LO 1.1 - Characteristics analysis

Visual Title Sequence Research

For this project, my inital idea is to create an opening sequence for a darts match. I tried looking online to see if there were any opening sequences I could link here, but there were hardly any, and the ones that were available weren't what I was looking for. However I have a rough idea of the kind of vibe I want in this project, so I found other opening sequences which capture that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShowyIVY7Hl46E

Spider-Man Spider-Verse opening titles

What I love about this is the visual treatment of the video. I love the sometimes realism, sometimes cartoon-ish, sometimes stylised look of the sequence - there is a lot of variety and it expresses the film very well. I love the typography too - it's very creative and doesn't just look like someone chose a font on Microsoft Word, it's very unique and arty, again reflecting the film and the main character of the film - Miles Morales, who sometimes makes graffiti art.
The audio also works very well with the opening sequence. It's again a very unique style of music, and it just sounds like the look of the video - if you didn't have either the music or the visuals there, you can get a pretty good idea of what they would look / sound like just by only either watching or listening to the opening sequence. Sometimes in the audio there is a glitch effect, which is a recurring theme throughout the film. It reminds me of someone spinning an old record, making the film feel a bit retro, which is definitely reflected in Miles Morales' character - the shoes he wears are originally from the 1980s, and later on in the film music is played on a record player.

Animation

Into/Across the Spider-Verse is known for its innovative animation and art style. The team behind the film wanted to make it seem more like a comic book, rather than trying to make the film look more realistic, as some animated films today are trying to do. They wanted the film to look and feel like a moving comic book, and to achieve this they had to try some different animation styles.
One of these is the use of smear frames. Typically in films, if a subject is moving quick, it is blurred to show that the subject is moving very quickly. However, in Spider-Verse they made use of absolutely no motion blur at all, and instead used smear frames.

Another unique technique used in Spider-Verse is the use of chromatic aberration. Normally in films if you want something to not be in focus, you simply blur it. But in Spider-Verse, everything is in focus, and when they wanted distant objects to appear out of focus, they made us of chromatic aberration.

One of my favourite techniques they used in this film is ben-day dots/halftoning as well as the use of hatching for shading

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-A65yop01Q 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BJkDyCdw0c

Se7en Title Sequence

Again I love the visual treatment in this video. When you watch it, it makes you feel a bit on edge, uncomfortable, squirmish. This obviously ties in perfectly with the film as it is about a serial killer, so by making the viewer feel uneasy right from the start sets the tone for the film.

Company/Organisation/Studio Research

Electric Arts (EA)

These are some of the games created by EA;

Stats

13,700 employees as of 2024
Founded 27th May 1982
Core development team size estimated to be somewhere around the 200-500 people mark
700,000,000 players

Hiring Process

• Apply on EA's website for a job that matches your skills and interest.

• Once they've reviewed your application, a recruiter will reach out if your experience and skills are a match. This first call is to talk about your background and the position.

• If that is a good match, you'll have a call with the hiring manager. 

• Are we all aligned? Great! If we are, we're moving forward. One of our talented talent coordinators will reach out to get your availability for interviews. We start with your schedule and work around your personal situation. 

• Your talent coordinator or recruiter will send your confirmed interview schedule in advance, as well as some tips for a successful Zoom interview. We can also share special Zoom backgrounds from our games, if you'd like. A lot of us use these during interviews to get in the game. 

• Your recruiter will let you know of any technical tests, case studies or whiteboard exercises that may come up during the process. We want you to feel as prepared and comfortable as possible, so don't hesitate to ask us questions. 

• After your interviews, your recruiter will tell you how it went and give you next steps. 

• Our timelines vary, so there isn't an estimate on how long your process will take. But we do try to move as quickly as possible for everyone's benefit.

All EA employees have also been working from home since March 2020.

Ethos

From the EA website;

• Creativity - Striving to bring imagination, original ideas and excitement to everything we do

• Pioneering - Acting with the curiosity and courage it takes to experiment, innovate and lead

• Passion - We are at our best when we pursue what we love, and have fun doing it

• Determination - Bringing focus, drive and conviction to our actions. Thriving on the journey and being motivated to achieve excellence

• Learning - Listening, having humility, being open to new ways of thinking and looking with a lens of inclusion. Challenging ourselves to grow and change as a company

• Teamwork - Committed to each other and to the accountability and integrity it takes to be a successful and team

Style of work

I've noticed that EA tend to only really go for one style the majority of the time, and that is realism. 

However there is one EA game that caught my eye - Need For Speed Unbound.

Kieran Crimmins was the Creative Director at Criterion Games for Need For Speed Unbound. In the YouTube video linked below he goes more in depth as to why these artistic choices were made, as well as other considerations when making NFS Unbound.
The reason the street art art style was chosen was because he believes the Need for Speed are synonymous with street culture, so therefore the art style represents the characters and general feel and culture of the game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ps6nV4wiCE

Arcane Trailer

The reason I decided to look into Arcane is because of the shading and visual techniques they use in the series. This is a screenshot from the trailer linked above. What I love about it is that the materials have a realistic shine and roughness, making the metals reflections look realistic, while still keeping a stylised look. I also love how the creators of Arcane made use of 2D smoke effects in a 3D scene, similar to what they did in NFS Unbound.

Slow Bros

'Slow Bros' are a "small group of people based in Germany, with an aim to combine digital and analogue worlds in the form of interactive experiences" (from Slow Bros website). Their members have varying skills, including skills in carpentry, filmmaking, illustration, apparel and games production. They have only created one game to date called Harold Halibut.

Joshua Beveridge

Joshua Beveridge was the animation supervisor for Into the Spider-Verse (the first film in the Spider-Verse trilogy) and is currently the the Head of Character Animation at Sony Pictures Imageworks. In the youtube video linked below, he talks about how he helped create the aesthetic we get in the Spider-Verse movies.

https://www.imageworks.com/our-team/joshua-beveridge

Primary Research

Half way through this project I got invited by my cousin to go to a darts final match. This was of course great fun, but also very helpful as it allowed me to be closer to the stage to see what they actually look like - I had struggled to find images of a darts stage.

LO 3.2 - Personal Development

My ambitions and aims for the unit are to explore creating realistic, stylised renders and fitting them to a certain art style, potentially explore different effects in After Effects / Premiere Pro and video editing. I want to develop my skills in realism as this is a good starting point for future courses - one of the courses I have looked into mainly focus on realism more than stylised work, as it is easier to work back from realism to create stylised work.
I would like to focus on the games design industry as this covers all the key areas of 3D design that interest me, and it will help me gain a better understanding of where I could end up in the future.
I know that I need to work on my time management skills, smething I will try to work on during this project.

LO 1.2 - Idea Development

Link to original feature including insight to the narrative and main characters if possible

Mood boards showing visual inspiration - art style, treatments and testure from the original feature
Consider visuals and videos that include:

Films
TV
Games
Graphic Novels
Photography
Illustration

Discussion around what I could do with the idea

Audio
Art style
Typography

Idea Generation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1la9DX8WzE 0:16-0:17

I really liked the short clip I referenced where the tip comes out of the grip of the dart, as if it is almost transforming.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CfTQmb4XbWk 0:00-0:03

This is also a helpful video, as it is clearly 3D rendered, so I can learn from this, particularly the clip I referenced. When the darts hit the board, the other darts wobble slightly, something to take into account when I come to create my opening sequence.

Art Style / Visual Aspects

Sky Sports Live: Premiere League Darts (opening)

I can't link this video as it is from Sky Sports and not on youtube, but I have managed to screenshot some images that were visually appealing.
I love the chalk look that they went for - stripping darts back to its roots with scoring on a blackboard. I like that they showed the history of darts with such a simple idea.

I took this screenshot because I like the effects they put on the video - the black and white filter as well as the edges with small bits of text, looking as if this clip was filmed on an old video camera.
The typography works really well too - it's very simple and easy to read, and somehow just matches the vibe of darts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSy1thHDnzk 0:43

I picked this particular image because you can clearly see the use of 'Ben-Day Dots,' a shading technique used in comic books. It adds a fun, vintage feel to the scene and makes it just a bit more fun and interesting to look at.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyIVY7Hl46E 1:12 - 1:22

What I liked in this sequence is the use of one brand, and multiple different logo designs - they took the Sony logo, and threw up a load more designs really quickly. This is something I may try and experiment with in my title sequence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqDHGa2ezXo 0:13 - 0:15

For a brief moment in this clip you can see something called match-cutting, a technique in which you take multiple photos/videos of the same subject, and align all of them with each other so that the subject is in the same place. It makes for a cool effect, as it gives the impression of motion despite it just being a few photos. 

Audio

No Rain by Carneyval - The audio seems to suit the vibe of a video idea I have in my head, and with some glitch effects and audio syncing, I think it could look great.

Darkside by Neoni - During the chorus of the song there are 3 beats that go off really quickly. As darts players use 3 darts per throw, this could work very well

Mama Said Knock You Out by LL COOL J - Has a fun and funky vibe about it, which could go very well with the darts vibe.

Shot Ideas

• Purely chalk scene - Effectively create an animation that looks like a stop motion on a chalkboard of a dart hitting the dartboard

• Dart in its 3 different parts and slowly pulled together. Darts stage then revealed and 3 of the newly formed dart flies into the T20/Bullseye (whatever one's cooler), with each one at a varying level to show the text on the flights, one flight saying "WHO", another "WILL" and the last "WIN".

• Dart on the right of the screen and flies towards the left

• Dart is flying and hits a dartboard which blows up

• Camera zooms into the dart and slows down (slow-mo)

Storyboarding

• Dart starts off on the right of the screen and flies towards the left

• As the dart is flying it hits a dartboard

• The dartboard blows up

• The pieces of the dartboard continue to fly with the dart keeping them in frame

• Camera moves closer toward the dart to allow for player stats to appear in post-production editing

Production

Life Changing Videos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNBe2t9KOJA (benday dots)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtetvOEcZt8 14:53 - 16:18 (paintbrush effect)

I randomly came across these videos on YouTube which really helped out with getting the spider-verse look. Before I found these videos, I kept trying to do the benday dots on the actual blender models. However, what this video teaches is a way that is much simpler and a lot quicker. It taught me how to get the benday dots in the compositor tab in Blender (effectively a photo editing software built into Blender itself).

Production + Production Evaluation

During the research phase, I got a bit impatient and just wanted to start making stuff on blender and experimenting with different shading techniques. Oh my am I glad I did this because I think if I hadn't I'd be about 2 weeks away still from finishing this project. I tried to get benday dots to appear in the lighter areas of a material, and hatch shading in the darker parts. I tried doing this by changing the material itself.

If you look closely at the image below, you can see the dots appearing in the lighter areas. One problem with using this shading technique was that I couldn't get the hatch shading in the darker areas which was a problem. I could've still put hatch shading on but it would've meant changing the material of every single material in the scene, so I decided against that as it would've been rather time consuming, and at this point I don't think Id even started animating the darts video yet and I had about 2 weeks left of the project.

The image on the left is a still render I did after I had already finished the video, so the final video you see will look slightly different to this. I added a still render as I think the spider-verse look wasn't very apparent in the final video, but I still wanted to show my process of how I went about trying to achieve that look.

Now onto the million problems I had with animation.

Before I start, I also want to make a note of the fact that originally I was going to use the song "Chainsmoking" by Jacob Blanks, meaning I had to time everything up to that song. However, halfway through production I came across "Toxic" by 2WEI, which appealed to me a lot more. I decided on that change at the start of the final week of production.

I'd already done a simple animation of the dart flying from left to right, and I wanted to make the dart hit a dartboard which would then blow it up. So now I had to figure out a way to get the dartboard to actually blow up, which was the easy part as I found it on a YouTube video. However I noticed that the dartboard was cracked - as if the dart had already hit it - before the dart even made contact with the board. So I had to copy and paste the original model of the dartboard and scale it over the top of the cracked board and then made the solid dartboard disappear as the dart made contact with it, so that the dartboard still looked like it was all in one piece until the dart actually hit the dartboard. Then the pieces weren't flying with the dart, the dartboard just blew up but stayed exactly where it was. So I had to figure out a way to get the pieces to fly with the dart; a. quick enough so that the pieces would stay on frame, but b. not too quick that they overtook the dart, because that's obviously not very realistic at all. So the way I did that was I got the dart to act as a physical object in the 3D scene, so that it would 'push through' the dartboard, therefore making the pieces fly forward with the dart. However the timing was off and the pieces seemed to fly off after the dart was already a distance away from the board - basically the dartboard was blowing up after the dart hit it, not as it hit it. So I had to make an invisible object behind the dart to push the dartboard pieces out of the way to achieve the look I wanted. Great. But the pieces still wouldn't fly forwards for long enough. So I had to add in some wind to push the dart pieces along. So, I set the wind value to say, 100 and now, finally the pieces were all flying forwards and everything was hunky dory. But then I noticed that the wind picked up in speed, which meant that all the pieces of the dartboard would speed up, eventually overtaking the dart, which obviously wasn't very realistic at all. So I had to tell the wind to be so powerful on one frame, and then a few frames later tell it to be less powerful. This was a lot harder than it sounds because I had to find the right values to put in to keep the movement of the pieces seamless while also keeping them in frame and to achieve the desired look. I ended up having 3 winds in the end to get the pieces to fly in a way I wanted them to. But then I noticed that some of the pieces were spinning really quickly, like really quick, and that looked stupid. So I had to go through and edit this value

to the z location, which made the dart appear to - for lack of a better term - 'bounce' around a bit. Then I added some noise to the y rotation to make the dart wobble. So now the dart was flying imperfectly, but the overall animation still didn't look right. The problem I had was that when the dart was flying, before the dart was on frame, it looked as though the dart was stationary because it was on a pitch black background, and there was no reference to see how fast the dart was actually going.

So I decided to add some mist in the background. Part of the reason for this was that when I was imagining the video, I could imagine there being some mist in the background as well as a bright light, sort of giving it the impression that it was in outer space or under water. So I decided to kill 2 birds with one stone and make the mist produce light. Looking back on this, it still isn't quite how I imagined it, but it made the project look a thousand times better than before. Below you can see the purple mist in the background.

Back to the animation with the dart.

I decided to add some lighting around the dart to keep the lighting consistent throughout the whole video. However when I parented the lights and camera to the dart, because of the noise textures applied to the dart, the lights and camera were also wobbling around (as they effectively copy the animation from the dart). So I had to unparent everything and manually add keyframes to keep the lights consistently in the same place relative to the dart.

At this point of the project I hadn't added in any colours (every example of my work I've used so far has been from the finished result as I am writing this after I have already finished the project) and I also hadn't yet added the camera zoom. The problem was I was going to slow the video down after the dart had hit the dartboard, which meant I had to render at a high enough frame rate so that when the video got slowed down, it was still a smooth animation. I was also going to zoom in on the dart after the video was slowed down. I could've done this in post-production however that would've meant a drop in quality, so I wanted to move the camera in the 3D scene to avoid this problem. So I decided to do a quick render of the animation I had so that I could make a mock up in CapCut of what the video would roughly look like, and so I could also figure out on what frame I had to move the camera in towards the dart. Below are some keyframes of the video (as I couldn't import the video for some reason).

So now that I had my template animation ready, it was time to add some colour in. I decided to just do an opening sequence for the Premiere League of Darts Final, as that meant I only had to do 2 different videos instead of 8 (which was my original idea). Adding the colours was a fairly easy process, just a case of changing the colour of the lights in the scene and the mist. I found out that the lights I put in to follow the dart created highlights on the dartboard pieces, which meant I could get the colour of the scheme of the player in quite a fun stylised way.

Different darts players also use different types of darts, so I had to change the original model of a dart I had based on the player that was being shown at the time.

Finally the Blender side of the project was finally done.

Now onto Premiere Pro.

By now I think it's around the Wednesday / Thursday before the project is due in, and I have next to no experience with Premiere Pro (Pp). So I'm already on the backfoot a bit which was absolutely fantastic. However, working on Pp was reasonably trouble free. I made some graphics in Photoshop (Ps) which I then transferred over to the Pp project. I wanted to make some player graphics that would appear on the screen, and I still wanted them to be in the colour scheme of the darts player. This was relatively easy to do in Ps, I just added a gradient map to the image which meant that anything originally light in the image was now yellow, and anything dark in the image was now purple/blue (changed the colour for the different darts players). 

For the audio of the video I screen recorded some commentary from darts matches and then extracted the audio. I wanted to get some commentary from the 'best moments' of each darts player's career. One of the pieces of commentary is during the world championship of darts when Luke Littler first started to make a name for himself. The other commentary is from when Luke Humphries won the world championship. I also added an echo effect to make the commentary more dramatic which I really liked.

These are some screenshots to show the effects I added to the audio to achieve the echo effect.

Overall Evaluation (addition to previous section)

Overall, I'm slightly disappointed with the final result of the video. The spider-verse look I was so excited to experiment with is hardly noticeable, unless you really look for it. This could be solvable if I had just changed some settings in the compositor, but that would mean re-rendering everything which I simply just don't have enough time for. There are some shots in which the benday dots are bigger than they are in other shots. One key aspect of the Spider-Verse look is the painted sort of look on the materials. This is something I didn't really get time to experiment with unfortunately, and I think if I could've, the project could've tied in with my research and original goals better.
I also wanted to try out other art styles. One thing I really wanted to try was a chalk scene, where the whole animation looked like it was drawn on a chalkboard. I think I could definitely have done this, but again I just needed more time. I'm disappointed that I didn't get to experiment with this, but I guess there is only so much you can do in 6 weeks.
My main problem with this project was time. If I had just had one more week, I think it could've gone that little bit better. I think the reason I ran out of time was because I was quite ambitious with what I wanted to achieve, and only found out how to get that look I wanted 2 weeks before the end of the project. I think had I stumbled upon that video at the start of the project it could have gone very differently. This isn't particularly my fault, just unfortunate circumstances.
I'm also not very happy with how the opening few shots look. They were created in about 1 day, and they were made right at the end of the project, so I didn't have enough time to properly sort them out, which is why I think there is a big quality difference between the opening shots, and the shots of the dart hitting the dartboard. I didn't like the lighting, the materials didn't look realistic in the background, the animation of the darts wasn't perfect, and the camera shake just looked off too

However, I am very happy with how I performed in this project. There are still more problems I encountered, but I genuinely think if I covered them all the written section would be about twice as long as it is. Despite all the setbacks I still pushed through and didn't let any of it bother me. I like that I didn't give up or think "that'll do," I really tried to get the best possible look I could with the time I was given. I enjoyed all the challenges of this project, and I really enjoyed solving one problem which then resulted in another problem and having to find a way to solve that one too. It was a really fun challenge to try and produce a video up to my perfectionist standards in a style that I had never really tried before. I didn't quite realise how ambitious of a challenge it would be, but I loved the feeling I got from being resilient and being a problem solver. Of course there are things I would do differently, but looking at the whole picture I can't really be disappointed with what I achieved.

SWOT Analysis Evaluation

Strengths

Looking back on my SWOT analysis, I feel like I definitely played to my strength in Blender quite well. I was pushing the limits of my knowledge and intuition, while also having to learn new methods and techniques, and I think I did very well with applying my Blender knowledge to this project.

However, I was lacking bit in idea development. I could only think of a darts intro sequence and really struggled to think of an opening title sequence for anything else.
However, when I was set on doing a darts title sequence, the ideas didn't stop flooding in. I also spoke to multiple people, showing them my work who gave me different ideas for my project. Someone on my course recommended the camera zoom idea which ultimately sprouted into having the player graphic show up and the change in audio choice as well as a couple other small details.

Weaknesses

Time management (as always) was still a bit of a problem in this project. However that wasn't due to a lack of motivation, it was because I was quite ambitious with what I wanted to achieve. At the time of writing there is 1h50m until this project is due in. So yeah I definitely used all the time available.
My motivation and concentration/focus really weren't an issue in this project. This was the most motivated I had ever felt for a project I had done before, and I could easily focus on it for hours on end. I think this was due to me having a vision in my head and being desperate to get that into something visual. I have been likened to 'a dog with a bone' in the past, and I definitely lived up to that with this project. I would also tell myself if I felt like I had a lot of work to do "I will get x done by this date" which helped too. As challenging as the timeframe was, it definitely helped with my work ethic. This was the first time in a project I didn't get distracted by other personal endeavours along the way.

Opportunities

In regard to making realistic renders, this project wouldn't be my best example of that. But that is mainly due to the fact that I was trying to achieve a stylised look when I actually got to starting the project. But there are some areas of the final video that I wanted to look realistic but just don't (which I covered in the penultimate paragraph of my overall evaluation). Again, I could've very easily gotten a more realistic look had I had more time, so I'm not too disheartened by this.
This project is definitely something I would add to my portfolio. It is a brilliant example of my resilience and work ethic, and although it was far from perfect, it provides an opportunity for me to talk about my idea development, suggestions for improvements and other idea suggestions I had along the way. It also demonstrated a willingness to work in - and learn - multiple software. I worked in Blender, Premiere Pro (Pp) and Photoshop to achieve a result I was pleased with, even though my knowledge in Pp is fairly limited.

Threats

As I have mentioned many times already, time was my biggest problem and definitely did end up being a threat. Well, it ended up being more of a brutal attack rather than a threat. This is just something to note in future. Most of the lack of time I encountered wasn't my fault, it was just a case of being ambitious and experimenting with new things that I hadn't tried before. However I think that with a little bit more digging, I could have come across the video showing how to get the Spider-Verse look in the compositor a lot sooner which would've helped a lot.

I'm annoyed with how little time I had in the end, because even as I'm writing I am having to cut corners and leave out some details of the project because I just do not have enough time. This bothers me because it will probably effect my grade and, in case you hadn't noticed yet, I am a perfectionist and I aim for the highest grades there are. I'm definitely not the kind of person to sit back and look at my work and think "that'll do," but unfortunately I have been forced to do that at times because of the lack of time.