Animated Documentary - Sheep set tests

Before we started animating with the sheep, we decided to first decide on how we wanted the background to look. We have some model foliage that I used on the newt set, which we thought we could use with this set also. We gradually built up the amount of foliage, taking photos of each stage, so that we can see what looks best with an photographed background. 

I put together the different amounts of foliage images along with different images I took. I think that the image with the foliage bushes works the best because with the others the floor and the grass in the image clash and it doesn't look nice. but with the bushes there it breaks that up so that it just looks like the field behind is a bit different from this with the sheep in.


I feathered round the edge of the bush so that there wasn't a harsh line between background and foliage, which made it slightly better.






I also blurred the background to continue that depth of field. And adjusted the colour balance so it matched the sheep layer more.

It looks okay, but I still don't think the colours match up properly or maybe it's the image. 
It might be a case of lighting the bushed to help it blend better or looking back at an image I took, it might be that the image needs bring down slightly so the horizon is lower down and behind the bushes. 















I went back to the images and tried to make it look as thought we had lit up the bushes, I upped the brightness, and already I think it's looking better and blends well with the background.


I also adjusted the levels of the background image so it was slightly darker, and brought the image down so the horizon is behind the bushes, it looks a lot more realistic now, and not as odd as it did before. So I think if we illuminate the bushes, this will help it look a lot better when adding the green screen.