EP – Final Video

In the last feedback session with Manos, he suggested adjusting my video’s color to be more contrasting. I agreed, so I gathered all the footage and conducted color grading. Since I shot the videos at different times, it wasn’t easy to match the colors at first, but I managed to adjust all the scenes. After this process, I added some sound effects.

This is my final video. I hadn’t thought about a name for this project, but now that I think about it, it could be “Little Sparky Bastard.”

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Little Sparky Bastard

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Breakdown Video

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Critical Reflection

Reflecting on my project, I am quite satisfied with it. I was able to animate the character, add electric effects both in Maya and After Effects, and composite everything together. It was quite an interesting experience as it started from my personal, subtle experience of getting static electricity whenever I touched electronic items and expanded it into a 1-minute video. By designing the main character simply, I saved time on modeling and texturing. Animation was a difficult part for me because I hadn’t done much of it before, but thanks to this project, I learned how to animate using animation layers. This helped me reduce mistakes and save time.

However, I regret my lack of filming skills. I also get easily distracted, which led to me forgetting certain parts in each filming session. For example, I forgot to clean up the desk and surroundings in the first take, I forgot to hold my phone in the second take, and in the final take, I forgot to remove my watch. These resulted in subtle differences in each scene, which made it difficult to maintain consistency.

Additionally, I wanted to show the character’s refraction when it goes behind the dog figure in the storyboard stage. I tried modeling it in Zbrush and refining it in Maya, but due to my lack of modeling skills, it wasn’t perfect. When I rendered the character animation, the refraction didn’t match the real world’s refraction as closely as I hoped. I believe this was due to the Index of Refraction (IOR) or other shader settings. I should have tested it earlier, but it didn’t occur to me at the time. Although there is some refraction, I find it a bit regretful.

Despite these mistakes and regrets, overall, I learned and reviewed many techniques in each program. Therefore, I can say this project was completed very well.