Making the SHU Symbol

My main take on this project was the visual effects. The first thing I started was making the SHU Symbol 3D. First thing I did was bring the SHU symbol Ollie made into Illustrator, draw around it and save it as an Illustrator 8 file and then import into 3DSMax.  A problem I ran into however was that, the illustrator wasn’t showing any details regarding the image. So I basically had to recreate Ollie’s deisgn in 3DSMax by scratch, which surprisingly wasn’t too difficult. It was merely a drawing out the jem like shape of the symbol, duplicating a second one, minimizing and then attaching to the first outline and then adding a bevel effect to fill in the colour between them. The “SHU” Text was added as text object and then was attached to the shape. Afterwards, the entire design was made into a Editable Poly and then extruded to give the symbol a 3D look. Afterwards, I made it rotate constantly for ten seconds.

The symbol was then exported as a PNG sequence and then brought into After Effects, from which the effects “Glow” and “Light flares” were added.

So, what went wrong...

The project is finished. Goodie!! However, as simple as the project seems, it wasn't a simple task. Technically if we wanted to, the project could have been finished at the start of April. However due to mixups with plans, lack of any knowledge of what to do in some cases and last minute switch arounds with locations and plans. Things got tricky. One of the scenes we planned on doing known as the "Art" scene got scraped due to Katy being ill most of the time and we needed her to act in it. For the maths scene, although we had an initial idea, changes were made whilst in the production of it. This range from camera angles to how the scene actually played. Originally Ryan was going to "zap" me with the powers to gain insight into the problem. However we opted to use the high five instead because plays into the support and enthusiasm aspect that Sheffield Hallam wants to portray.

The biggest setback was probably the lack of enthusiasm mid-project. With all of the other setbacks regarding this project, it got to the point where it was a strain on our minds to actually pull through. One example would be going back again to how filming the maths scene took up two hours, when it should've taken half an hour.

Other things would also include technological difficulties such as in the opening scene, where Ryan's microphone was too quiet, however that was fixed in post.

Visual Effects Part 3

The outro was made simply by using two photographs. A sun element was made in Photoshop and the apparent 3D text was also made in Photoshop. For the new Sheffield Hallam University Logo, I keyed out all the white surrounding the text and “Repoussed” it into a 3D layer and then positioned it according to the image. To make the shadow, I copied the same 3D layer, rotated it as if it were lying on the ground, "dropped" a shadow on the layer and the turned the opacity of the 3D text to 0 and then placed the layer somewhat in front of the first 3D layer. I did this so the shadow would look affected by the sun thus more realistic. Other 3D text was done using the same method.

Visual Effects Part 2

The Final Area of visual effects we’re in the final scene/outro. In this scene we see the SHUper ream summoning a massive energy ball that transforms the university into a bright and vibrant place. Now in the final result we see our SHUperteam reach to the ground and we see a blue neon SHU symbol pop up and then the team summons the energy ball in the air. Well in the original version, the ball is actually summoned on the ground and then brought up into the air by the SHUper team. The reason why this was never used was because there were problems with Motion Tracking the ball completely with the character movements so an alternative had to be made.  

The second clip in this scene shows the team throwing the ball at the SHU Symbol to transform. Yet again in the original, the ball movement was meant to be match moved. However, it worked that keyframing the movements and size would be a lot easier. The explosion wave effects were a plugin “Shockwave” which were then keyframed to set off one after the other.

Visual Effects Part 1

For the details on the board, I made this these in Photoshop and the spinning sphere was an image of yellow lines going over each other. The sphere was created in After Effects by wrapping the yellow lines in a ball and the rotating it. Both the details and sphere had a glow effect added on to it.

In the second shot that I used the board symbols, I had to create a mask around Ryan so it appeared as if the symbols were actually in front of Ryan and on the board as well. The mask was created on the same layer as the board symbols. However, it took a while to complete due to Ryan’s movement so the mask had to be morphed frame by frame.

Just to bring it up. A lot of the visual elements were created in Photoshop, such as the ‘impact’ from the high five in the “maths” scene and “SLAP!!” parts of the project. They we’re heavily influenced by Scott Pilgrim vs The World.

For the maths visual effects, numbers and maths symbols were created using 3DSMax, they were the rotated, exported rotated and used in After Effects the same way as the SHUper symbol. A glow effect was added in After Effects with the addition of a 4 colour gradient as a mask for the whole clip. Another 4 colour gradient was added on top as well with the addition of another effect called “Star burst” to turn it into floating particles.

More Inspirado

As for the visual effects,a lot of the inspiration came Scott Pilgrim vs The World. The blending of comic book style visual effects in a real time style, we thought would be good idea and that it would blend well with the product's style.

Inspirado

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5fzmmrk6kk

This was the base of what we wanted to create. Youtube star, Tomska made fake advertisements for Lincoln University that went viral. The reason for this we believe was they had a good combination of humor, showcasing the university and the vibrancy of it's students in a positive light.

We wanted to take these elements and see if we could incorporate into our own project.