Unity FX test

Sandstorm Unity FX Test from Jamal Coleman on Vimeo.

I have been experimenting in the Unity game engine recently. I have been playing with different fx ideas for Semnat Studios next game. Here's a recent screen cap in Unity of a sand storm effect I've been working on. All the art is courtesy of Semnat Studios. Click here to check Semnat's recent work.

Fluid test

Been playing around a lot recently with fluid dynamics in Maya. Here's the most recent test.

Maya smoke test from Jamal Coleman on Vimeo.

"Unspoken" now available for viewing online

"Unspoken," my BFA Short movie is now available for viewing on my Vimeo page. It can be found here.

Announcing "UNSPOKEN"

Officially announcing "UNSPOKEN," my senior project short film. Previously known as 'Red Tea,' the project now has an official title. Also a premiere screening at my BFA Department Senior Show. The first screening is at 5pm on Friday, April 30th. The second screening is three hours later, at 8pm on the same day. The location of the gallery is at the Lee Edwards Gallery in the UMass Studio Arts Building. A notification of the location of the screening will be posted at the gallery prior to the screening. The gallery will also be open all week, playing the short films in hour or half hour intervals after the first initial screening day. The gallery and screening space is shared with five other students with some brilliant work from the same department. It's an open event, feel free to invite anybody. See you there!

Digital Scratch Film Technique

In my early tests for "Red Tea," I tried using a rotoscope technique in photoshop as an accent to the emotional state that the character is in as well as to heighten the surreal and tortured look I was trying to achieve.

First roto test

The idea behind the rotoscoping is to show a sort of self-hate feeling of depression. Drawing over this test was a unique experience and added to the psychological overtone of the film. However, the mark making in this test, using a standard small soft brush in photoshop looked too much like a marker, and did not feel very well integrated as part of the film.

In review of the test with my advisor, she suggested I look at some Len Lye short films and traditional scratch film technique. My problem would be that I was dealing with HD video, and not 16mm film to produce this very unique analogue mark making of scratching away the emulsion. I wanted to stay in photoshop, and to achieve as close a look to traditional scratch film as I could. After scouring Google and Vimeo for hours with no luck on anything resembling digital scratch film, I decided to jump into photoshop after careful study of some scratch films and design my own brush. After only playing with the custom brush settings in photoshop for a couple of hours, I found a nice combination (mostly thanks to the dual brush mode and jitter settings) that looked very much like a pin scratch into traditional film.

This is one of my favorites. Perhaps channeling some Joker?

Still able to achieve a thick mark by repetition.

I was very pleased with these results, and will continue to explore how to capture the look while in motion. Unfortunately my photoshop crashed shortly after I finished the first test, and lost the brush from my lack of custom brush experience (not saving). But I am working on reproducing this effect, at least I'll know how to do it again after this experience.

I was very surprised not to find any resources online about digital scratch film. And if anyone is interested in the exact process and settings used for the tests I'll be happy to share technical details.