Alison Yang - Compositing Artist - Demo Reel 2024

Hello, I'm Alison Yang, a compositor recently graduated from Alpha Chromatica. This is my fresh demo reel! I hope you enjoy watching it and please feel welcome to leave your comments :)

#1_SCREEN BURN IN

I had a lot of fun while doing this stylish shot. 

Firstly, I had to navigate the low pixel values from the dimly lit environment footage, it seemed easy to key the screen out at first glance but the compressed quality of the original plate left a lot of details which required further effort like isolating areas with different treatments. For example, the edges of the middle screens are the most difficult areas since the glow was too bright to surpass.

Secondly, I encountered the complexity of tracking the two side television screens, which displayed static and glow, and the plate was shot by a handheld wabbling camera. I tried all the ways I could such as Mocha, Nuke planer tracking, etc., but none of them yielded effective tracking. I ended up marking the corners of the two screens manually and then point track the markers. In curve editor, I smoothed out the movement to get the final accurate tracking.

Lastly, I had to meticulously handle the contained edge details of the female's clothing, ensuring a seamless blend with the new screen content while the clothing kept moving.

#2_LOGO REPLACEMENT

Highlight of this shot: 

Besides changing the posters on the wall. I also changed the sign of the train station which is on the screen left. I intended to not only change the color of a sign but also its letters, complicating the task. I first altered the sign to yellow with a new 'Y' letter.

To reintegrate the hair, I despilled the blue background color, infusing the same yellow from the new sign into the areas that where previously blue.

This method ensured the hair edges blended seamlessly with the new background without any residual blue hues, making it an effective solution despite its complexity. 

#3_ACTOR REPLACEMENT

The Wolverine!

I am so glad that I was able to use this movie for my actor replacement shot. Now myself is standing in the same scene with Logan! 

This shot was the hardest one to accomplish as the green screen that was shot at my school studio was not able to make the same light setting as the film has. The shadow side of my body especially my face was too exposed to make it as darker as the actress's. So I had to patch my face with darker skin first before I did any of the color correction. The work really required my attention to detail and the control of consistency because the actress was turning her head and talking at the same time, which means the face skin is changing all the time. 

Moreover, the hair of Logan was another challenging task as my standing position was not 100% the same as the actress's and we had different heights of shoulders and everything. So it resulted in many gaps between Logan's hair and my shoulder. I honed my painting skills really well after I practiced painting the gaps with natural hair even when the hair was moving.

Speaking of painting, the background was also reconstructed by my imagination and attention to the perspective since there was no scene in the movie without the actress standing there. But I had fun! I think the vase looks great.

#4_DIGI MAKEUP

In the intricate world of VFX, aging a character convincingly is a formidable challenge. I aged Hugh Jackman's character, Logan, by 10 years in a demonstration of subtle compositing. 

Achieving a realistic aging effect in digital makeup requires an understanding of human facial anatomy and the aging process. It's not just about adding wrinkles or gray hair, it's about subtly altering the texture, tone, and volume of the skin to reflect the natural changes that occur over time.

What sets my work apart is the subtlety of the compositing. In digital makeup, less is often more! The goal is to enhance the character's appearance without drawing attention to the effects. The aging effects are so natural and integrated that they enhance the storytelling without distracting from it.

In the complex process of aging Logan realistically, a variety of techniques were utilized, including generating smart vectors, deploying vector distorts, warping using spline warps, softening using median and frequency separation workflows.

One major downside of using Vector Distorts is the composite significantly slows down and overwhelms Nuke. To address this, I deployed a time test technique that involved reorganizing and isolating each part of the script based on different tasks.

I then pre-comped the heavy sections for each altered element, ensuring that I could freely and quickly make changes while maintaining the flexibility to refine details. This approach also kept the script light enough to view the results in real time.

For instance, when working on Logan's right eye, I started by minimizing the rotopaint strokes needed to achieve the desired look and connected them directly to the plate (background footage) to see the results.

As I progressed towards the look I wanted, I duplicated the areas I wanted and shuffled the Alpha Channels into their own ChannelSets. Each ChannelSet was created based on their respective roles in the composite. At this stage, I switched off all the Color Channels and precomped only the Alphas into a single Master Exr sequence.

I created my own "menu" which allowed I to pick and choose the effects I wanted to apply without the need to attach any tracking data since that information was baked within the exported ChannelSets.

Why not export everything you might wonder? Why just the Alpha Channel with the tracking data? Over time I noticed that the notes given were mainly addressing my paint work and not the tracking.

Whenever I did get notes related to the Alpha Channels or Tracking, I would make changes, render a new version and Version Up (Alt + Up Arrow Key) the precomp's Read Node. This allowed for quicker turn arounds. 

REFERENCE

In my pursuit of authenticity, I conducted extensive research on how gray hair and wrinkles appear in low light. By studying various visual references and understanding the subtleties of aging, I was able to apply this knowledge to Logan's face, resulting in the aged look I was going for.

I also contemplated further improvements to the shot, such as adding more gray hairs to Logan's neck and enhancing the skin texture to appear looser, which would contribute to a more comprehensive portrayal of aging.

One of the aspects I particularly appreciated about the shot was the natural appearance of the eye bags. This appreciation stemmed from a realization that, prior to this project, I lacked a detailed understanding of the aging process. The project became a learning journey, where I delved into numerous visual references, including studying each wrinkle on Hugh Jackman's face, to accurately depict the aging process.

#5_HAIR KEYING

The very first keying shot I completed. I chose this shot in particular to experiment and practice different keying techniques. The intensive lighting in this plate makes getting the full details of each chunk of hair extremely challenging. Understanding how alpha and color should be integrated into the new background helps me tackle the whole task holistically instead of sticking to one step of the entire process.

#6_MUZZLE FIRE

Lighting up the fire! 

As a very common film production challenge, making muzzle fire that isn't fully captured by the camera as real as it is is never an easy job. The decay of light and interactive light of its surroundings need to be managed thoroughly. I have taken examples from real-life muzzle fire videos and studied the scientific theories of light so that I know how intense the light should be as the distance goes up. Audiences can feel authentic in this way as what they see aligns with what they always see in life and other well-made movies.

#7_MULTIPASS

Ryotaro Shyba is a real library in Japan, Alex Roman gave its digital life decades ago. Thanks to my instructor Ganz who made it into a multipass that I can play with. I have decided to go with this plate when I first saw it. The camera moves in an interesting way that I like, and it reminds me of many mysterious stories.

However, the challenges of this shot also gave me a lot of fun. First of all, this inside scene has a window with an outside light source and object. When I change the light conditions I need to make sure both inside and outside are responsive and convincible. By navigating different layers and shuffling the parts wisely, I was able to make the lighting into the look I wanted.

I was pleased that I took this chance to experiment with vignette, lens distortion, bokeh for defocus with kernel, and chromatic abbreviation altogether to achieve the final result cohesively.

Also, as the camera was not able to be as accurate as it should be, all the light bulbs failed to move along with the camera tracking. So I had to point track each one of them to add the volume lights on. Using rotopaint and volume ray enables me to make the lights natural and subtly integrated with the environment.

ORIGINAL MODEL

#8_MARKER REMOVAL

Denoise (NEAT Video) | 2D Point Tracking | Paintout | Roto | Hands/Cloth/Body Parts Bring Back | Green Screen Extend | Greenscreen Correction | Regrain

#9_WALL REPLACEMENT

3D Camera Tracking | 3D Projection | Wall Plank Patch | Relighting | Color Correction | Weathering | Roto | Motion Blur | Focus Matching | Regrain