Digital Photography and Imaging

November 01, 2019

Digital Photography and Imaging - Final Project

22/10/19 - 26/11/19 (Week 9 - Week 14)

Atiqah Farzana Binti Syalleh Karimyee (0336740)

Digital Photography and Imaging

Final Project

INSTRUCTIONS:

Assignment Brief:

Week 9 (22/10/19)
Final Project:

Our final project was to make a future city scene of a utopia or dystopia. A utopia is an idealistic place where everything is perfect, whereas a dystopia is a place of great suffering or injustice or post-apocaliptic.

At first, I really wanted to do a dystopian city, but then I felt like it would be much more difficult. I was stuck inbetween choosing a utopia or dystopia city, so I started sketching out ideas which included both.

Fig. 1.1 Utopia/ Dystopia City: Sketch 1

For my first idea, I wanted the utopia to be enclosed in a bubble which protected it from the dystopian city outside.

Fig. 1.2 Utopia/ Dystopia City: Sketch 2

With the same bubble concept, I placed it in a different setting- outer space. I took inspiration from the movie Wall-E, where the earth was so polluted to the point that humans had to go to live in outer space. I think the movie plot is slowly becoming a reality for our earth, so I thought it would be an interesting concept to take on with my piece.

After receiving feedback from Mr. Martin, he suggested that the buildings could be going in any direction or pointing inwards since they are in outer space. I initially wanted the buildings to be standing straight, but I thought the idea was different and interesting so I decided to change it instead.

Lastly, my final idea is a full utopia where all of the buildings are famous/ historical buildings from different countries. I thought that this idea was kind of interesting where different elements would look very nice with each other.

Fig. 1.3 Utopia/ Dystopia City: Sketch 3

I asked my friends to choose which they liked best and they all said that they liked the second one, and so I went with that.

To start with the final project, I found an image of the space with a glowing milky way(?) in the middle to use as the background. I think it was a good base to start on as it did not have too many elements in it.

Fig. 1.4 Space Background

Fig. 1.5 Bubbles

I duplicated and resized the bubbles to create the capsules of earth in space. I intend on making 5 of these bubbles and having them become gradually smaller to show a sense of distance.

Fig. 1.6 Bubbles in Space

Of course I had to include spaceships and UFOs because this setting would be nothing without them.

Fig. 1.7 Spaceship

Fig. 1.8 UFO

Fig. 1.9 Buildings in Bubble

I attempted to make the buildings pointing inwards as Mr. Martin suggested, but I felt like it looked very messy and awkward. I opted to keep it straight like normal buildings.

Fig. 1.10 Buildings Images

Fig. 1.11 Buildings in Bubble 2

Fig. 1.12 Buildings in Bubble 3: Closeup

Fig. 1.13 Buildings in Bubble 4 and 5

Fig. 1.13 Buildings in Bubble 4 and 5: Closeup

I did the fourth bubble and just copy-pasted it as the fifth bubble because it was going to be very small and too minuscule to make a new set of buildings.

Fig. 1.14 Astronaut Images

I felt like it would be nice to add some astronauts in the picture. I added them outside of the bubbles, and even made sure to include their reflections.

Fig. 1.15 Astronaut: Closeup 1

Fig. 1.16 Astronaut: Closeup 2

Fig. 1.17 Meteoroid 1

Fig. 1.18 Meteoroid 2

Fig. 1.19 Meteoroid Edit

Fig. 1.20 First Attempt

I thought I was already done at this point, but Mr. Jeffrey had a lot to critique about my work.
Feedback (12/11/19): Mr. Jeffery said that "aesthetics: check, colour combinations: check, but believability: uncertain". He said that the larger bubble looks more balanced in terms of the layers of the buildings and how the bottom is cut off, so he does not see the ground (but imagines that there is and should have a ground for the building's foundations). The rest of the bubbles can be fully seen, which he kind of has a problem with as the buildings must have foundations to stand on. As it is in space, gravity is sorta a thing, which I think should allow for the buildings to stand in non-conventional ways; as Mr. Martin had suggested before for the buildings to be pointing inwards in the bubble.

Mr. Jefferey said that the worst thing about it are the reflections on the ball building (atomium) which I do agree. I could not find a better picture of it but he said I could try to erase it. He also said that I am not that far from my goal and once I'm finished I can start on the animations.

After listening to their feedback, I looked back on my work and tried to fix up the small details. Mr. Jeffrey did mention a lack of greenery, so I decided to add some plants/ vines to the buildings and the spaceship.

Fig. 1.21 Plants/ Moss/ Vines

Fig. 1.22 Plants and People Added

I also included some people walking along the buildings so the setting could have a bigger sense of life and humanity (other than the astronauts).

Fig. 1.23 Plants on Spaceship

I was thinking back at what Mr. Jeffrey asked me, how the bubbles stay connected or rather how they keep close to each other in space when there is no gravity. I intended on them to have some sort of magnetic aura that could keep the other balls within a certain distance. I thought it would be difficult to edit, and people may not be able to see or understand the logic behind that, so I had to change my idea.

Later on, I came up with an idea to have a chain connecting all the balls together. The story I made was that the chain was hollow to allow flying cars or vehicles inside the bubble to travel to the other bubbles through this chain.

Fig. 1.24 Chains

Fig. 1.25 Chains and Reflection Added

Fig. 1.26 Final Attempt: Screenshot

Fig. 1.27 Final Attempt

Feedback (19/11/19): Mr. Jeffrey said that my work looks a lot better now and that it even reminds him of a 1980s space film poster, namely the first Star Wars. I wanted to animate the chains that connect the balls, but Mr. Martin said that even the balls have to move. They said that it would be quite a challenge to animate the whole thing but I think I can manage (hopefully).

Fig. 1.28 Still Image in After Effects

I felt like it would be tough to start off with the bubbles/ chains moving, so I decided to animate something small first. I thought the meteoroid in the background was a good start so I went ahead and used the puppet tool to animate it.

Fig. 1.29 After Effects: Meteoroid 1

Fig. 1.30 After Effects: Meteoroid 2

After getting a head start, I started animating the balls because I knew it would take a lot of time. It was very difficult at first because all of my buildings were on different layers. I was not about to move and animate every single building for all the bubbles, so I went back on Photoshop and made all the buildings in each bubble in the same layer.

Once that was complete, I put the PSD file back into After Effects and redid the meteoroid animations. I was okay with redoing it because it was better than moving each building one by one.

Fig. 1.31 After Effects: Bubble and Buildings 1

Fig. 1.32 After Effects: Bubble and Buildings 2

After animating the buildings and the bubbles, I then animated the chains. I started off with the furthest chain and moved onto the ones that are closer.

Fig. 1.33 After Effects: Chains 1

Fig. 1.34 After Effects: Chains 2

Fig. 1.34 After Effects: Chains 3

A small detail that I noticed was that when I moved the bubbles, the reflections of the astronauts/ spaceships would not move. I had to animate their reflections as well.

Fig. 1.35 After Effects: Astronaut Reflection

I completed animating all of the bubbles and buildings inside them, the chains, and the meteoroids. I felt that if I made the UFO and spaceship move, there would be too much going on in the animation. I then thought of adding flashing lights to the two spacecrafts. This way they would not be moving but still have some animation.

I searched up how to animate flashing lights in After Effects and found a very good and easy tutorial. Following it, I started off by creating a new solid black layer. I then had to make a lens flare by clicking on Effects/ Generate/ Lens Flare.