Final Project: Initial Research

Creating notes for myself:


Horror Shot Enhance

Visual Effects: Discovery Project

My final one minute submission for the Term 3 Discovery Project. Unfotunatly, I could not make room for sound.

Enjoy.

If you have any questions make a post of email me at mmcdonald118@gmail.com

AE Course Final Submission

This is my final for After Effects Class. I compositied a bunch of things I learned from the class and threw it on to a Halo Reach clip I recorded earlier. This is the final result and it took around an hour and a half. 

Process:

To create things like the green scan line effect I just used a Grid with different directional blurs. The target assist was created from a Solid using masks to create "tech rings" that later formed a reticle. Expressions are also used on the reticle spin position to seem random.

Discovery Project Journal #4 Zombie Make Up

Here is Andrew Kong, our resident "model", turning into a zombie before your eyes. Our good friend Katie Melanson from the Film Campus volunteered to come out all the way to West Van to put on some amazingly gross undead make up effects.

Before Zombified! (well not really)          

You never go full Zombie...

I would give special thanks to Katie for the amazing job she did on the make up, you basically made this project ten times better than it would be. I also want to thank Andrew for being a good sport about being a zombie for four and half hours and Dayln for being an awesome cameraman and great person to work with and bounce ideas off of.

Thanks!

Gaming on the Rocks: A Recap

Last night I attended EXP Presents: Gaming on the Rocks.

Now I half expected this to be some huge dudefest where people were just going be LANin' in up and the women were hunchbacks that spent their times in clock towers than social events...but was most definitely wrong. This seemed more like an E3 after party than anything. Dead Rising 2, Halo Reach, NHL (whatever the recent one is...) and a bunch of others sprawled across thirteen TV Screens they even had the PS3 Move--which I must say was really not that fun to play once you have played the Wii.  Hell, they even had their own semi-booth babes selling vouchers to buy food. The drinks were great too. They had a lot of hilarious names to existing drinks like "Level Up" and "Shoryuken". 

I mostly played Halo Reach because most of the other venues and screens had huge lineups and Halo Reach was the only game I could really excel at either than NHL, which at that point was taken over by a group of VIPs. Reach was enjoyable for the most part except the fact that everyone kind of didn't know how to play and the people that did were not all that great either but I still had a blast racking up Multi-kills.

In the end it was a great night of drinking and gaming and socializing that I won't forget soon and I encourage everyone who is reading this to get check it out next year if they do it.

Who is Artosis?

I agree this world is IMBA!

Remember Noble (Wallpaper)

Noble Team Wallpaper
By Matty McDonald
(1440x900)
(1920x1200

(1360x768)

Discovery Project Journal #3 HUD Test V 1.0

This is a Heads Up Display test.

The main focus of this test was to see how it work with different distortions.  In this version I created a run down blue HUD it isn't the final, hell, it's even off centered in this rendition but I created it to get a recognition of where the distortion was coming from.

Note how low the camera is to the ground. Laugh Out Loud.

I used Mesh Distort to create this wrapping effect of the HUD, I also tried to create some sort of lens "bending" on the left and right side but that will most likely be scrapped because it looks like crap.

Discovery Project Journal #2 Projection Test

Last weekend I finished a few tests for the Heads Up Display model for the project. This test was for the projections that the HUD would produce for things like looking around the room and tracking things using this futuristic helmet our character would be wearing. 

This video entails a street light projecting a hologram out of the green light and seemingly coordinated with the numbers on the left of it (which actually says "Rate" above the digits).  Using this effect would bring off the appearance of a very high tech display that would literally track everything much like a Terminator.  

Discovery Project Journal #1 The "Pitch"

I've decided to re-create this blog some of my work while I am at VFS.  However, I am going to be using these "Journal" segments to see how I got from point A to point B in my Discovery Project.

What my Discovery Project entails is basically a thirty to forty five second clip of a camera moving from the angle of a first person perspective in a single shot. This idea was inspired by the first person shooter genre and I have always wanted to create something that would allow me composite my own visual effects in the Heads Up Display.  The story was simple there is no dialogue just sound effects, foley and ambiance the sole narrative is based on first person camera movements.

The plan was to have our character work like this:

Character moves through door > Character finds something on the ground that indicates someone is in distress > Character sees movement in the corner of his eye > Moves around the other side to intercept it > Character falls to the creature/zombie/whatever.

Camera angles all follow within one solid shot and movement. I'm still working out the kinks with an AV script but that is the main idea.