Random Rising Storm: Vietnam Bullshittery - Update #3 (Patreon)

Good evening everyone. I hope you've all had a lovely Christmas. Full of prezzies, good food and good company. I was most certainly slipping in and out of food comas on Christmas Day itself. 

Alas, I feel like I'm full of excuses in this update sadly. It's the end of week 4 on the latest bullshittery and I'm not as far through as I'd hoped.

The reasons are easy to pinpoint. Week 1 & 2 were consumed with pre-production tasks instead of editing proper. Week 3 involved mostly cutting the full video clips together with a smidge of adding text/animations on Thursday and Friday. And week 4, this week, has been dominated by Christmas related family gatherings on Monday to Wednesday.

As a result, I'm afraid I've only completed around 2 minutes and 50 seconds worth of the full ten minute edit. Instead of being over the 5 minute mark as I normally would be. Sorry about that.

What's there is looking pretty good though. As a side-by-side, here's a comparison for the prior scene with Digby:

And then compare it to its current form. I've gone to town with the previously mentioned "Null Objects". Basically invisible squares in After Effects, that I can move and manipulate without you noticing them. And then I can have the text inherit properties of those squares at different times. To make the text fall through the air following one square. And then stick to the ground once it arrives, be on fire, etc. There are normally a dozen or so Null Objects quietly doing their job behind each scene. Having the text move, wiggle, fly or hold still when its task is complete.

Another important element of my edits is trying to make the text seem like its in the action itself. That it's not simply overlayed on the screen, but is serving as part of the comedy.

Therefore its important that things in the foreground obscure the text. This means "masking" - making a cut-out and defining the edge so that the text behind the mask becomes hidden. Which can be an extremely time consuming process and is one of the reasons I'm not as far through as I'd like to be. Just marking out all the contours of a GI can be quite painstaking. And they run infront of the camera a lot.

In addition, some sequences involve things happening to a clan member who is away from the rest of the action. Notably ZF Quebec who consistently played the commander role during this streams and made the strangest noises when startled. Which he was often.

I'd like to make a small cartoon avatar of him at the base of the screen during said sequences, to better convey the things that are happening to him.

To do this, I've been making a selection of very draft images in photoshop. Which are then being imported into After Effects and turned into a articulated puppets. At which point I'll request the services of a proper artist to go over my work and make it beautiful. Again, this sort of thing can be a slow process. As you put it together layer by layer until it looks right.

So next week will be week 5. And I'll strive to get to the 7-8 minute mark. I won't be able to do all remaining editing and quality assurance in one week I'm afraid, so it'll need a 6th week after that to properly polish it.  My apologies.

I hope you have a lovely upcoming New Year everybody. Thank you for your generous support. Letting me do this nonsense through 2018. I massively appreciate it.

Roll on 2019 :)