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Giant chalk board
David Del
March 26, 2009 at 7:45 pmI am looking for some tips on creating a giant chalk board with writing and photo’s on it.
Should I create the chalkboard in AE or in photoshop?
I am going to be moving the camera around the board to reveal different sayings and photos ala 2.5D movement.I am running XP on 4 gigs of RAM and I don’t want my system to run out of room because of a HUGE photoshop graphic, but I am unsure of how else to accomplish this.
The chalkboard will have to be somewhat dusty and have a boarder around it.
Thanks in advance,
Simon Bonner
March 26, 2009 at 8:31 pmHi David,
You might consider importing a smaller graphic from photoshop and using the motion tile effect on it to expand it out in X and Y space.
Simon Bonner
youtube.com/simonsaysfx
David Del
March 26, 2009 at 8:45 pmWould that just repeat the edges of the graphic?
david bogie
March 26, 2009 at 9:38 pmthe task rather depends on your total dimensional needs and whether you mean “chalkboard” or “whiteboard.” A black or green chalkboard requires a large surface since it will, in the real world, be covered with dust, partial erasures, defects, damage. Whiteboards tend to have their own defects but generally could be edge-repeated. Consider how the photos will be attached to the surface; glue, magnets, tape? Does the paper they are printed upon cast shadows? Do they flutter in a breeze? How are your “sayings” attached tot he surface? Are they handwritten with chalk?
Is the scene totally flat or do you intend to simulate window or room lighting?
What’s your release media?
If it’s just DV, a 2k chalkboard can hold a lot of stuff about 25 full-frame DV thingies. A 4k image can hold 16 times as much stuff.bogiesan
David Del
March 27, 2009 at 2:35 amThe whole project deals with the 1910-1930’s so it would have to be blackboard. I am going to move the camera around exposing photos, but also having them fade when the camera is not on them, so the actual size doesn’t have to be extremely large. I would like most of the trappings of a realistic scene with shadows, some written words in chalk etc.
The photos I am using are all JPG and it will be a 720X480 DV sized project.david bogie
March 27, 2009 at 2:55 pmThen I’d say photograph a chalkboard with a good DSLR at about 10mp. You don’t really need nearly that much rez but you need to shoot a long enough shot to include the edges. You should be able to locate a chalkboard in several older schools, maybe even the oldest lecture hall at a local university. You can shoot a green board and change the color. What you’re after is a good collection of textures, damage, and dust.
You really do not need to make this a 3D scene according to your description. You can achieve the same camera simulation by moving the anchor point of your main comp, the hone that contains all of the precomps or nested elements. I’m just suggesting you don’t exert more energy/expense than necessary.
Good luck on this, sounds like fun. Start another thread if you need more advice.
bogiesan
Todd Morgan
March 27, 2009 at 8:58 pmYour best bet is to figure out how close in your need to be, and then how big of a canvass you want to zoom out on. I do think that creating a mock-up in Illustrator is the way to go. That way you can layout your entire board, and even import a high res image of one into Illustrator. Once you are happy with the layout, import the whole thing into your project and use your 3D position and rotation keys to simulate camera motion.
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