'Standing By' transitions and Space Jaunt

First off, apologies for not uploading anything since November. I bought a new mouse (wired, this time...) but as it was Christmas, couldn't afford a new hard drive. Picked one of those up the week after Christmas, and since then I've been working on Dai's first uni short 'Standing By' which you will be able to view over at his blog when he puts it up this week.

I've got a lot more work to make over the next few weeks. 2009 is shaping up to be a fairly prolific year, and WILL be the one where I make it out of the world of retail and into a media position. Anyway, the work...



The transitions

Working out the concept for these took a while to sort out with Dai, made increasingly difficult because he's in London and I'm in Llanelli, so, after trying out a few ideas and uploading them to our dropbox, the above style is the one he decided he wanted. Essentially just luma and inverted luma mattes of a (pre matted) ink bleed layer, it was made more complicated because of masking and various reasons. Took a lot longer to do them than I anticipated.

Technical notes: Footage shot in London Town by Dai, and starring the wonderful Howard and Paul. Composited together in After Effects, in Llanelli Town.



The Space Jaunt

This took *ages* to make. Time was spent mainly putting all the elements together, rather than the final composition. It was my first attempt at making stellar bodies, so that took up a lot of time. My original storyboards for it were far more complex, with more planets, the star appearing from behind the planet, flying through the nebula, comets and asteroids, and the whole thing lasting longer. Oh, and sneaking in a Death Star, to see if anyone noticed... Alas time was not my friend, Dai had a deadline so compromises had to be made. At least I've got solid foundations to work from for the next time I need to do a flying through space sequence.

I really quite enjoyed putting this sequence together. It's not often I can legitimately watch Stargate SG-1, Doctor Who and Battlestar Galatica DVD's as research...

Overall, despite not putting in many of the original ideas I wanted, I'm fairly happy with this sequence. It achieves what it was intended to do, and looks pretty damn good, I think.

Technical notes: The gas giant, the planet's rings and the Earth put together in Photoshop. The green 'life force' effect, the nebula and all the wormhole/tunnel elements made in Particle Illusion, saved out as TIFF sequences and imported into After Effects. The star and starfields were made in After Effects. Everything composited together in After Effects. Music (not used in Dai's short, I put it in to make it more interesting to watch) is 'The Doctor's Theme' by Murray Gold from the Doctor Who series 1 soundtrack.