its done!

finally ive completed im. i was very lucky with the tracking in the end, turns out i didnt really need to track the scene for my character to actually feel likes it part of the seen. i think this is due to its constant movement along with the constant moving of the camera shot in the scene.

ive tried to upload it onto youtube but when i did the video turned out like this...



so i imported my maya image sequence into after effects and arranged it where i wanted it in my frame. i then went on to setting out where i was going to need to mask out so that the dragon would fit into the scene.




i masked out 3 main areas in my scene
1- when the dragon first appears following the car from behind the building in the foreground.
2- the telegraph pole which passes infront about halfway through the scene.
3- the building that the car passes behind at the end of my chosen scene.

i used the mask tool, and then animated it each frame so that when the area that needed to be masked moved and changed size due to proportion etc the masking points would still work.



to create the shadow i duplicated the dragon layer, turned into a 3d layer so i could control it on x y and z axis. changed the levels and experimented with the level of blur and opacity to get the shadow looking the way i wanted it to.

i used the shadows and certain colours in the scene to change the shadow on my actual character, just to give it the feel that its part of the environment, due to its metalic texture i thought this quite a good idea seeing as metallic objects usually change colour etc when in depending on the environment they are in.

then by blurring the dragon layer very very slightly to match that of the car my dragon started to blend in quite well.

my piece was almost complete. i then toyed with the idea of adding flames to the creatures mouth which i think would be quite a cool thing to add if i had more time. i got to this stage on the second to last day and still needed to do work on my other project so decided to call it a day on industry exercises 2

here is a still of it seeing as the youtube video does not want to work....



i think i could have done better overall, but i am still happy with my piece considering how i had to change my idea and then completed it within a few days when others had 9 weeks. i am dissapointed that i couldnt make my first idea work but at the same time i am quite pleased because i think this piece has ultimately come out cooler. if i had decided on this idea at the beginning instead of the IKEA idea then i think i could have done such a better job and had a more complete, more varied piece at the end when comes to level of animating and level of interaction with the environment in the scene. But really considering the amount of time i had left to complete the piece i am very happy with the way it has come out.