Digital Photography and Imaging - Project 1

01/10/19 -  15/10/19 (Week 6 - Week 8)

Atiqah Farzana Binti Syalleh Karimyee (0336740)

Digital Photography and Imaging

Exercises 

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INSTRUCTIONS:

Assignment Brief:

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Week 6 (01/10/19)
Project 1:

Today we had to show our ideas and planning for project 1.

I spent a long time trying to think of an idea, and on the night before class I finally came up with something. I was scrolling through instagram and saw a funny post of this sphynx cat edited into a raw chicken. This is the original tweet:

Fig. 7.1 Tweet Inspiration

I found it hilarious, and I wanted to use this as my project 1 idea.

I immediately drew out a rough sketch of this idea and started searching for hq pictures that I could potentially use for my project. I shortlisted these three photos:

Fig. 7.2 Sphynx Cats

I chose Fig. 7.3 because it is a much higher quality photo compared to the other two.

Fig. 7.3 Chosen Sphynx Cat Photo

Fig. 7.4 Raw Chicken

Mr. Martin wanted us to do a mock up in class so he could see a potential outcome for project 1.

I masked off the wing and leg of the raw chicken and placed it onto the cat picture. In Fig. 7.5 the cat's paws and tail were showing so I had to edit that out.

Fig. 7.5 Wing and Drum on Cat

 I used the spot healing tool to cover the tail and paws, and I think it looks much better now.

Fig. 7.6 Spot Healing Tool

Fig. 7.7 Drum Added

I added the other drum leg and now the edit looks more complete. I was debating on whether I should put another wing on the other side of the cat but I decided not to because from all the pictures of raw chicken I had seen, the wing is usually hidden behind the body.

Mr. Jeffrey said that it looks good so far but he suggested that I should try to put the chicken skin texture onto the cat's belly to make it more realistic, but I know that would be very difficult. Nonetheless, I tried to attempt it.

I used the quick-selection tool to select the chicken texture from the leg and then masked it off.

Fig. 7.8 Chicken Skin Texture

I then placed the masked texture onto the cat's belly and used the brush tool to soften the edges and blend it in. I thought it would be quite difficult to do this but it literally took less than a minute and the results were very realistic-looking.

Fig. 7.9 Texture Added

Fig.7.10 Final Edit

I tweaked with the saturation and hue of the leg and belly texture so it's more pink and "raw-looking". After I had finished my still image manipulation, I would have to start animating it. I plan on making slight movements to the ears and limbs to make it look like it's wiggling. I envision it to look cute, even though there's nothing cute about raw chicken.

This is my first time using After Effects so it was very challenging to me. Mr Jeffrey was not in class today so he sent us a few video tutorials from his previous classes. It was very difficult to not have someone explain step-by-step in front of me but I still managed to work it out.

Fig. 7.11 After Effects

 I followed Mr. Jeffrey's tutorial on the puppet warp tool to pin down the ears to the head and wiggle it around a bit.

Fig. 7.12 Puppet Warp Tool on Ears

Essentially, I just used the puppet warp on all the other limbs to make them wiggle.

Fig. 7.13 Puppet Warp Tool on Wing

Fig. 7.14 Puppet Warp Tool on Leg 1

Fig. 7.15 Puppet Warp Tool on Leg 2

I decided to make each part of the body wiggle at different times so that it adds more dimension compared to if all the limbs were to move in the same direction at the same times. I showed my progress so far to Mr. Martin and told me to make the animation slower. He also suggested to add a background of just a solid colour. He told me to look up a colour wheel and choose a colour that is opposite of my current object which is the cat-chicken.

Fig. 7.16 Colour Wheel

The cat-chicken is the lightest shades of pink to orange, so opposite of that is violet/ blue violets. I eyedropped the various shades to see which would look best. I ended up choosing the lightest shade from the blue violet range, which I thought suited my work the best.

I had to go back to Photoshop to adjust the background colour because I did not know how to do it in After Effects. I also added in a slight shadow to make it look like it had more dimension, and was not just a floating object.

Fig. 7.17 Photoshop: Background Added

To my surprise, I did not have to export it back into After Effects because it already updated itself with the new background colour. I don't really know how this works, but I'm glad it did because it saved me some time.

With that out of the way, I had to redo my animation. Using the puppet tool I just repeated the same steps but I was more aware on making the movement very slow and subtle.

Fig. 7.18 Puppet Warp Tool on Wing

Fig. 7.19 Puppet Warp Tool on Ears

Fig. 7.20 Puppet Warp Tool on Leg 

Here is the final video! And here is the YouTube link to the video.