Slyboots Surai

Remembrance from Julia Giordano on Vimeo.

These are the two last shots of Surai's short film. I must revise and improve the previous scenes, make the montage and add the sounds and music.

Now, the visions of the old fortune-teller come back to the present and we can see Surai's shocked reaction at what she did.

Again, I've drawn and painted her in Flash, then used After Effects lights and cameras. She's supposed to be inside a tent that's just lit with some oil lamps. I've tried my best to suggest so by using a global red light and a brighter spotlight by her left. I've used the pretty handy 3D simulation tool I like so much to place the elements in a background so that Surai and the chair cast some shadows over the tent's cloth.

So now... two more shots to go, pretty much to redo and improve, the montage... There seems to be no end!

By the way, tomorrow I'm recording the voice-overs for the old woman and the shaman, thanks to my landlady's wonderful collaboration :-)

The shaman falls, deadly hurt, and Surai runs away. I'm not very happy with the result, but it'll remain this way for now. I must move on to the next shot...

On the second video I've tried to add some dynamism to the image by closing the shot a bit and trying to simulate the camera's vibration when Surai runs past it.

I think this is the shot I like most for now... :-) I've just uploaded a new version because I'd noticed that the shaman should be straigthening up after trying to catch the sword. So the following shots will form the sequence when Surai picks up the blade and sinks it into the shaman's chest.

I've used reference footage to draw Surai's movements in the second shot. I've opened in Photoshop the live-action video I'd previously recorded, then imported the main keyframes into Flash and traced over them. I've deleted some frames to disguise the realistic flow and created the inbetweens. I've drawn the shaman and exported him and Surai in independent files, then combined them in After Effects. Finally, I've added some bluring effects to the shaman.

I still have to add the colouring and background, but I'll do that when I finish the remaining shots. From now on I'll focus on trying to get them done as soon as possible and without the final colouring.

These are the shots where her eyes form and then open. They will be interspersed with the ones showing the shaman's reaction.

Here's another shot of the shaman's reaction, rushing to catch the laying sword. A brief shot of Surai's eyes opening will go between this shot and the latter. I'm thinking about replacing the first two seconds with a closer shot of the shaman's face, but I'm afraid I'd have to sacrifice the sway of the camera, which I like...

Again, the shaman's colours are yet to be improved.

Beause of the low quality of the video, it may be difficult to observe the effects added to the woods. As in the previous shot, I've used two blurring effects: the Radial Fast Blur and the Vector Blur.