May

The end was near

What was left to do now was one of the hardest scenes - the powerup gap scene. This is the bit near the end where the neurons are being lifted up by the white sparks and as we see them rise the whole environment lights up.

In the animatic, simply boosting up the contrast was simple enough to show a change but in the actual scene there were many intracacies (far more than was proportional to its length, which was quite annoying!). There were many elements and it was of course the scene with the hardest composite.

To start with the actual gap scene was properly created. There were three shots where we saw the WS of the gap and the characters on either side. 

To begin building this, we used combinations of the concepts of the gap we already had. As the environment, up until this point, had been quite dark, when the light up occured, we wanted to show the depth and scale of this environment. Therefore, a lot of the scenery in the environment was to be painted in photoshop. The way we did this was to generate a random alpha using a dirt map in maya, UV mapped the texture and exported this into photoshop where we painted on top of to get the right shape. As long as the alpha remained intact, it didnt matter that the colour parts didnt match the exact shape of the geometry in maya:

To get the environment to light up we would use a dark environment and light environment and reveal the light environment by means of some kind of masking. To save time from us masking each layer of the scene, we thought we would use the random motion of sprytes to generate an alpha.

Here is an example of how we were generating this alpha:

This worked well as can be seen in the final film.

As we were compiling and editing all our scenes together Sean commented that it would be nice in some scenes if we were to have some kind of cellular bodies floating around, to enhance the idea that we were constantly on the cellular level.

Whilst not having the time to put them in every scene, we did think it would be really good if we did try to concept them and at least put them in a few as we thought it was a good idea.  

We used the cell shapes from the cells which make up the environment and used them as the participating media. Here are a couple of tests which show the effect of this cellular effect which were going for:

Still

Moving

Here is a more comprehensive break down of how the system works for the cellular bodies:

This was the final hurdle in finishing our project. It was just about editing now and bringing it all together. 

Jack gave us an array of soundeffects. We also had recorded some of our own sound effects and we therefore mixed and matched to create some new sounds and layered them up until we got the weird, quirky sounds to match the piece. We were pleased with the result of this in the final film, especially the gloopy noise which makes it sound as if everything is taking place in some viscous liquid.

Unfortunately, we had to cut a small section at the beginning, not because it was unfinished but simply that it didnt seem to fit. Previously we intended to move through this environment and then zoom onto the character. Yet when the panning of the environment was created and inserted at the beginning, the intermediate zoom did not fit at all: it just seemed to be far to short and far too fast. We played around with different combinations but in the end we resolved to get rid of the beginning shots completely and open on the blue character opening his eyes. 

This seemed to be too quick an introduction but we had no time left to make improvements. We hoped the pan we put in to show the characters relationship in location terms would be enough to get across the environment and its mood.

Overall, we were pleased with the piece though many changes and improvements will be made for our degree show.