Amie McGovern's Portfolio
Collaborating With Kane (Sound Design) And Oliver (VFX)
About My Collaboration With Kane Obrien
Kane is a third year Ravensbourne Sound Design student. He got in contact with me after seeing my Pitch and asked if I was interested in collaborating.
Kane has been a massive help in both sound design and also giving me lots of feedback on my ideas along side helping me come up with ideas. We have been communicating mostly by email and having phone calls over Discord. Working along side a fellow creative has really helped push me to come up with new ideas and also opened my eyes to new possibilities.
Originally I felt I was just going to have subtle background noise similar to my 'Creature Comforts' reference. However Kane's new ideas has really helped push my project. His idea to put music to the characters to help add character I feel is a grate idea and will help the overall piece come together much more smoothly. Listing to his other work I can tell he is good at adding music in a subtle way in which is not too overpowering yet adds emotion, so am excited to see what he creates. Kane will also be voice acting the Ox.
About My Collaboration With Oliver Hancock
Oliver Hancock is a third year Multimedia Computing student from Coventry University. He works part time in Jaguar Landover helping with 3D modelling and texturing along side working on modifying online game engines such as GTA, Highlife, he has a lot of practice when it comes to using Blender, so I asked him if he would like to collaborate. Oliver has been a huge help as I had never used Blender before this project.
Oliver taught me how to reassign the textures to my characters once I brought them into Blender, helping me gain more Blender knowledge. Once I have the textured animation in Blender, I place it where I want it to go in my image and then pass the file onto ollie.
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Ollie then works on making sure my animation is placed correctly, adds lighting, shadows, any 3D models that are needed and also some finishing touches e.g., water ripples to make sure the animation looks as realistic as possible. Ollie will then be rendering my animations.
Oliver will also be Voice acting as The Gorilla.
Kane's Work
Kane's notes to me after looking through my original ideas at possible lines for the animals to use.
My Notes to Kane after we discussed on zoom that we are to just use the interviews and not any scripted voice acting. As we both agreed the interviews have a more organic feel to them.
Kane's Script idea using the interview recordings. The pink and purple notes are my impute I added once he sent the script to me. We had previously both had desiccations about who to cast as what animal. Kane really helped me decide upon this as he knew less of the people who were interviewed so was able to picture there voices as animals better.
First Idea Sound Animatic By Kane
Kane put together the final recordings, creating music to go with it. He added his sound to some of my pictures and drawings to create this animatic. He also came up with the end scene lines which I really love. Overall I really liked the outcome, especially loving the music he created however my teachers and classmates did not understand the audio so I decided to go back to the original idea of creating a script in which Kane later helped with.
Kane's Idea for new script
Overall I really liked his idea for the Ox so this was the main idea I took from this script which was super helpful.
Background noise Audio; Second Draft Audio;
I asked Kane to shorten the introduction to a maximum of 10 seconds as I felt it was a little too long for the animation despite it sounding beautiful.
Final Audio
Overall I am really happy with the final sound I think it really helps tie my animations together and help them come to life with the subtle noises such as the Chameleon eating and the elephants foot steps.
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I also really love the music he created I think it sounds fun and mischievous, helping to add character. Along side making the piece more engaging.
Oliver's Work
Render Test Plus Ice Cream Model (Collaboration With Oliver)
I sent my original blender composition to Oliver who I am collaborating with to help me with the VFX side of my project. Oliver helped set up my scene and add lighting and shadows. He also created a 3D model of a ice cream melting, for my Chameleon to eat. Overall I feel he helped my scene look a lot better then it originally did. I love the shadows as I feel they make the Chameleon look much more realistic.
To This (Oliver's Test Render)
From This
Wave Movement Test
Oliver experimented with adding subtle wave texture movements to the water. I really like the outcome as I feel it helps the scene come to life.
Render Timing Test
To render the scene with the wave ripples it took roughly 1 second per frame.
Taking into consideration my animatic is 1 minute 27 Witch is 87 seconds that is 2,175 frames.
2,175 frames converted to minutes would be 36.25 minutes of rendering time for my project.
Oliver's Blender Work
Oliver added fur to my Gorilla I feel this was a huge help in helping my character come to life.
Oliver found a new way to add the character to the photograph. By 3D modelling the image he was able to use a tool to make sure the character was sitting at the right level and angle.
Oliver's Final Gorilla Render
Overall I am super happy with the outcome of this render as I love the way Ollie has added lighting and shadows alongside fur to really help the animation come to life along side make it look although the Gorilla is really their.
Render Time; Half a hour
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Oliver's Renders;
Oliver decided to change the ice cream to a doughnut in the chameleon scene as the chameleons' tongue went over the ice cream. This was something I should have considered more whilst animating.
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Overall I really love Oliver's use of lighting and shadows as they help to bring the animations to life.
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I wish I took into consideration the angles I took my photographs as I wish the elephant and ox were shot at a lower angle. In order to make them appear larger. I also animated them both from a lower angle. I also wish he was able to make the elephant slightly larger.