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Tip #1067: Animating a Gothic Horror Anime Series

… for Visual Effects

Tip #1067: Animating a Gothic Horror Anime Series

Larry Jordan – LarryJordan.com

One of the creative joys for the Castlevania production team is designing the various demonic creatures.

(Image courtesy of Project 51 Productions and Netflix.)

Topic $TipTopic

Castlevania launched as a video game in 1986. In 2015 a creative partnership forged between Frederator Studios, comic book icon Warren Ellis, Project 51 Productions, Shankar Animation, Powerhouse Animation Studios, MUA Film and Netflix produced an anime inspired adaptation that debuted in July 2017 and has been renewed for a fourth season.

In this detailed article from VFXVoice.com, the production team describes how Castlevania came to NetFlix, how the show is created and discusses many of the challenges along the way.

Castlevania was always going to be 2D hand-drawn animation. Anime and the artwork of Ayami Kojima for Castlevania: Symphony of the Night were influential in deciding upon the animation style. “The early character design passes for the series were somewhat bland,” recalls producer Kevin Kolde. “Evaluating those designs and looking for a recognizable visual entry point for fans to the series, we realized that for most Castlevania fans, when they thought about the look of the game series, they probably thought about the stunning art that Ayami Kojima had created for the series over the years. Beautiful gothic women and maybe even more beautiful gothic men. We focused in on Kojima’s work and pushed the designs in that direction. All of our characters had to be beautiful. It took some iterations to get there, and somewhere I have a long email chain discussing the amount of eyelashes a character should have, but in the end I think our director and Production Designer Sam Deats really captured the essence of her work and did it in a way that that we could actually animate.”

One of the creative joys for the Castlevania production team is designing the various demonic creatures. Given the nature of the source material, there is an extensive amount of onscreen blood and severed limbs. “The show was always intended for adults.” states Kolde. “We had a brief discussion in Season 1 around the dead kid we see in the street during the night creature attack on Targoviste, but we decided it was important to show the results of Dracula’s revenge. We wanted to show the other side of a character that the audience had likely been sympathetic to up until that point.”

The entire article is worth reading for its behind-the-scenes insights on how these shows are created.

Here’s the link.

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Tip #1066: Creating Fog on Set

… for Visual Effects

Tip #1066: Creating Fog on Set

Larry Jordan – LarryJordan.com

Fog and haze can help create looks, fill space, soften colors and add drama.

(Image courtesy of Pexels.com.)

Topic $TipTopic

This article, written by V Renée, first appeared in NoFilmSchool.com. In it, Film Riot’s Ryan Connolly shows how to use fog to help add depth to shots, diffuse light or simply create a creepy atmosphere.

There are many different ways fog can help create a specific look and set a tone for your film, but it also helps to give your scene, as Connolly says in the video, a “Spielbergian vibe,” because it not only diffuses light, but it carries the color of the light throughout the space you’re using for your scene.

The article, in addition to linking to the ten-minute Ryan Connolly video, also includes examples from:

  • E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial
  • Jurassic Park
  • Lincoln

There also a discussion about the difference between fog and haze; and an inexpensive way to create them.

Fog isn’t the only way to pull off light diffusion, depth of field, or even fog effects (you could apply it in post if you really wanted to), and you may not even want the look it produces. (Maybe you’re going for the high contrast.) But, after reading this article – linked above – you can go forward with a little more understanding of just how versatile fog actually is, and use it in the future to create some awesome effects!

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Tip #1065: Introduction to Particle Effects

… for Visual Effects

Tip #1065: Introduction to Particle Effects

Larry Jordan – LarryJordan.com

The updated Particle Editor, from Babylon.js, simplifies creating particle systems.

Images created by Patrick Ryan (left) and Gabriel Aguiar (right).

Topic $TipTopic

Thomas Lucchini, part of the team at Babylon.js, posted this article to Medium.com. This is a summary.

Creating effects with particle systems is a fun way to learn visual effects. This article illustrates how to create a Magic Orb, using an updated tool the Babylon.js team just released: Particle Editor.

For those completely new to Particles, particle systems are commonly used in 3D scenes to simulate phenomena like fire, smoke, or visual effects like in our demo. They uses small 2D sprites which always face the camera to give the impression of volume. A particle system is displayed with one single draw call which ensures good performance. The magic comes from the parametrization of a particle system (e.g. shape of the emission source, evolution of the speed of the particles, lifetime, color, rotation…) combined with the chosen 2D sprite.

What’s new in the Babylon.js Particle Editor is that you can now create and edit particles not only in your code but also via an Editor accessible via our Inspector. The Particle Editor is part of our efforts to simplify Babylon.js.

The article linked above goes on to provide introductory tutorials to their particle system, a step-by-step tutorial, and more. (The screen shat was created using their system.)

With GPU Particles you can have millions of particles, with noise textures you can apply custom changes to the direction of the particles, with Sub Emitters you can spawn new particles from existing ones,… and the list goes on.

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Tip #1070: What Determines Storage Performance?

… for Codecs & Media

Tip #1070: What Determines Storage Performance?

Larry Jordan – LarryJordan.com

Aerial density, RPM and whether an SSD is in the mix all affect storage performance.

The Seagate logo.

Topic $TipTopic

Seagate published an interesting article, titled: Choosing High Performance Storage Isn’t Just About RPM. This is a summary.

The performance of a hard drive is most effectively measured by how fast data can be transferred from the spinning media (platters) through the read/write head and passed to a host computer. This is commonly referred to as data throughput and typically measured in gigabytes (or gigabits) per second. In either case, data throughput is directly related to how densely data is packed on the hard drive platters and how fast these platters spin.

Higher revolutions per minute represent a faster hard drive, but the rate of media transfer is just as important for data storage solutions.

For the areal density specification, we can measure data density on a hard drive in two ways: bits per inch (BPI) and tracks per inch (TPI). As tracks are placed closer together, TPI increases. Similarly, as data bits are placed closer and closer to each other along a track, BPI increases. Together, these represent areal density.

As a rule, when areal density increases on a hard drive, so does data throughput performance. This is because the data bits pass by the read/write head of the hard drive faster, which leads to faster data rates.

For the RPM specification, platters need to spin faster to increase performance in a hard drive. This results in moving the data bits past the read/write head faster, which results in higher data rates. Hard drives have been engineered with spin rates as low as 1200 RPM and as high as 15K RPM. But today’s most common RPM rates, in both laptop and desktop PCs, are between 5400 and 7200 RPM.

Given two identically designed hard drives with the same areal densities, a 7200 RPM drive will deliver data about 33% faster than the 5400 RPM drive. Consequently, this specification is important when evaluating the expected performance of a hard drive or when comparing different HDD models.

However, when moving to a solid state hybrid drive (SSHD), RPM is largely irrelevant. Why?

SSHD design is based on identifying frequently used data and placing it in the solid state drive (SSD) or NAND flash portion of the drive. NAND flash media is very fast, partly because there are no moving parts—since it’s made of solid state circuitry. Therefore, when data is requested by host computers there is typically not a dependence on pulling this data directly from the spinning media in the hard drive portion.

Sometimes, however, data will be requested that is not in the NAND flash, and only during these instances does the hard drive portion of the device become a bottleneck. Since the technology is so effective at identifying and storing frequently used data in the NAND area, SSHD technology is much more efficient in delivering data to a host computer quickly.

In tests conducted by Seagate to illustrate this article, the fastest performance for an SSHD drive came from one where the platters only spun at 5400 RPM.

Here’s a link to the full article.

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Tip #1069: Create a Custom Poster Frame

… for Codecs & Media

Tip #1069: Create a Custom Poster Frame

Larry Jordan – LarryJordan.com

Poster frames represent your media in the Finder.

Copy a new poster frame image into the image well in the Finder > Get Info window.

Topic $TipTopic

Ian Brown suggested this tip.

There’s a very fast way to create a poster frame for a QuickTime movie. (Poster frames appear in the Finder, and other locations, to illustrate the contents of a clip.)

  • Open the video in QuickTime Player
  • Move the playhead to the frame you want to use as a poster frame
  • Choose Edit > Copy (shortcut: Cmd + C)
  • Close the video
  • Select the file icon in the Finder
  • Choose File > Get Info (shortcut: Cmd + I)
  • Select the small icon in the top left corner
  • Choose Edit > Paste (shortcut: Cmd + V)

Done.

EXTRA CREDIT

Actually, anything you paste into that top left box will become the poster frame. It doesn’t need to be an image, it could also be a graphic.

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Tip #1068: When to Choose JPEG, PNG or TIFF

… for Codecs & Media

Tip #1068: When to Choose JPEG, PNG or TIFF

Larry Jordan – LarryJordan.com

Pick the codec that works best for your project.

Export codec list from Adobe Photoshop.

Topic $TipTopic

A codec is the mathematical formula that determines how to convert light, or sound, into binary digits for the computer to store or display. While there are a LOT of still image codecs, there are only four that you’ll need to choose between for most of your video projects:

  • PSD
  • JPG
  • PNG
  • TIFF

So, which should you choose? Here are some tips.

PSD

This is the native Photoshop format.

Use this when you need to retain the ability to edit the elements of an image or when you want to enable, or disable, specific layers within the image.

NOTE: For best results, always embed media into the Photoshop file.

JPG or JPEG

This is a highly-compressed file best used for final distribution. Good image quality in a very small file size.

Part of compressing a JPEG file involves throwing away color data and reducing some of the image quality. While this is almost always OK for images destined for the web, it is not a good idea for any image that you want to edit.

NOTE: Compressing an already compressed file will materially damage quality.

PNG

This is a modestly compressed image format. Excellent image quality with a large file size.

This is a more modern format than TIFF and is the best choice for outputting finished images at high quality. While you can’t reedit a PNG image the way you can a PSD, this provides excellent image quality. PNGs, unlike JPEG, supports an alpha channel for transparent image elements.

The only limit of PNG is that it is only supports 8-bit color.

TIFF

This is a lightly compressed image format, providing excellent image and color quality with a large file size.

TIFF is my go-to still image format. Supporting up to 10-bit color, alpha channels and essentially lossless images, it has been around for a long, long time.

The only limitation of TIFF is that, unlike PSD, you can’t edit elements within the image.

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Tip #1058: What is the Events Panel

… for Adobe Premiere Pro CC

Tip #1058: What is the Events Panel

Larry Jordan – LarryJordan.com

The Events panel explains alerts and warnings in Premiere.

An empty Events panel in Premeire.

Topic $TipTopic

The Events panel is located in the Windows menu. What does it do? Here’s the answer from the Adobe Support Community:

The Events panel lists warnings, error messages, and other information you can use to identify and troubleshoot problems, particularly those associated with plug-ins and other components from third-party developers.

An alert icon on the status bar notifies you of an error. Double-clicking the icon opens the Events panel, and clearing the associated item from the Events panel removes the icon from the status bar.

Do either of the following:

  • Double-click the alert icon in the status bar.
  • Choose Window > Events.

Then do any of the following:

  • To learn more about an item in the list, select it and click Details.
  • To clear the events list, click Clear All.

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Tip #1057: What Does this Blue Button Do?

… for Adobe Premiere Pro CC

Tip #1057: What Does this Blue Button Do?

Larry Jordan – LarryJordan.com

By default, sequences are edited as nests – but you can change that with a click.

This button determines how sequences are treated when they are edited into the timeline.

Topic $TipTopic

I’ve been using Premiere for years and have never paid attention to this blue timeline button. Here’s what it does.

When this button is blue, inserting or overwriting a sequence from the Files panel into a different sequence in the Timeline edits it as a nest.

When this button is white, inserting or overwriting a sequence from the Files panel into a different sequence in the Timeline edits it as a separate clips. (That is, it deconstructs the sequence into its component elements.)

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Tip #1056: Move a Mix from Audition to Premiere

… for Adobe Premiere Pro CC

Tip #1056: Move a Mix from Audition to Premiere

Larry Jordan – LarryJordan.com

Take the time to verify the technical quality of your mix using Amplitude Statistics.

The four key fields I check for every exported WAV file.

Topic $TipTopic

Recently, when I was preparing my webinar An Overview of Adobe Audition, I was reminded of an important tip I learned a while ago.

When sending an audio mix from Audition back to Premiere, don’t use Multitrack > Export to Adobe Premiere. Why? Because you don’t know what you are getting. There’s a better way.

Instead, choose File > Export > Multitrack Mixdown > Entire Session.

This displays a window where you can set various parameters for your exported mix. In general, for video, choose:

  • WAV
  • 48K sample rate
  • 16-bit depth
  • Stereo
  • Check Open files after export

When the mix is complete, the exported file will be displayed in the Files panel. Double-click it to open it the Waveform Editor. This next step is the reason for this whole process: choose Window > Amplitude Statistics and click Scan in the lower left corner of the window.

This analyzes your clip for a variety of technical parameters. Here are the four fields I ALWAYS check:

  • True Peak. This is the loudest level in your mix. This must be below 0.
  • Possibly clipped samples. This must be 0. Anything larger means you have distortion in your mix.
  • DC Offset. This should be at or very close to 0
  • LUFS. This measures the average level of the total mix.

For broadcast, digital cinema and cable, LUFS should be -24 ±1. For the web, LUFS should be around -16. (LUFS is also referred to as LKFS.)

Once I verify that my audio meets all technical specs, I import it into Premiere and add it to the timeline as the final mix. The benefit to this approach is that I KNOW my audio is good, before final output, rather than HOPING it is good.

EXTRA CREDIT

Here’s a video that shows this process in operation.

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Tip #1055: Create a Small Movie Fast

… for Apple Final Cut Pro X

Tip #1055: Create a Small Movie – Fast!

Larry Jordan – LarryJordan.com

A Master File does not necessarily mean high-quality. Actually, you get to pick.

Choose File > Share > Master File, then pick H.264 or ProRes Proxy.

Topic $TipTopic

Here’s a fast way to create a small file you can use for client reviews, audio mixing or wherever image quality is less important than small file size.

When you need a small file, quickly, here are the steps:

  • Select the project in the Browser or open it in the Timeline to make it active.
  • Choose File > Share > Master File.
  • Then, from the Video Codec menu pick H.264.

This quickly creates a very small, high-quality file because H.264 compression is hardware-accelerated on virtually all Macs.

EXTRA CREDIT

Unlike proxy files, this movie will match the frame size and frame rate of your project.

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