is messed up but the actor moved out of state before we could get him back in to ADR it. Lemme know what you think! Also, the voice over is the store owner. He wanted it to sound like that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-InLVKHTN90

It's got up to 1080p, so, watch it like that if possible.

Dr Sanchez

Nice video, well framed and the colour effects are very good. Just a heads up though, it would've been a lot smoother if you stuck with the 180 degree rule, it's all over the place here. And there is one cut where the kid says 'hey' and it cuts in to a close up that felt really choppy.

I thought the store owners voice worked very well.

Siege

Yeah I realized that towards the end of the shoot (about the 180 rule). :-/

Siege

New commercial! Also, we launched a new website a month or so ago. If you look carefully, we're also working on something that might interest the Penny-Arcade community. If there's enough interest, I'll post some pictures of our Carl suit (which is 95% complete, thanks to Sean Bradley). Not sure how to embed vimeo on these forums.

Here's the commercial:

http://vimeo.com/15619088

Commercial has a temporary password on it till tomorrow. PW is 'brooke'

Here's the blog post:

http://siegefilms.tv/

Siege

So, I'm working on an Automata short film and thought I'd share this little picture with everyone. It's been delayed for now, due to lack of funds (as I'm funding it myself) and finishing my last semester of college, but I plan on continuing it at the beginning of next year.

Let me know what you think of the image. This was a rough draft to gauge how it would print, but we're trying to keep as true to the comic as we can.

Siege

Also had this shot of when we first assembled the suit for testing. Don't mind the impromptu green screen set up in my living room.

I'm...not sure why his collar is popped, either.

Siege

Figured I'd update this. Recent work is mostly on an Automata Fan Film trailer. Here's a screenshot with the final treatment. Trailer should be done in about 2-3 weeks.

The_Glad_Hatter

Shit, that looks good!

Heartlash

The_Glad_Hatter wrote: »

Shit, that looks good!

Siege

New SIEGE Films Production Logo that I just finished. This is actually taken from the very beginning of the Automata short film, thus the black and white treatment (the gear is normally a copper color).

http://vimeo.com/17987284

Based it off of this image:

Heartlash

I find the "IE" in Siege a bit hard to read, particularly with the hint of light behind it. I also find the thinness in the "G" and "M" to feel a bit out of place.

I like the visual though.