This thesis assesses the marginal field (niche unit) of visual effects while taking into account visible and invisible vfx in virtual and actual geographies in Hollywood movies as part of industry-level studies, all the while seeking to bridge the gap between traditional, theoretical approaches of cinema studies and practitioner experience in the context of production culture. The focus of this essay remains on the many temporal aspects of production processes that identify vfx film production as chief, and vfx for television as subsequential. Encouraging scholars to consider a previously limited and repeatedly mislabeled area by demonstrating the pandemic presence of effects and its workers as a form of Hollywood diaspora, this thesis also seeks to demonstrate the need for involvement by means of scholar-practitioner methodologies.

By using existing knowledge from the game community, which have had a long experience from game artificial intelligence, and new research from the field of artificial intelligence I have implemented REACT, a crowd simulation system for visual effects. REACT is based on high-level behaviour that uses an underlying layer of low-level behaviour. The high-level capabilities gives the digital character means to reasoning about how to achieve certain goals based on a knowledge base of rules and facts that are present in the virtual world. This gives the digital character a degree of autonomous intelligent behaviour. REACT is designed to integrate directly into the 3D animation package Maya as a plug-in. This means that the animators can continue to animate their characters via their animation package of choice, rather than having to learn a new technology. In addition, many animators are already familiar with the workflow of Maya, so learning curves are reduced. REACT is already in use in the visual effects industry where it has proven itself to be a worthy competitor to the existing systems on the market.

Music videos have under the last 50 years become entertainment in our society. Some are created to reflect feelings while others are a kind of showcase for the artist. There are also those based off of the lyrics and thus creates a short film or an illustration of the lyrics. Through the use of technologies such as visual effects is it possible to bring the impossible worlds and stories alive.Videos with these effects are the kind of videos I've been analyzing in this essay with the purposeto explore how much the visual effects affect the narration. To achieve this I have chosen to make a semiotic study focused on analysis and interpretations of five chosen music videos created during orafter the year 2000. CGI, slow-motion and metaphors are techniques I've been looking at and they have proved to contribute to how the story of the video is told and how it's understood. The interplay between image and text is another thing I've been studying and in the chosen videos it's been varying between interpretations and literal translation to the other. / Musikvideor har under de senaste 50 åren varit en form av underhållning för vårt samhälle. Somliga formas för att spegla känslor medan andra visar upp artisten. Det finns de som baserar sig på låttexten för att skapa en kortare film eller gestalta låttextens innehåll. Med hjälp av tekniker som visuella effekter kan dessa drömlika och omöjliga världar och historier komma till liv. Det är videor med sådana effekter jag valt att analysera i denna uppsats med syftet att ta reda påhur stor roll de visuella effekterna spelar i berättandet. För att komma fram till detta har jag gjort en semiotisk studie fokuserad på analys och tolkningar av fem valda videor skapade under eller efter 2000-talet. CGI, slow-motion och metaforer är tekniker jag kollat på och det har visat sig att de alla bidrar till hur berättandet utspelas och uppfattas. Sambandet mellan bild och text i de valda videorna har pendlat mellan tolkning till bokstavligt översatt till varandra.

This paper will cover the creation of my thesis film, “Down to the Last,” from concept to completion, with a special focus on writing a dark comedy with a strong female lead, and the desire to incorporate visual effects and stunts to enhance the overall story. Details of how my crew and I decided to approach the challenges of my script and vision will be fleshed out along with solutions to problems we faced during preproduction, principle photography, and postproduction. The outcome of the project is a combination of minute deviations from my initial vision and a minimization of visual effects in order to preserve the tone and humor of the story.

This paper’s goal was to understand how the fighting game animations in the video game Guilty Gear -Strive- lent themselves to their characters appeal, by looking how the animations are built up to be a good quality for a more interesting character based on the character background. The paper aids to help designers find relevant information for the creation of animations for a greater player enjoyment of its characters in a fighting game. This was done by choosing three characters with different speed classes in terms of their design and official marketing for the video game, as well as three attacks that were analyzed by looking at its consisting frames divided into sixty frames per second. The paper finds relevant information and good practices to enhance the appeal of a fighting game character to better represent their characteristics. We find that bigger visual effects such as big explosions or shockwaves are good for stronger characters while the use of faster movements using methods of slow in and slow out and timing are good for making faster characters more appealing, anticipation of attacks are also important while the specific use of the anticipation frames can give different feelings even if they are equally long where acrobatic characters use it for building momentum and stronger characters use them to charge up by pulling their body back.

Wind energy is an appropriate solution to reduce carbon emissions and climate change. The expansion of wind energy developments in Sweden in recent years has created substantial opposition which makes wind energy tougher to develop. The landscape and visual constraints associated with wind energy developments has become the critical reason for local opposition and protest. Planning information relating to the visual and landscape impacts of a proposed wind energy development are often brought forward through a landscape analysis. Digital tools are used in a landscape analysis to identify the proposed visual effects associated with a development. These tools provide visual aid of the proposed development through 2-dimentional and 3-dimentional images, identify constraint areas on a map as outlined in the respective development plans and identifies where visibility is likely to occur. This thesis uses a quantitative assessment by the example of a potential wind farm in Sundsvall Municipality in Sweden and theoretical research on landscape connotation. The motivation of this thesis is to outline the opportunities and limitations associated with the digital tools used to conduct a landscape analysis, promote a standardised approach to practice and implement suggestions to improve digital tools to allow for more public participation and to limit opposition towards wind farm developments. The results of this thesis suggest that the social issues and visual perceptions of turbines can be reduced through the inclusion of digital tools, but radical changes are needed within the planning process to recognise the benefits of digital tools and provide a standardised framework.

Easy Prey is a three-dimensional (3D) animated action comedy short film about stereotypes, expectations, and portrayals of strength that follows a ballerina as she is cornered in an alley. The fight that ensues expresses women's empowerment, physically and emotionally, by challenging preconceptions of ballerinas and the performance of femininity. This expression is founded on the intentional inclusion and exclusion of common cinematic tropes to efficiently convey key information while undermining common stereotypes. The action and atmosphere utilize classic film techniques to heighten and release tension. Easy Prey is inspired by my personal journey in healing my relationship with femininity and its societal performance, finding value and strength where I once felt shame and inferiority. In confronting preconceptions in this film, the viewer is encouraged to reflect upon their own biases and views on strength while being entertained.

Sustainableefficient lighting is becoming seen as one of the mostimportant issues in the office environment In Sweden, energydemandfor lighting corresponds to 20 of the total electricity use in officebuildings 31 while lighting form on average 33 1 of the electricityconsumption in UK office buildingsThisthesis investigate how to make lighting in offices more sustainableand focus on energy efficiency, to save energy through creating guidelinesrelated to light source technologies lighting control systems and the userbehavior then apply those guidelines to an existing office throughsuggesting a new lighting designTheexisting office in this case is the ÅF company 10 th office floor locatedin Stockholm SwedenThisinvestigation methodology consist of 2 main parts literature review andProject ( study At the first part, methods used are a combination ofliterature review related to saving energy through sustainability in lightingand how light source technology lighting control systems and the effect ofuser behavior could help to create more energy efficient lighting systemsAtthe second part, methods used in the Project study analyzed throughqualitative methods through surveys in addition to quantitative methodthrough and personal observations The used methods helped to createguidelines for the new suggested lighting design for ÅF 10 th office floorpartTheResults shows that the new suggested lighting design saved up to31 96 than the current lighting situation3

The type of media shared through social media channels has shifted from text content to include an increasingly large number of images. Visual traces resulting from people's online social behavior have the potential to reveal insights about our habits, activities and preferences. The role of social network-related factors have been well studied in previous research. Yet, few studies have sought to understand how user behavior in social networks is dependent on the image itself. The goal of my dissertation is to understand how people engage with image content, and I seek to uncover the role of presentation and image content on people's preferences. To achieve this goal, I study the image sharing communities, Flickr, Instagram and Pinterest, using quantitative and qualitative methods. First, I show how colors -- a fundamental property of an image -- could impact the virality of an image on Pinterest. I consider three dimensions of color: hue, saturation and brightness and evaluate their role in the diffusion of the image on Pinterest, while controlling for social network reach and activity. Next, I shift the focus from abstract colors to a higher-level presentation of images. I study the role of filters on the Flickr mobile application as proxies to visual computation. To understand how people use filters, I conduct an interview study with 15 Flickr mobile users about their filter use. I analyze Flickr mobile images to discover the role of filters in engaging users. Presentation is not the only factor that makes an image interesting. To gain deeper insights in what makes an image more engaging in social image sharing sites, I study the images of people on the Instagram network. I compare images of people with those that do not have faces and find that images with human faces are more engaging. I also look at the role of age and gender of people in the image in engaging users. Finally, I examine different content categories, with and without filters, and study the impact of content category on engagement. I use large-scale data from Flickr and interviews with Flickr mobile users to draw insights into filter use and content engagement. This dissertation takes a first step toward understanding content and presentation of images and how they impact one aspect of user behavior online. It provides several theoretical and design implications for effective design, creation and imposition of rules on image sharing communities. This dissertation opens up a new direction for future research in multimedia-mediated communication.

Submitted by Maicon Juliano Schmidt (maicons) on 2015-04-17T17:02:00Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Daniel Bassan Petry.pdf: 2239495 bytes, checksum: fa0cad4c5777a1cb7bc7f18f278e9c2c (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-04-17T17:02:00Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Daniel Bassan Petry.pdf: 2239495 bytes, checksum: fa0cad4c5777a1cb7bc7f18f278e9c2c (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-03-13 / CAPES - Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / Partindo de uma afetação criada pelos filmes da Nova Hollywood que utilizam efeitos visuais, surge a necessidade de reflexão sobre o que são e como agem estes efeitos (analógicos e digitais) no cinema comercial contemporâneo e na cultura visual, principalmente através do entendimento de que o cinema é parte integrante desta cultura. Com os trabalhos de Manovich (2002, 2008), Mirzoeff (1999), Zielinski (2002) e Mitchel (2004) como base, percebemos a importância da inclusão do software na produção de produtos culturais, transformando a cultura contemporânea também em cultura do software. Realizando uma busca de inspiração arqueológica analisamos os filmes Um homem de cabeça (Georges Méliès, 1898), Star Wars: Episódio IV (George Lucas, 1977), Forrest Gump (Robert Zemeckis, 1994), a trilogia O Senhor dos Anéis (Peter Jackson, 2001, 2002 e 2003) e Avatar (James Cameron, 2009) identificamos relações entre os softwares utilizados para a criação de efeitos visuais digitais com as técnicas existentes nos filmes criados, utilizando somente procedimentos analógicos. A partir dessas traçam-se as relações existentes entre os filmes, com intenção de entender como os efeitos visuais atuam no cinema contemporâneo. / From an affection created by the movies that make use of visual effects and compose the New Hollywood, an urge for thinking about what are and how the visual effects (analog and digital) act in the contemporary cinema and visual culture is born. Considering cinema as part of the visual culture, with the researches of Manovich (2002, 2008), Mirzoeff (1999), Zielinski (2002) and Mitchel (2004) as base, we realize the value of the insertion of software in the production of cultural products, modifying contemporary culture in a software culture, amongst others. Conducting a research of archaeological inspiration we analyzed the movies The four troublesome heads (George Méliès, 1898), Star Wars: Episode IV (George Lucas, 1977), Forrest Gump (Robert Zemeckis, 1994), the Lord of the Rings trilogy (Peter Jackson, 2001, 2002 and 2003) and Avatar (James Cameron, 2009) we identified relationship between the software’s used for creating visual effects and the techniques that are in the movies made only with analog procedures. From this we trace the relationship between the movies, with intend of understanding how visual effects act in contemporary cinema.