Digital Photography and Imaging - Final Project

12/11/18 -  7/12/18 (Week 12 - Week 15)

Jasmine Teoh Lee Suan (0331993)

Digital Photography and Imaging

Final Project: Surrealistic Cinemagraph

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INSTRUCTIONS:

Assignment Brief 

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Week 12 (12/11/18): Briefing

For our final project, we were to create a surrealistic cinemagraph.

Figure 0.5 Notes

  
Week 12 - Composition and Sketches 

First and foremostly, we had to choose a surrealistic artwok and recreate it with our own images or stock images. I had narrowed down my choices to these three and brainstormed about which would be the best choice.

Figure 1.1 Reference 1

Figure 1.2 Reference 2

Figure 1.3 Reference 3

Figure 1.4 Mindmap

I decided to go with this one in the end:

Figure 1.5 Final Decision on Surrealistic Artwork

During Week 12, Mr Jeffrey taught us a little more about After Effects and did a practice with us.

We masked and took the two ships out of the picture and turned them into separate layers so that they could move freely later in After Effects, then we used the clone stamp tool to take the ships away from the original background.

Figure 1.6 Clone Stamping the Background + Layers

After that we animated the ships to move in After Effects using the diamond and changing the ships' positions.

Figure 1.7 Video Animation

Figure 1.8 After Effects

Week 13 & 14: Creating the Composition

I started sketching on my sketchbook for ideas on the composition and placement to see if there are better possibilities.

Figure 2.1 Sketches on Composition 1

Figure 2.2 Sketches on Composition 2

Honestly, I wanted to create my own composition at first but Mr Hafiz said that it would be faster and easier to follow an artwork. Therefore I decided to change a few elements and themes of it, and give it a concept as well. My conceptual view on my cinemagraph will be explained below.

Here are the files I used to create my composition, the video file was a video I took of the sea when I was on the cruise that I went on just recently.

Figure 2.3 Source Files

Here's a screenshot of my work in progress:

Figure 2.4 Screenshot of Recreating Artwork

 Layers:

Figure 2.5 Screenshot of Recreating Artwork Layers 1

Figure 2.6 Screenshot of Recreating Artwork Layers 2

Figure 2.7 Screenshot of Recreating Artwork Layers 3

Figure 2.8 Screenshot of Recreating Artwork Layers 4

 Final Still Artwork:

Figure 2.9 Final Surrealistic Artwork

After I was done with my final artwork,  I then decided on the elements that I wanted to animate.

Week 15: Animating  

First, I arranged all the layers according to my final artwork, and made sure that the arrangement of the front and back of each layer is correct. Then I changed the blending modes of some layers that have modes like color dodge, pin light and multiply so that they would look the same as in Photoshop.

I started animating the clouds / mist first. I didn't want a jump in my GIF so I had to be really careful of the end position of each animated element and that they hand to end the same time they started. I gave the clouds behind a slower floating effect, while the mist in front a fast moving effect. I also made sure to end the moving mist out of the frame so that it doesn't jump when the sequence ends.

Figure 3.1 Screenshot of Animating Artwork 1

I added a video layer, the sea layer into my composition. I masked the video layer using the shape and mask tools ( I failed a few times before finally knowing how to mask) and placed it behind the curtains. as my sea video was already in motion, I didn't have to animate that much.

Figure 3.2 Screenshot of Animating Artwork 2

After that, I animated the curtains with the same mindset of getting them back at where they started. I gave the curtains a bit of a pause when they closed, just like how real curtains would. I also made the laser beam layers go on and off by adjusting their opacities. I didn't want the glowing eyes layer to be fully off at one point too so I set the opacity of that one to 50% instead of 0% when it reached the halfway point.

Figure 3.3 Screenshot of Animating Artwork 3

Final Surrealistic Cinemagraph: 

As you can see, it is a drought land with a lion head door in the middle of that nowhere. Beyond the curtains of that door is what everyone in a drought would seek for, water and the sea. The curtains open and close to tease whoever is looking at the sea, inviting them to what they want. But the neon laser beams are there to remind you that you should beware as you would be walking right into the lion's mouth if you do so. Basically, it is a metaphor of 'If you want something really badly but have a long journey to get there, you should prepare for obstacles and danger along the way'.

This GIF was made by converting the original video into a frame animation, therefore it has a bigger file size and looks clearer.

Figure 4.1 Cinemagraph Animated GIF

This GIF on the other hand was converted through an online converter, so the pixels are bigger and it is less clear but it has a smaller file size too. 

Figure 4.1 Cinemagraph Animated GIF(Lower Quality)

Here's the video that I downloaded after uploading it to YouTube. I used this video to convert it into the GIFs above. 

Link to YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jmcm8cYvgQ&feature=youtu.be

And that's all for Digital Photography and Imaging!