Re: Works-in-Progress Post and Critique
Smeagol better watch himself.
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Smeagol better watch himself.
Ah yes very very nice Leo that looks fab. how soon could we possibly expect your next film?
No, they dont really look like anything. Try making them more uniform, like, just rectangle prisms...?
No, they dont really look like anything. Try making them more uniform, like, just rectangle prisms...?
The silhouettes actually came from buildings at my airport, so I think that they're pretty realistic. Two of the the three are rectangular.
Ah yes very very nice Leo that looks fab. how soon could we possibly expect your next film?
Hopefully pretty soon. I'm thinking early March.
Smeagol better watch himself.
I'm in a bad mood today, so I'm going to yell at you for this one. 
Smeagol is a great brickfilmer, and a great storyteller. He excels at many aspects of brickfilming. To compare me to him even just in terms of visual effects is not a compliment, though. I don't want to be the next Smeagol. I want to be the best me that I can be. My goal is not to be a better FX artist than anyone, it's to be the very best FX artist that I can be. While I take a lot of inspiration from his work, he is not my goal.
- Leo
Last edited by Leonardo812 (January 21, 2009 (10:26pm))
Maron wrote:No, they dont really look like anything. Try making them more uniform, like, just rectangle prisms...?
The silhouettes actually came from buildings at my airport, so I think that they're pretty realistic. Two of the the three are rectangular.
I agree with Maron, if the building was more detailed it would be easier to define it as a building, but that wouldn't work seeing as the image is so blown out. Unless the film has a building just like that, I think it would work a lot better if you did have had a rectangular buldings.
mcoov_studios wrote:Smeagol better watch himself.
I'm in a bad mood today, so I'm going to yell at you for this one.
Smeagol is a great brickfilmer, and a great storyteller. He excels at many aspects of brickfilming. To compare me to him even just in terms of visual effects is not a compliment, though. I don't want to be the next Smeagol. I want to be the best me that I can be. My goal is not to be a better FX artist than anyone, it's to be the very best FX artist that I can be. While I take a lot of inspiration from his work, he is not my goal.
- Leo
I was just joking, but yeah. 
Anywho, that's an awesome shot. I hope to see your film soon.
I was just joking, but yeah.
Anywho, that's an awesome shot. I hope to see your film soon.
I hope to see it soon too.
Every film I make gets more and more fun. This one is a blast. I get to do all sorts of cool things, and because it's a co-production with another brickfilmer, I don't have to do some of the things that I dislike about brickfilming.
- Leo
Here's the updated version of this shot, though. I tried to make the background buildings look like they were in the distance. I don't know if I succeeded.
It's an awesome shot. If I was making it though, and I had any kind of ability with CGI, I'd fill in the right of the shot a little more. It's hard to picture where in a town you'd have a building like that with a streetlight in front of it and nothing next to it (since the other buildings do look like they're in the distance) - I'd expect the corner of the next building in the street or something.
That looks spectacular, Leo, though the washed-out look is somewhat distracting. Also, I think you should add shadows for the small tentacles gripping the building.
That looks spectacular, Leo, though the washed-out look is somewhat distracting. Also, I think you should add shadows for the small tentacles gripping the building.
Thanks, Nick. I'm still struggling to find a visual style for this film that I like. This scene should emphasize the dusty, dirty buildings. I've tried film effects and all sorts of color correction, but haven't quite found something that really works. I'm thinking of actually re-lighting some of these CG shots and see if I can get something better.
- Leo
Oooh....
Way cool, Nick. I like it. I'm not sure that my comp could handle that many bricks. It is a little hard to judge the realism of large renders like that, but it looks pretty good to me.
- Leo
Last edited by Leonardo812 (January 25, 2009 (07:25pm))
What programs do you use Nick? It turned out amazing, very realistic.
NXTManiac
What programs do you use Nick? It turned out amazing, very realistic.
NXTManiac
Carrara for rendering, I believe.
- Leo
EDIT: Actually, I might have heard something about him using Maya. I guess I'm not sure.
Last edited by Leonardo812 (January 25, 2009 (07:34pm))
I don't use Maya that much... It's a pain trying to get a halfway decent render of anything. This was done in Carrara, with DOF, color correction, and the sky added in After Effects. While rendering, it nearly did reach the limit of its RAM usage, but I'm planning to upgrade to 64-bit Windows soon so I shouldn't have any more problems then.
Do the background buildings look horribly out of scale with the foreground, by the way?
That looks nice Nick, I wouldn't say it looks realistic, but it looks good. The perfect divisions on all the seams (on the stairs, for example, all 1x4s looks too uniform) kind of contributes to the CG look, and in a wide shot where the building is in full focus it feels wrong for anything to be out of focus. A real wide shot of a building like this would probably be full focus. The background buildings look fine as is, perhaps the blur obscures the fact they're not to scale? The dramatically darker left sides of the curved segments of the building look unnatural (particularly given the more evenly lit sky) so perhaps a more even, overcast lighting setup with soft shadows would work? Also the shot feels a little shallow to me, what size lense are you using (in the virtual sense)? It should probably be at least 35 mm, given it has a "wide angle shot" type of setup, though that could depend on what you're going for stylistically.
That reminds me of some shots from Equilibrium. Nice work, Nick.
I'm trying to get a good dramatic scene of cinematography. Tell me how I'm doing.
1:
2:
3:
4:
5:
1: Which is the best?
2: How could I improve that one?
3: Are they any good?
They're all a bit dark and the first one doesn't look right, because the subject is out of focus. What is happening in the shot?
Thanks for the input, Sméagol. Here's an updated version of the shot. The camera was at 50 mm but I brought this down to 35, which I definitely think helps. I also added another light to remove the darker shadows. DOF is reduced somewhat as well.
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