The Final Product

This would be the first section of our film, I really like how this section has been edited its exciting and makes you want to see more.

The next few sections start to slow down a little.







The last section is the most peculiar to watch, I found it quite strange and funny at the same time. When the box that holds the pigeons appears it just pops out from no where, its quite comical. Unfortunately the pigeon didn't integrate into the footage nicely part of its disappeared I would have liked to have fixed this if I had the time.

I don't have this video at the moment but might be able to upload it at a later date.

Editing

Editing was all left to the day before the deadline which I was a little unsure about. I was really worried that it wouldn't get finished. The first section of the film at the train station looked awesome. It was really jumpy and the audio of the zombies sounded really good. As the film goes on however, the editing looks like its been rushed and starts to get a little boring. I think we needed to keep the same quick feel that the first edit had. It was quite difficult to create a realistic zombie apocalypse with only five zombies, I think the main reason why it gets a little boring because it all the same thing over and over again. If we had been able to accomplish what we wanted to do with the amount of zombies growing and it getting more gruesome it would have looked so much better but it was very difficult to get people to be zombies in our film.

Rendering the pigeon Animation

When rendering out the animation I couldn't decide which lights looked better in the animation. Some made really dark shadows, but another one made a really clear green and would have made it easier to get rid of and intergrate it into the other footage. I decided to use both lights and although this also didn't make the shadows very dark, it did make the pigeon look very cool so I decided to stick with this and see what the final render looks like.

It took about 4 hours altogether to render out.

The next step is to put it into after effects and delete all the green. hopefully this won't be too difficult I've never done it before.

Finished Pigeon Texture

After drawing on all the feathers I had a look at the texture on my pigeon modelled and thought it looked a bit flat and plain. I added loads of lines to the texture to make it look more scratchy and rough. I also had a look at more images of pigeons to see where there feathers are darker and where there light, I also added greens and purples to give the pigeon some more colour.

It took a longer time to do but I think it was worth it because it looks quite realistic

The Pigeon is now fixed

I finally fixed the pigeon and this animation second time round looks better than the first one all I have to do now is finished the texturing and render it out. The animation isn't perfect but the way I've angled the camera you can't really see the flaws.

Disaster With the pigeon

I did something very stupid with the pigeon animation. In 3Ds Max you have layers, so a edit poly layer (for the model) a skin layer and a rigg layer. You ususally collapse the editable layers to make the file size smaller. I collapsed the rigged layer, saved the file and then shut down my computer when I reopened it the animation for the skeleton was still there but the skeleton was no longer attached to the pigeon. I bascially deleted the rigg layer, what makes it even worse is that 3Ds Max comes up with a box to say are you sure you want to do this it could delete everything, but because I was in a rush I just ignored the warnings signs and did it anyway.

To fix this problem I would have to re-rigg the skeleton to the model. Luckily I saved my project as a separate file before I rigged my model so now all I have to do is rigg it again and animate it. To make sure the pigeon is finished on time I'm going have to work extra hard.

Presentation Results

The presentation results went well but colin and Darren did mention that the reason why we might be struggling a bit with our group is because we have too many chief's and not enough indians, too many roosters and not enough chickens.

Rachael and I thought it might be good if we meet up with the other roosters to see who's going turn into a chicken.

I thought it might be a little bit of a tence meeting because everyones been very stressed lately so I decided to draw a funny drawing to lift everyone spirits.

I'm more than happy to be a chicken I just need to be told what to do or I get confused and turn into a rooster.

The problem didn't seem to get completely resolved, after the meeting it seemed like no one wanted to push to much because they didn't want to create more tension. This all happened the last day of filming so when we were discussing what should happen at the end of the film no one seemed to have a clear idea of what they wanted to do with the pigeon. Someone suggested why don't we just get rid of it altogether or just have a still of it. I was really confused of where this came from because I thought everyone liked the pigeon idea. I asked everyone two weeks into the project whether they liked the pigeon idea and I was happy to drop it as I hadn't spent that much time on it at that point, but they said they all liked it and wanted to carry on with the idea. I said I wasn't happy with us dropping the idea as I had already spent so much time modelling and texturing the pigeon.

Last of the Filming Woooo

Last day of filming. Last night we had try to film again but there was some confusion about who was getting out the camera and we ended up not having one. That was an annoying disaster which could have easily been avoided.

Again we had hardly any zombies, even less than last time, there was some talk about putting off filming again but I definitely didn't want to do that. I thought we'd just have to accept that were not going to have the amount of zombies we'd want and we'd just have to make do with what we've got.

Everyone seemed a bit distracted while filming today we ended up filming a strange crazy man dancing on the path for a while. It was funny a first but then I realised that our volunteer zombies were starting to get bored and wanted to get home. It was difficult to try and re-focus everyone especially since the police then turned up to try and move on the crazy dancing man.

We then moved on to film at city hall we filmed the footage with the volunteer zombies first so they could get off home. We did a scene where I would be drooling fake blood that was quite gross, it didn't taste very nice and I couldn't help but giggle part the way through.

We didn't finish filming as early as I would have like, it means we've got less time to edit.

I'm glad I don't have to put that gross fake blood on anymore.

Filming

First things first the zombie make up. Rachael came up with this awesome concoction of ribena, coffee and corn flower which really looked like blood. She used PVA as a base coat and then covered us in face paint and the fake blood. It looked horrible and didn't smell very nice but it did the job really well. I swear when Rachael was putting it on me she was delibrately aiming for my nose and mouth. She would just get a massive handful of this smelly stuff and then just smear it all over our faces it was quite funny to watch, thats if you weren't the person getting attacked by Rachael. I don't think me skin really like being smothered by all of this stuff, it started to burn up to start off with but it seem to calm down once we'd got out in the cold. We didn't have that many zombies anyway I didn't really want to pull out as well.


The first day of filming was quite funny. We got all zombied up went down to the train station and couldn't figure out how to work the sound on the camera. It was freezing cold and we were standing around for about an hour. We were in the middle of fiddling around with the camera and the train station lights went out after that we decided to call it a night and we'd figure out how to work the camera tomorrow. As soon as we left the lights mysteriously came back on again so we were wondering whether they had turned the lights off just to get rid of us.

It was quite frustrating that we couldn't film that first night because I felt like we let down the people who did come out to be zombies.

When I washed off the paint my face didn't look too red so I sue it'll be fine to be a zombie again.

The second day of filming went a lot smoother. There was a lot of struggle to get people out to be zombies. In the end I had to tempt people with brownies, that got a couple of people out but no where near the number we needed.

We figured out why the camera sound wasn't working properly it was quite funny. It was because there was so much sound that the camera just cut the sound out. This was due to us being quite close to the fountain. Luckily this time the fountain had been turned off. We thought we should work quickly just incase the lights decided to turn off again.

We got the camera all working fine the only problem was getting Jorden to get his lines right. It was a freezing cold night again and in one scene I had to be lying on the floor. Luckily Jorden managed to get that scene done quite quickly. The scene that took the longest was the scene by the work station. We ended up with about 30mins about of footage of Jorden saying his line and then swearing because he messed up, it was quite amuzing to look back at.

Because we didn't have that many zombies we decided to only do the sections where we didn't really need them, and it was freezing so we didn't want to be out too long.

Complete computer generated pigeon

The pigeons coming along but theres still a lot that needs adjusting. It looks quite lumpy at the moment.







I adjusted all the lumpy section but realised that I didn't consider how the pigeon would look top down at the moment it still looks quite box like.









After adjusting the shape of the body, I made the curves curved and also added a smooth modifier to make it smoother. I still need to adjust the beak, wings, legs and make the face more curved.








I made the wings look less like aeroplane wings. I added a little feathered edge to it to give them more shape, I also did this for the tail. I decided not to model separate feathers like I did with my plastecine model, this would take way too long and wouldn't make my pigeon look very realistic. I realised half way through modeling my pigeon how to use the symmetry modifier. I should have used this at the start of modeling my pigeon it would have saved so much work.









I showed this pigeon to a couple of my friends to see what they thought of it and they suggested that I should make the neck of the pigeon longer and the head slightly smaller. I did this and it looked so much better.


The final Pigeon model

This is my final model and I'm really pleased with it, it took a lot longer than I expected it to and I'm sure theres a better way to model something, but for what I'm using it for I think its a pretty good simple model.
I showed the pigeon to may group and I think they liked it.

Filming dates and equipment needed

We have decided on filming dates which will be, Monday 7th and Tuesday 8th, hopefully the last filming date will be the 14th that way we will have enough time to edit everything.

The equipment we'll need are:-

Sony MX2
Tape
Tripod
Rifel mic
Radio mic
Light reflector?

Computer Pigeon

I haven't really had any experience in modeling on the computer but it seems like fun. I'm just going to make it easy for myself and start from a box. I shall use the pictures from my plastercine pigeon as a guide.








After the basic shape of the pigeon was done I extruded out the wings, beak and legs, and then started smoothing stuff up.








so far I haven't had any major disasters, I always make sure I save my work at the sepaate stages so if anything does go wrong I can always go back.

Plastercine Zombie Pigeon

I first modelled the basic body of the pigeon and then added lots of little ovals and layered them on top of each other to make them look like feathers. I added wire to the wings, tail and feet to make them stronger and able to handle there own weight.



Unfortunatly the pigeon had a little accident and the wings have become very weak and starting to tear.

I decided to take the wings off and use thicker and stronger wing to reattach them









I painted the pigeon quite dark colours using a lot of greens and purples to brighten it up. I brushed over the feathers in white to bring out of the shapes more. I added a little bit of red to the beak to look like blood to make it look more gruesome.












I tried to re-attach the wings with thicker wire but it was to difficult to try and feed the wire through. I ended up piercing it through the top of the body or the wing. I decided that since we had decided not to use a stopmotion pigeon anymore that I would just leave the wings off. I will still use the photos I have taken as guides for my 3D model.

Zombie Pigeon

The zombie pigeon is this huge mutated bird which first spreads the zombie infection. I first made the zombie in plastercine as we might use it for stop motion. It would also make it easier for me to model it on the computer if I had a structure to reference it from.

Surprisingly it was quite easy to find images of pigeons that look very dirty and ragged.




The ugly pigeons tend to have ruffled up feathers quite large beaks and the feathers are also very dark.
The eyes are red and quite large.

Meet the Group

We are a group of 5, 6 including our MCP. There is Rikki Chart, Jorden Guest, William Ceuppens, Rachael Hufton and me. Then our MCP Dan Williams.



















We disscussed assigning each other jobs but we decided that it might be best if everyone does a bit of everything so no one should be left with either all the work or none of the work.

When it comes to filming we decided that there were people that were better at using a camera than others, like me who's a bit useless. We're going to work to people's strengths.

My strengths are animating so I asked if it was alright if I could model and animated the pigeon, and to make myself useful in the filming front I would be a zombie as we need quite a few.

Story Line of Film

The story line of our film is about a mutated zombie pigeon that starts off a zombie infection, you don't find out about the pigeon until the end. The film starts off screams and strange noises but the screen is black with just the introductory sequence for example the title. The film would stay dark and someone would start talking about zombie attacks that had happened in the city, newspaper styled images would start to come onto the screen as he is talking about the zombie attacks. He would then say something like "We're about to go to the scene of the attacks, the first attack was at ..... come with us to .... and we'll show you what actually happened". That would be the first short section the next section would be at the first scene of the attack. It would be a comical zombie attack, and as you progress through the film the attacks would get more gruesome and more comical the amount of zombies would also grow as you go through the story line. The reports of the attacks would be done as news reports. All of the attacks would be done as the news reporter goes to the scene of the crime after the attack has happened.
The last zombie attacks would be at the train station the zombies would be coming down the steps of the train station. The news reporters are about to catch the zombies live on camera. As they go to hide out of sight from the zombies they hear strange rustling noises coming from behind them. One of the camera crew turns around and starts screaming as the rest of the crew turn around they see this massive zombie pigeon running towards them snapping its beak. The camera falls to the floor and the rest crew run away screaming (these screams would be the same screams and sounds that would be at the beginning of the film). The screen would go black and then newspaper articles would shoot onto the screen. They would be articles of the army retrieving the zombie pigeon and taking him away. It would also flash up to an article of the zombies being trapped into the showroom. The image of the zombies on the newspaper would then turn into a moving image of the zombies clawing to get out.

Throughout the film there would be references about the film industry in sheffield.

We haven't decided how the pigeon got mutated but at the end of the film there could be articles about how its a government conspiracy, the pigeon was made to be a biological weapon and stuff like that.

Intergrated Project Ideas

For our intergrated project module we have to make a something that is able to be used with wikitude. I was a little confused about the idea at first but initially came up with few ideas before I grouped up. I know a lot of ideas that had been said by other groups where to make a walkthrough of sheffield pointing out important areas of sheffield and giving information in the ideas. I really wanted to create a fantasy world with mythical creatures.
When I grouped up my team members they said they also wanted to do a more fantasy type of world. Many ideas were past around the group and we finally decided on making a documentary styled film involving zombies and other creepy creatures. It would be made in a grainy old styled film. We also wanted to involve areas of sheffield that have also been used in the film industry to support the sheffield film industry. There has also been talk about trying to involve the showroom and seeing if they would show our short film. There was some talk today about one of the final scenes would be the zombies trying to escape the showroom and that would be a metaphor for the films bursting out the showroom. At first I didn't get the whole metaphor thing at all but after my team members explained it it seemed like a really cool idea.
The storyline for the film is we are documenting what happened in sheffield in the zombie attacks. It turns out that the zombie attacks started from this mutated zombie pigeon. The film is about trying to keep the zombies at bay and stopping any more zombies happening.
The storyline for the film hasn't been completely set out yet but the ideas are forming quickly. I have been assigned the role of creating the zombie pigeon which is awesome and will get started on that straight away.