Late Night Ramblings Part 2: Electric Boogaloo

         Yes, I know I made that joke twice, but it's my blog and I can say it as many times as I want.

        Anyways, it is time for some unfortunate news, I will be working alone. The not-so-bad news, I have some ideas. Following the slightly more technological approach we had with Neue, I wanted to create a  3-D render of some sort. So far that's the only really thought out idea I have, but I do have ideas on how I can incorporate it. 

        One idea I had was creating a glass-breaking simulation. The overall idea is simple, but learning exactly how to make it work and how to make it look good will be a challenge. How do I plan on incorporating such a wonderful idea? By making a horror flick. I'm mostly inspired by ultra-realistic redners made in Blender (the 3-D graphics engine I am most comfortable with). It's simple yet complex nature has helped me quite a lot, as there are tons of online tutorials to help newcomers get used to it. I managed to make a render myself actually (pictured below).

        

        Yeah, it's pretty hard to see it's full 4k glory due to compression, but it's there. It also helped me get used to nodes and texturing, both of which are pretty important in renders in general. 

        So, what does this have to do with my project? Not much, maybe I'll find a way to incorporate the moon or something. Still too early into the planning stage to actually come up with something.

        As for my inspiration, I've been looking to my second-favorite thing, horror. One idea of having a glass-breaking render be used would be by having some sort of monster hunt a main character. The idea of an all-powerful beast looking for humans to eat and the hero finding some way to fight back has always been cool, especially when done well. I'll list a few examples and note what I enjoy most about them. 

        Hopefully it works, if not, click here. But as you saw, the trailer presented us with a terrifying threat, but we never saw the full scope of it, just a few shots, where wouldn't you know it, the creature was obscured. This type of filmmaking is brilliant, as designers, editors, directors, producers, and everyone else knew that fully showing us the monster would not only get rid of fear, but make the model itself seem fake.

        I've studied my fair share of how to make renders look convincing, and I think that implementing it into a minimal amount of scenes would add to the project as a whole. This is just the transitional post, but it is what has been on my mind. I'll keep jotting down more ideas and hopefully come up with a more conclusive idea later on, but until then, adieu!

Late Night Ramblings

         It seems like there will be no break for us in AICE Media. We just finished creating an internet sensation and now we have to create a short film trailer. We have time, which is good, but creativity doesn't come instantly. Not too sure what I want to do, but I do have some ideas. For Neue, we heavily focused on creating a "techy" vibe, and I intend to keep that going for this new project as well. While datamoshing looks cool and all that, I think using it again shows a lack of creativity, so I was thinking of doing something else.

        One idea I came up with was animation. I have taken a liking in it, but never really found a way to fit it into my other projects. Using some filter just to get the outline and tracing over it would be cool, and seamlessly merging it with other shots would be a challenge; but hey, it's an idea. Stoklosa DID advise us against it (hi by the way :)), but what else am I supposed to do late at night other than tracing over 60 frames per second? I'll obviously have to pitch to a group, but I know some people in class like those types of ideas.

        As for my other idea, I was thinking of doing a bit more visual effects. We have time, which is good, but I'm not too sure my future team or I would want to put ourselves through that. We could keep it to a minimum, but it would still be a hassle. I'd rather do something a bit more complex than a green screen or basic 3-D asset, but there certainly are limitations. Again, I'll have to wait until I have an actual group before suggesting.

        I'm pretty sure I have been using After Effects for three years now, but I never went into VFX territory, and focused mostly on line editing , graphics work, and pacing. I have also been picking up on Blender, but I feel like it would be hard to incorporate it into the project. 

        At this point every possibility is a possibility, and I don't do well with possibilities and choices. I'll come up with a cool little thing I can do both well and in a relatively short amount of time and create a story that fits it or uses it in some way.

        Just to hit a higher word count and get attention from colleges, I wanted to reflect a bit more on Neue. We created an entirely original story for him, which is funny for a single music video, but this time we will have no social media (I think?), so we'll have to create a project filled with information. It sounds easier, but condensing marketing and story without a full-on presentation is pretty hard, so we should primarily focus on story, which in itself should be enough of a marketing tool. I personally enjoyed taking care of the more technical things like the website and social media, and I feel like I'm way too adapted to that. I did have some creative input, but my ideas were mostly based either on someone else's ideas or a problem we were having. I feel like I can manage to create a movie trailer by myself if worse comes to worse. If you want to find out if I actually managed to get a group or not, tune in next time at this very same spot.