Compositing Project overview and evaluation

For one of my projects at college I was tasked with creating short experimental animations using footage I took myself and then using Cinema 4D to track the footage and finally composite objects into the scenes. I went up the the castle near my home and took some footage of different areas as well as taking some footage of the surrounding streams which lead into the castles moat.

some of the experiments I played around with were things like mapping the footage onto objects and then using those objects as masks, that way I could have other objects looking like they were going behind things in the scenery. I used this technique to make it look like the red tubing was wrapping around the castles tower. I also used this to make a short animation with golden rings coming out of different slots on the castle. I then tried messing around with more effects on the object I was using as a mask and ended up adding some glass reflection and transparency and this made it so I could have objects that appeared to be floating  in water.

On the project I also learned some simple character modelling techniques and how to start creating and animating a character rig. I was able to make a simple rig that I then was able to add pieces to to make a rudimentary character.

Overall this was defiantly not one of my favourite projects I have done. I think this is mostly down to this project being a lot more technical based and about learning methods rather then being wholly creative based. This paired with the amount of times when a technical problem would derail the whole project like the tracking on footage not working the way I wanted it to meaning I had to get more footage, or finishing a composition and waiting hours for it to render out and not being able to do much while that's happening.  In future if I would probably try to work more from home especially when rendering, that way I can leave my PC on over night to finish the render without worry of it stopping.