Colour Me Blue

A Road to Nowhere

This is a screenshot of my original video. It was taken in the afternoon light travelling down a road. I tried playing with quiet a bit and some of the effects I created were pretty awesome.

With this Screenshot, I make the picture look sunnier by reducing the shadows that you can see in my original shot. It looks like a hot afternoon’s shot, doesn’t it? To do this all I did was use three way colour corrector and bend the three colour grades towards reddish and greenish tones along with reducing the intensity of the image.

In this clip, I simply moved the colour correction towards more pinkish tones to get an older times look to it. Those days with crappy cameras and hippie eras. This road of Goa has been photographed in such colours quiet a few times and I love the fact that I was actually able to imitate it somewhat.

In this image, I used both the Luma Curve as well as the Three Way Colour Corrector. The curve looked more like an S rather than a diagonal line when I was done with it and I tried to increase the shadowwing to give it a dawn kind of feel. The day is just starting.

Taj Mahal

Before doing anything, this was a shot of Taj Mahal, taken early on a winter morning.

In this shot I dimmed the brightness and increased contrast by 27%. I also increased the red tones using three way colour corrector. I did this to make Taj Mahal stand out, to create focus on it.

This I think is my coolest effect. I kept the contrast and brightness levels I had set in the previous image and added the change colours effect. I then played with the hue, saturation and lightness.   I did this to achieve another way of making my Taj Mahal stand out which it didn’t in the original shot.

In this picture I increased the colour balance, mostly red and green. I also increased the contrast a little bit. It now looks like I’m at the start of telling an ancient tale. This would probably be an opening shot.

Sunburn – Music festival

This is an original video I made at the Sunburn festival in Goa. As you may notice the quality is pretty bad. So I did a few things, check it out.

I thought this was really cool for a credits scene. It helps the logo to really stand out. I did this by lowering the brightness and incresing the contrast. I also used the three way colour corrector to increase the pinkish tones.

For this image I played with the RGB curves to make the image look like there was more than just blue lighting. I like the way the colour combines together. It’s great for music festivals.

To take the lighting out completely, I used Video Limiter. It changed my image to black and white while still leaving the logos in colour. It’s a pretty cool thing to do because if you actually imagined doing it, it sounds next to impossible or at least a lot of work.

Cinematography – A feeling

“In my opinion, it’s clear that music is one element that transforms a film. Let me back up a bit: I believe all the elements: image, sound – and “sound” includes sound effects, dialogue, and music – should affect and transform each other. Without transformation, it isn’t art.” – Robert Bresson

An amazing movie by one of the best French directors – Robert Bresson

Our reading, a chapter out of Robert Bresson’s ‘Notes on a Cinematographer’, was very intriguing. It was not one of those assignments you just read through something and get to work. I had to watch a film by him – ‘Au Hasard Balthazar’, one of his most renouned works. I also spent hours online going through others quotes I could find from his book. It was very interesting for me. French Cinema has always been known for the art in the movies. The film had me enraptured as I can truthfully say I have never seen anything like it. Firstly, the protagonist of the film is a donkey! An animal treated inhumanly almost like he doesn’t exist. The entire movie leaves a cold feeling in you. I don’t really know how to put it in words, but it is emotionless in a way where it pulls on your emotions. Everything I read in that chapter was depicted in the movie itself.

To explain who Robert Bresson is, I am just going to use a quote I found in another article by Justin Morrow – “Robert Bresson is French cinema, as Dostoevsky is the Russian novel and Mozart is the German music.” You can find a link to the article in my references if you wish to know more about him and his work.

Robert Bresson on set

I read a lot of the quotes and I obviously have my favourites while I would beg to differ on a few of them as well. I could go on forever but I have decided to discuss only four here – two from my reading and two I came across online.

“Your film must resemble what you see on shutting your eyes.”  Absolutely. That is the dream, isn’t it. Our course teaches us to research our audience, see what they want. It tells us to research new media and see what the rest of the world is doing. Use new devices and what not. But deep inside, I feel all of us are just dying to show the world what we see. I think that is a great idea in itself.

“If the eye is entirely won, give nothing or almost nothing to the ear. One cannot be the same time all eye and all ear.” This is something I have not thought about in this way, but working in advertising, a rule we followed is, if making a poster don’t just have a headline which says what the art on it does. Say more or hint at more. Sometimes, don’t say anything at all. I think we have become so smart that we don’t need two senses to say the same thing. That is old school. Maybe, new media can just be playing differently with different senses and seeing what we can make someone feel. It’s like sometimes it is the middle of the night, you’re standing out in your balcony. or you’re in a brand new city, and you can hear the music in your head, a music to go with your feelings and emotions. It’s wonderful, more wonderful than real music can ever be.

“Not to play two violins when one is enough.” Simplicity is an art. We have heard that many times. Well, I think it’s true. There is no need for an orchestra when you can win over someone with an acoustic guitar.

“Hide the ideas, but so that people find them. The most important will be the most hidden.” This quote I think is my favourite one. I saved it for last because I thought that would give me enough time to think about it. I was wrong, it can be intepreted in many ways. It is the ultimate trick for anyone in the industry and so few have been able to achieve it. There’s a fine line between making an idea obvious and having it lost. For this one, I think it’s great to just think about and leave it at that. There are no tricks or answers!

References:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000975/bio?ref_=nm_dyk_qt_sm#quotes

http://nofilmschool.com/2014/06/robert-bresson-gesture-notes-on-the-cinematographer

http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/70031-notes-sur-le-cin-matographe

Digital Drawing Techniques (Flipped Lecture)

I am taking an animation class this semester called ‘Illusion of Life’. Most other people in my class are already familiar with digital drawing techniques and software. I find myself lacking in both aspects as I started the class with absolutely no clue what to expect, just a dream to produce animation films someday. Reading the flipped lecture for digital drawing techniques was really helpful for me. I am just starting to pick up on it and I feel like there is just so much to take in.

I have heard terms like vectors and bitmap many times over the years but was never really clued in to what they actually meant. If I wanted some designs which would be more cartoonish or outline or art worthy, I would type xyz vector on search. But that was the extent of my usage of the actual term. Jenny’s lecture explained what it really means. When saving my animation project the other day (vectors were used mostly), I first rendered it with full resolution. The file turned out to be so heavy, it would just not play right! I went back and rendered it again in half resolution, thinking the quality of my work would affected. But, surprisingly that was not the case. Atleast I could not make out the difference between the qualities of the two. Reading this lecture, I realized that vector drawings do not lose quality at different, lower resolutions. That’s when it clicked into place in my mind.

I agree with Jenny that drawing with a mouse or trackpad are just not my cup of tea. I did buy a stylus for my project which was really great. I bought it online for just $20! But, you have to be really careful while choosing your stylus as a lot of the cheaper ones (below $20) have really thick nibs. Some are not compatible with all devices either. Like, the one I bought is great when I use it on the apple devices at Uni but doesn’t work at all on my laptop, which is touch friendly.

Another thing that caught my eye in the lecture was the mention of selective erasing method. If you are using photoshop, what I would suggest is make an outline, and a copy (MUST), as Jenny suggests. Then, there is an option on the right side above your layers which will let you select that outline with just a click. That way when you use the brush or eraser tool, it would not let you go outside the boundaries. Makes for much faster and easier work. I just learnt this trick from my friend, Daven, who is amazing at drawing cartoons and like digitally. Check out his website.

http://www.davenbettridge.com/

All animation film work is generally done using digital drawing techniques. My favourite ones include Ice Age and Narnia.

Here is a link which might add a little to Jenny’s lecture. I found it really helpful. Goes right back to the basics.

http://www.digitalartforall.com/15/what-is-digital-art/

Check out some of these amazing things people have done with digital drawings..

Jim Carrey made digitally by Patrick Brown

By Twentieth Century fox films

A site you can check out where someone has changed the genders of famous cartoon characters (pretty cool!) is..

http://designtaxi.com/news/365021/Digital-Artist-Switches-The-Genders-Of-Popular-Cartoon-Characters/

While all of these are really advanced, I plan on using some digital drawings for my project to create characters for my story as they will be displayed on my blog. I want to do this to enhance the visuals on my blog as I understand that it attracts more audience while it also makes a blog more alive.

Creating the snowflake using CODE – A review

Programming Concepts. Two words which can put the fear of god right into me! When I read this on Jenny’s list of tasks, I thought, well those are the ones I am going to leave out. I did Business with Computer Aided Management as my bachelors degree and every semester, I had to choose one programming language course to study. I dreaded these as I never really understood anything in class and barely made it through the course.

But, when I, against all my head was telling me, decided to open up the link provided, I was shocked. It was amazing and fun! It was nothing like I had ever seen before. After an hour of using code, it was so much fun trying out different snowflake designs. I can tell you now, I realized I’m not as good with maths as I thought I was, but I still managed to create some pretty awesome stuff. The design I finally settled on is displayed below. What do you guys think?

I tried various times to get it right and I think I still settled on a pretty simple design. But simplicity beats everything, yea? I really like how this program was displayed with the use of Frozen characters and if you want to learn more, there are different themes up there. I tried making trees using zombies! That was pretty cool.

The reason I think this task really helped me was not the stuff I learnt to do, because I am still not sure how I would want to incorporate using it in my media project, but it really gave me confidence that I can work with a computer, learn different things no problem. This is really good for me because I feel my Bachelors degree took that away from me. I can create, and think of more possibilities now, which gives new dimensions to creativity in my head. It’s funny how these little frozen characters warmed my brain towards trying again. I am glad I did not slink away with my tail in between my legs!

Creating a snowflake with CODE

Hey guys! This is what I created using CODE. It is pretty cool, eh?