Maya live

Maya live is very useful when tracking live action and importing a 3D object such as a character or in my case, my dinosaur. for my animation to fit in to the scene in maya you have to track the footage, you do this by importing the scene as a image sequence and then track a well define are in the footage. i found that the best tracking points were those found in areas of dark spots and also areas which remained in the whole scene. I managed to located 6 of these areas. it was also very helpful to be able to track the footable while it played backwards, i found that in one of my scenes napoleon walks in front of few tracking points making them go crazy. however when I tracked the backwards i was able to save a lot of the stability.





I found that when you managed to locate a good tracking point, the point sticks to the footage as if it was part of it. however, in my scenes there is very little camera movements and it wasnt really challenging to achieve a very powerful tracking spot.



here is what happened when napoleon walked in front of the track points, as you can see it has changed from green to red

sound

as it is impossible to know exactly what i dinosaur sounded like i have chosen to use sounds from movies and from documentaries, as i am using a large carnival dinosaur i wanted to see how others imagined the sounds to be.

here are some links of sounds which i found to be useful in my scene.



the sounds on this clip have been edited and replaced with the original on the movie, however i like the fact that they seem to be a mixture of real animals such as lions and elephants. you are able to hear what i mean in the first scene of the clip, at the end of the t-rex roar you can hear the elephants.


I really like the sound which is on this clip, its the T-rex sound in Jurassic Park. i would like to fit this sound somewhere in my scene.

Reasearch

this is some research on the way i would like my dinosaur to walk.



I also need to look at some head movement, I would like to use real life footage for this, reptiles and birds are believed to have similar movements and bone structure to those of the dinosaurs and theoretically, they should share same characteristics. here are some video footage of examples i will use.



here is a scene from Walking With Dinosaurs, as you can see there are a lot of good examples of walk cycles, and complete body movement. The dinosaurs are also roughly the same shape and size as the one I will be using.

Animations/ walk cycle

I believe this will be the hardest scene to do, i imagine that the dinosaur will obviously be bigger than Napoleon so it wouldn't need to run, a fast pace walk would do. of course this also depends on how large i will want the dino to be in comparison to Napoleon. for research on walk cycle i have looked at the movements of dinosaurs in movies such as King Kong and Jurassic Park, these films are good reference as the dino rig i will be using is of a large carnival know as Albertosaurus and the movies have large carnivals which I can use for reference.

here is a scene from king kong, i find this scene useful as you are able to see how the dinosaur sort of struggles with its own body weight, it has a very natural feel to its movement. I would like to somehow achieve a similar look.



although the video below is not of a movie i believe the animation on the dinosaur is very well put together, you get the sense of weight as the body balances from one foot to the other as it walks. this will come in handy when I start my animation.




here is another clip of dinosaur movement, i really like the movement of the head and again, how it manages to achieve the illusion of its heaviness.



its said that birds are the only remaining ancestors of the dinosaurs so I decided to look at the way the walked, i came across this video and realised it could come in handy if i wanted an scene with a bit of anticipation



here is a scene of a ostrich running, i believe this too will come in handy when when animating the chase.

Napoleon Dino-Mite PLAN

For this project i have chosen to add a 3D character to the scenes in Napoleon dynamite, as you can see from the video, the areas where the movie was filmed are pretty plane and lifeless. I would like to add a dinosaur to my chosen clip, I believe that the scene I have chosen will allow me to add some more excitement when animating the dinosaur.

I will be using Autodesk Maya, Adobe Premiere and Adobe After effects to complete my project.

I aim to to get what i want from this exercise by begin doing a bit of research in areas such as the movement of dinosaurs, (obviously there wouldn't be no firm evidence but i believe that other examples on other movies have done a well enough job in recreating it)

My second area where i would concentrate would be on my story board, i would like to have a normal scene and possibly chase scene when Napoleon runs across the dirt road.

here is my chosen video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbXKP4ua2ng




here is the dino i will be using


PROJECT BRIEF/PLAN

I have also done a schedule of what I would be doing for the next 8 weeks