The Chase

A few weeks ago Netterville showed my animation class a tutorial about green screening in AfterEffects. Funny thing is that my stop motion project did this already. The 5 of us have had experience with the green screen room and keylight 2.0.

Netterville asked us to create a green screen project, so Jake, Alex, Logan, Andrew, and I all look at each other thinking we could do a project together again before all the guys graduate. Awesome idea except that we needed an idea to film and make into a animation. We threw ideas around. One idea was that we become a Smash Bros character and do a smash battle. Another was to do Call of Duty. Video games came up a lot. Most were shot down due to the amount of blood in them and the fact that weapons at school aren't allowed so actually filming it wouldn't happen. Smash Bros was a good idea but we couldn't meet the deadline we thought so we were going to think up a new idea.

I went to my computer and realized I had green screen shots. If I could think of a cool story with the shots I had, I could make a cool video. I realized that I had friends doing crazy crap with each other like putting on a magic show. And ending up fighting it out on stage with magic. I had had walk cycles so they could come on stage without a problem. I also had audience interaction if I so desired a magic show. But I could have these people jump all over the world and have them chase each other doing little tricks to each other along the way. Then wanting revenge following them all around the world. Maybe a evil robot army would come in and make the dudes work together? Combine live action/stop motion, green screen, 3-D animation, and special effects? There were so many ideas. Well beginnings of ideas. I needed something to complete one of them so I could run with it and create a project.

 Then I heard someone say "run across the arch" and I knew these two guys were going to be meeting on top of the St Lois Arch and they were going to chase each other across dementions trying to find each other again and get their meeting over with.  I looked at my footage and knew exactly what footage was going to go with what scene. It was perfect.

 
Next I searched for backgrounds. This is a green screen project after all so I needed a setting. I knew I wanted to start on top of the St Louis Arch. I liked this picture. It had good lighting, and part of the city scape. The arch itself isn't the best lit but it'll work for a simple animation.




Now the question is: where do I have Andrew go? Paris, Rome, New York City? I like traveling, history, and art and these three cities catch my eye. Paris has the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower and Versailles isn't to terribly far from Paris. Rome has so much history attached to it that it would be so awesome to visit! The architecture is amazing and I believe Leonardo Di Vinci is buried there. I'd also like to say that the statue of David is there. Lots of cool stuff is in Rome. New York City would just satisfy my wish to travel. I mean, NYC would be so cool to visit with Broadway and the Statue of Liberty!

But I felt like those places were way to realistic for a magician. I wanted something more mystical. So when I found the picture to the left, I knew I had to use it somewhere in my animation. It is from Google Images. I don't know who made it or if it is from a movie but who ever made it is awesome! That is just one picture I used as part of the whimsical places Andrew showed up to.

Logan disappearing in water.

Once I had the backgrounds I started pulling in the footage to put on top of the images. I took a walk cycle for Andrew and Logan sitting down. To get rid of the green screen for each of them I went to the effects tab of After Effects, went to keying and choose Color Key. Color Key got rid of most of the green. I went to a matte that allowed the green color around Andrew and Logan to expand. Once I expanded it, I went to the effects tab clicked on keying and this time I choose Keylight. Keylight is more powerful than Color Key and is more precise. Which is why I used it around Andrew and Logan. I used this technique whenever I got rid of the green screen during this project.

Andrew showing up somewhere

On the Arch I had Andrew and Logan approach each other. Then Logan disappears. I used a water effect for Logan instead of smoke. I felt like smoke was typical for wizards disappearing and Logan isn't a normal wizard as he's in a chicken hat, swim trunks, a e-Comm shirt, while wearing socks and sandals. Not your typical wizard getup. So he needed a weird was to poof out of the scene. I looked through the action essentials pack Netterville got from Video Copilot and I loved this water spray. I think it goes with character. The way the water was, the bottom half of Logan could be seen near the end when it should have disappeared. Not ok. I used the stroke tool to create a stroke over Logan. I made it blue so it would match the background. I messed with the opacity to make his disappear at the right time. I used the same stroke tool to make Andrew disappear. I had Andrew disappear in a cloud of smoke right after Logan left. Andrew first went to a garden maze place. It was a cool background. Andrew would leave to go to that awesome mystical place. I have him go to different spots there. I adjusted his size so it looked like he was receeding in space. Then I went back to the arch where Logan is waving to people from on top of the arch. Andrew shows up. Andrew isn't happy so he crates a fireball and sends Logan spinning off the top of the arch. Funny little act of revenge. Andrew disappears to start this little chasing game all over again.

Andrew's "revenge"

In my mind they won't ever seriously hurt each other. They are close friends and play around like this all the time and have done mock fights like this before at all sorts of different places. Some of them Andrew shows up to while chasing Logan.



 Learning wise, I didn't anything. I learned this on my last green screen project with Logan, Andrew, Alex, and Jake. I knew the technicalities of green screening. This was just a fun little project to do. I really liked it. It ended up being a silly little animation and I'm totally ok with that. It's good practice. I think that with practice you get better every time so I'll be a pretty good green screener by the time I graduate if I continue doing green screen projects! This project doesn't really have a storyline and I think that if I really wanted to do more green screen projects I'll need a story line. But I think I'd want to do more of a post production heavy project like this one and the Mage Wars project I helped with. I think that green screens give you so much freedom and creativity that you better take advantage of it. With that freedom and creativity you should have fun with it and enjoy it. I want to take the fun parts  making videos and animation that Andrew, Logan, Jake, and Alex showed me you can have while putting in the effort and time to make a quality animation or model. I hope I can do that.