Beam Me Up, Christian

F3 Visual Effects at FSU - Week 4

This has been a really exciting week for me in the visual effects cycle: first, I wrapped all of the visual effects on my F3, "At the Feet of the Union" !!  W00T!!!  Second, I got to move on to Christian's science fiction film, "Flying High", as a matte painter, which I couldn't be more excited about!  Christian is giving me the opportunity to create an entire alien planet for the opening sequence of the film, and he is giving me almost complete creative freedom.

I already posted some of the mountain shots from my F3 a few posts ago, so this post I'll just post some of the ones I haven't posted yet as well as my work so far on "Flying High."

This is a really dark shot, but it is supposed to be.  We didn't have the time or resources to set up a whole Confederate camp, so instead I comped one together.  Classmate Collin Lockett modeled some great tents in Maya for me and textured them using onset texture references taken by AC Grace Colley.  Then I lit the tents, rendered them out, and brought them into Nuke to mix together the tents with several different live action plates.

In a similar fashion to the previous shot, we didn't have the time or resource to recreate a Confederate company.  There were seven of us that could dress in costume, including myself.  We shot 36 plates on set and changed clothes and props between each take, and then it was all stitched together in Nuke and then projected onto rudimentary geometry so that the camera could slowly push in.

This shot wasn't intended to be a visual effects shot, but on set it was raining and the fire burned out.  So I keyed out a healthy fire from another take, tracked it into the moving shot, then recreated the flicker by keying out the real flicker from the healthy take and rotoscoping out problem areas like heads and hands.

This is that matte painting I made for Christian's F3, "Flying High".  The scene involves a stoner named Hunter rescuing his friend Thompson from an ominous alien planet.  Christian tasked me with creating that ominous alien planet.  He gave me a list of descriptive words and 5 pieces of concept art from some of his favorite films that reflected the mood and look he wanted.  So after looking everything over and talking over some basic layout with him, I went to town in Photoshop creating this matte painting.  I started by using some texture brushes to block out the colors and shape of everything I wanted, and then I began texturing some of the planar surfaces using high res texture photos taken from the set.  Then, I began gathering a library of images that would fit the painting from the public domain.  From that point on it was just a matter of warping the images to fit into my blocking, recoloring the photos to look like the belong together, adjusting lighting and value to create depth, and adding it atmospherics.  I was even able to fit in the famous Vasquez rocks!  That was my subtle way of tipping my hat to some of the most influential science fiction moments in the 20th century.  I had a lot of fun bringing in some of the intricate detail into this painting.  My favorite parts are the rivers of blue lava.  I really like what those bring to the shot.

Anyway, that's what I've been up to this week!  Next week I start work on the animated film "Yeti in Paradise" then the animated film "Live Tree or Die" before hopping back over to "Flying High" for the the last two weeks of the process.  It should be an exciting time, I am really looking forward to the changes in scenery!  I have found that staring at the same shots for too long can sometimes be discouraging, and it can definitely become monotonous.  I'm really excited to keep moving forward in this cycle and to see what it brings.