Category: Year 3

Categories
Visual FX Year 3

Narrative VFX Techniques

I am planning on hopefully having multiple different visual effects within my cinematic. These consist of, Water/Rain effect, a dust particle effect as well as multiple visual effects done upon a pre-recorded video.

The water/rain effect will be used at the begging of the cinematic just before the person enter the building. I will try and make a sleet like rain that slowly builds up on the persons visor which they then continue to wipe smearing the water and removing it shortly after.

The dust particles will show up in the cinematic as the player enters the house and disturbs the dust within. The flashlight showing more defined dust particles as it moves across the room. Slowly settling back down as the cinematic continues.

Finally I am planning to film myself on a greenscreen as a tv commercial chef. Within this video after I add the 3D models to the video I will slowly start to distort parts of both the environment and the chef. The distortions and glitches getting worse as the commercial continues. This will eventually spread into the cinematic itself effecting the 3D models within the cinematic and leaving multiple glitched static parts on items.

This cinematic will be animated from a first person view. This means that I was be attaching a camera to the players head to give the image of the viewer being the one to experience this horror.

Categories
Visual FX Year 3

Exercise 2 Particle Creation

Within this exercise I decided to create smoke, this will help me as a smoke FX is going to be very similar to that of the dust FX that I’m planning on creating.

To start off I made sure that I had Niagara active on my version on unreal engine 5. Once I checked this I started to create the VFX. I first started off by creating a system to run my VFX through. This started me off with just a small white circle that faded after a short amount of time. I then changed this out for the smoke texture and begun.

Firstly I made the texture larger, this would make it easier to see. After this I followed the lab with every step eventually turning the simple texture into moving smoke.

Categories
Visual FX Year 3

Exercise 1 Virtual Cameras

I did this exercise in hopes to better myself with using the cameras within unreal engine 5, allowing me to get a smoother and higher quality end piece.

To start off I loaded the scene of two people stood in front of a sofa. After it had loaded up all the shaders I began the exercise. To begin I added 3 Cinematic Camera Actors naming each one there respected camera angle. Those being: Wide shot, Close up shot C1 and Close up shot C2. After I added these three into the scene I moved them into the correct place using the pilot mode on each of the cameras.

Once done I started to edit the Level Sequence. Within this I changed when the cameras would change, changing them at intervals of 60, 120, 150 and 200. Swapping between the Wide to Close1 to Close2 then once again back to Wide.

After this I decided to add some key frames into the sequence allowing me to have the cameras move whilst I the sequence played out.

Finally I went into the level blueprint and made it so that whenever you start the game level the sequence will always play first before giving the player control.

Categories
Visual FX Year 3

Story Boards

Categories
Visual FX

Genre of the Piece

With the piece that I’m going for there is actually two genres happening at the same time. These two genres being a TV Commercial, as well as a videogame cutscene.

The way in which I’m planning on adding both of these into a 60 second clip is interesting. My plan is to have the commercial be a video that plays within the cutscene and is a key part of it.

Lets start off with the TV Commercial. The commercial is going to consist of a telemarketing cooking show which seems to be making a rather weird dish. This is going to have multiple video distortions within the video with both the distortions happening to the kitchen and the individual themselves. This will try to consistently get across a feeling of stress and horror to the person witnessing this.

Secondly we’ll talk about the cutscene. This is where the commercial will be. You’ll start off by walking into this abandoned house after some sort of disaster on the world wiping your visor as you do. Once entering this house you’ll be greeted with an old box TV with one of its legs crooked and broken into the floor boards below. Once you move your light over the TV it sparks to life, starting off as static but quickly changing to the TV commercial. As the commercial plays out the player continues to move closer and closer to the TV eventually being physically dragged into the TV by something laying wait inside. Once again I’ll be trying to put across heavy horror vibes in an attempt to scare the player within this cutscene.

Categories
Digital Storytelling Year 3

The Flowchart of the Narrative

Categories
Digital Storytelling Year 3

Blockout/Prototype Environment

A topdown perspective of the blockout.
A perspective view of the blockout environment
A wireframe view of the blockout environment
An analysed version of the blockout environment explaining what things will be/what they represent.

Categories
Digital Storytelling Year 3

Script For Mothman In Space

The Voices you will hear whilst panning through environment.

Categories
Digital Storytelling Year 3

The thought behind the (Moth)Man

When I was coming up for ideas relating towards what it was that I wanted to do for my digital storytelling the main idea that I liked the sound of was cryptids. After this I looked through some of the cryptids. I looked at some of the popular ones such as Bigfoot, Nessie and the likes. And I also looked at some of the more obscure ones, such as Momo, Ogopogo and so on. After looking at a few I finally decided upon one, Mothman.

I looked into some of the theories surrounding Mothman, the main ones being about his arrival. There are two main theories about why he shows up, the first one is that he arrives at nexus points these being points in history that consist of large quantities of death to consume the energy that the deaths creates. The other theory is that he is the cause of these events, and he uses them to still gain energy.

After getting both of these theories I started hatching a story around them, I thought “If he’s a interdimensional being, why would he only show up in the present. We don’t know how old it is or how old it even can become.” Hence the futuristic theme used in my idea.

The reports of how Mothman looks can vary from a large owl/moth like creature to something more humanoid similar to that of batman. Though no matter what there is a recuring feature that repeats in every encounter which is two red eyes that seem to always watch you. Which is the main part of the mothman that I will be using making it so that you never see the mothmans body but you do see his two red eyes watching the death happening and then once its done looking at you instead.

Mood Board
Mind Map
Categories
Digital Storytelling Year 3

What if Mothman was real?

Set in the future within a space station/colony, they don’t think anything bad is going to happen but the viewer sees mothman moving around the outside of the station/colony (arriving due to an impending disaster that’s going to happen). 

People inside start to see things moving outside, but can’t distinguish what it is, the only thing they can make out is 2 large red eyes. The people who see it start to have symptoms of headaches and recurring nightmares of the ship’s electronics having issues and corrupting some of the passengers on board.

The disaster happens within the station/colony, which consists of the ship accidentally going through a spacial anomaly which ends up infecting some of the crew making them lose their appetites and also become hydrophobic (Space Rabies). They start to hallucinate and see their fellow crew as monsters and creatures, some even believing to see the mothman himself standing behind them (Omen of Death). This leads to the infected crew attacking each other as well as the innocent bystanders leading to mass death and infection and feeding the mothman. 

Ways to show the story could be through a 3D environment that shows the viewer the aftermaths of the disaster. This could consist of a futuristic space station room that holds up one of the few still infected as they’ve managed to lock him in the cargo room. The person would be bashing on the door with the faint sounds of talking from the other side. There would be blood on the floor and across the wall with the person foaming at the mouth and multiple bite marks on them. As the camera pans around the room mothman is seen multiple times for brief moments with only his piercing eyes visible. After about ⅔ of the walk through the voices would sound panicked as you overhear them mention that the electronics have failed and the camera spins round as you watch the door open up, the infected escape and the cycle continues. After this the walkthrough continues and you get the last sighting of mothman as you notice that his eyes have moved onto you.