Flavio’s Freakout Scene
Towards the end of my film, Flavio is confronted by his boss to “invent his way out” of a particualr situation. Caught off guard, Flavio has a major breakdown and freaks out. The room pulls away from him and the background gets very trippy behind him as he doubts himself and his abilities.
Here’s the original board panel
When I first wrote the scene, it was never going to be more than a simple swirling background with some kitchen utensils cascading through the scene.
As I continued with the film, the sequence got more solid in my head as to what I was looking to achieve. What I wanted was those iTunes Visualizations that you see when you play a song in iTunes. But of course Apple would not allow us to use the effect in the film. So, I had to devise my own visualization.
Ultimately, that ended up being more fun anyway.
I started with some basic plane geometry in Maya, bent it in half and duplicated it creating a sort of tunnel. I randomly deleted some areas of the geometry and then added various glows to it. Finally I moved a camera through it to simulate it coming at you.
In After Effects, I added some ’synapse flashes” and in Flash I added the pots and pans floating thorugh the scene, ultimately warping them in After Effects as well.
For this scene we asked the overseas studio to send it as a Tiff sequence so it will be easy to “bluescreen” their animation right over this backdrop. The beauty is that if this ends up not working I can easily swap it for something else instead.
It was a ton of fun to do and while this is not the ‘final’ piece because it has not been approved yet, it’s basically what I want so hopefully everyone else at Frederator will like it as well.
If you’d like you can see a clip of the test scene here!
Of course Flavio still needs to be added in the foreground but hopefully you get the idea I am going for.
The file is in an mp4 format but it should open no problem in Quicktime.
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On August 21st, 2006 at 12:00 am
Wow mike thats amazing!! I love visuals like that.. theyre soo visually delicious! I love when shows have them in it or are the entire show.. I JUST LOVE IT! I downloaded maya PLE and I cant figure anything out! Its soo hard! I should get some training on it! Talk soon my friend!
On August 21st, 2006 at 12:00 am
Mike, maybe you can teach me how to do that maya stuff, and those cool effects in AE one day. Cant wait to see the full flavio short!
On August 21st, 2006 at 12:00 am
Thanks Stephen! As Floyd will tell you Maya is something that takes years to learn and I only scratch the surface of what it can do. Yeah, I know my way around it but people spend a whole lifetime with Maya… it’s a very deep program. As for teaching you, what with you back East and me out West it’d be kinda hard to don’t you think? If you really want to learn about Maya, download some tutorials(that’s pretty much how I learned). They’re all over the web! If you have trouble finding some email me and I’ll see if I can get you some links.
On August 21st, 2006 at 12:00 am
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXN9r6tPgHU
don’t ask me how I find these things…
yr clip is totally awesome and trippy, like this scene from 2001. except…with.. orbital…music.
-JX!
On August 21st, 2006 at 12:00 am
Wow! Thanks! Yeah it DOES look like 2001! That’s amazing… know I’ve seen that film a bunch of time but I didn’t remember that sequence. Or maybe I did…
On August 21st, 2006 at 12:00 am
I liked it. It reminds me of “Dr Who”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8L96B-RISlg
On August 21st, 2006 at 12:00 am
Hey Floyd, yeah it does resemble that as well. I guess that’s what I was going for in a way. 70’s trippy backgrounds. Another thing I was going for was those “oil on the projector” projections they did behind Jimi Hendrix and Led Zep back in the “day”.
On August 21st, 2006 at 12:00 am
Awesome! Looking very cool.
On August 21st, 2006 at 12:00 am
Thanks Art!
On August 21st, 2006 at 12:00 am
This looks awesome!
A journey into Flavio’s mind!
On August 21st, 2006 at 12:00 am
Hey Avi! Thanks for the kind words! Yup, that’s EXACTLY what I was going for!
On August 21st, 2006 at 12:00 am
Whoah….the colors….the dishes….
On August 22nd, 2006 at 12:00 am
LOL! A little disorienting huh? See what you get when you look inside the mind of a whackjob like Flavio?
On August 22nd, 2006 at 12:00 am
Hey you shut uppa you face Milo! I know wherea you LIVE! Eh it’s okay. I just kid!