Extended Practise: Kingdom of Masks Post-Production

 Extended Practise
Kingdom of Masks Post-Production 1

• This week:
• I worked on Post-Production VFX for the Kingdom of Masks animation, for Khoa.
• What went well:
• Using After Effects, I edited Still 11 and Still 12. During a meeting with Khoa and Emily, I made note of everything that may need adding in Post-Production, more specifically Puppet animation for Still 11 and using rendering effects for Still 12.
• For Still 11, Khoa wanted the characters to be moving in slow-motion and throwing their arms and the masks around the Mask Maker.
• Here is the PNG still, which was sent to me:

• Using the rigging tools in After Effects, I created a slow-motion movement of the characters. As After Effects is a very smart tool, once I imported the PNG and started applying the pins to the shot, the software is able to cut out the characters and props for me.
• This way, it identified each character and prop as a separate mesh, so that when I animated them, it wouldn't warp the other characters within the scene.

• I found the animating process quite tricky at first, as I wasn't used to the After Effects timeline and the way the puppet tool worked. I tried to keep the timing and principles of animation in mind, however, but that was much more difficult with a simple rig.
• Here is the final edit, with a place-holder background:

• Furthermore, I worked on Still 12 this week.
• This shot was the trickiest as it contained the most editing I needed to do. During the meeting, we had discussed making the Fairy move slightly, making the magic spell appear, adding clouds, adding particles and lighting. However, as this Still was given to me as a Photoshop document, it made it much easier to break down and edit.
• I started by animating the Fairy's leaves swaying slightly, using the Puppet tool. Once that was Pre-composed I could then start applying Particle world effects and lighting.
• I had a lot of experience with using Particle World at this point, so I could quickly create particle effects for the magic and fireflies, by having the settings at 0 Gravity and adjusting the particle type and animation.
• Furthermore, for the lighting, I made use of Adobe After Effects' Light Rays tool to animate the spell appearing around the Mask Maker. I think that using the Puppet Tool on the floating magic, to make it move slightly, really helped with this effect.

• Here is the final composition (without the edited background):

• What could be improved:
• The effects of the Fairy, in comparison to my first compositing of Still 11, feel a lot more polished. I think that next time it would be much easier to have all of the components of the scene ready, before going into the Post VFX. As I had the full Photoshop document of Still 12, I could go and make changes or easily animate each layer at a time, whereas Still 11 only consisted of the one PNG and place-holder background. Unfortunately, because of the time limitation, some of the Post-Production and Production overlaps slightly, so I only had access to small chunks of content at a time. 
• Whilst the Puppet tool in After Effects is quick and easy to use, it would have been a lot more advanced if I had a breakdown of each character in a Photoshop document. Therefore, I could manipulate the arms or head, without it warping elements of the body. This is something I would keep in mind for future projects.

• Next week:
• I will be working on Stills 17, 14 and animating the transition between 24 and 25.