Sleepiness, Work Woes and iTunes

Hey everyone, a reasonably late night post this time.  And I'm quite sleepy at this point in the day (my brain seems to switch off at around 11pm and yet frequently refuses to sleep until after 2am.  Stupid brain!) so there may be typos, pointless rambling and/or ranting, inconsistencies and repetition.  You have been warned.

Well I just found out that I have, once again, misjudged the time I have for my animation's completion... not out of my usual generally crappy time management but this time from simply getting the wrong handin date.  So now it's crunch time, and though I don't expect to actually finish, I'm going to see how much I can get done.  And if it comes to it, worst case scenario is that I chop out the fancy looking bits and make a trailer, and maybe the full thing will be done for our independent exhibition at the Shadow and Moon Cinema at a later date.  Or is it sooner?  Damn my lack of organisation!  I hope I at least got the name of the place right.  So far it's been Star and Moon, Star and Shadow, Star and Space and 'that place with the two things... you know, the astrononomicalisticismish name.  You know'.

I would really like to get it finished though.

Also, iTunes, I'm afraid you're rubbish.

I have an iPod that was paid for fair and square.  I have a computer that was paid for fair and square.  So why is it my computer isn't allowed to play music from my iPod that was bought on iTunes?  Oh, because it's not authorised!  But it's okay, you can authorise UP TO 5 COMPUTERS for each account, and let them play the music bought from that account!  Yaaaay!

Well that's a load of  bollo  bullsh  rubbish!  As far as I'm aware, you can't take music from your iPod and put it onto the computer, only the other way around.  Logic follows that if you're playing music on your computer, the iPod must be connected to it.  The owner of that iPod must have therefore paid for the music from iTunes.  I don't get the point of this other than to be needlessly controlling.  The agreement covers personal use of the music.  I don't think people would use a computer to, say, play the music to the public...  It's much easier to just hook the iPod up to actual speakers.  What exactly is the problem?

It's a little complaint but this is one of the main reasons the public prefer to get their stuff using 'alternate methods'.  I've heard the complaint made by a lot of people with a variation of digital goods... music, films and video games is a common one.  This is an issue in the fight against piracy.  In this example:  I can pay for a track of music online and get it on my iPod.  I can only play this on 5 computers and it comes with its own dodgy sound file type.  Or... I can get it for free, play it on anywhere, anything, as much as I like, and have it in a file type that I can do whatever I like with.  Which sounds better for the consumer?  Fix it, people!  They can't expect to beat piracy if they keep making it look so much more appealing.

Rant mode deactivated.

Geez.  After all that needless ranting, I need something to cheer me up.

And there it is!

Tetsuoooooooo!

Okay, I did a bit more fiddling and I'm pretty sure that the change of framerate was responsible.  So I've sort of found a way to fix the issue, even if it involves copying, pasting and re-positioning every frame that's off.  Note to self:  Never, never never forget to set the framerate correctly before starting.  It's a pain!




Say it with me now:

TETSUOOOOOOOOOO!

A Bizarre Issue

Firstly, I'm posting on my blog for the first time ever with my feet Mac! It's so clean and new and fancy. It even still smells new. ...I'm not weird! I've been wanting to post a new little piece of animation I've done but have run into a bit of an odd issue. Perhaps someone can help me with this. On Adobe Photoshop CS5, using the timeline to animate, and I've gotten this oddness:

Now, most of the animation is in 2s, and you can see most of the lower layers are all in line. One stops being displayed at exactly the point at which the next starts. Then at layer 56, for some reason, the images stopped letting me change their... display bars? To be 2 frames long. No no, they want to be about 1 and a half frames long. I don't know how or why they're 1 and a half frames long but no matter what I do I can't seem to fix it. I can't align them properly and it makes the timing look odd. I know at one point I realised the framerate was 30 fps and changed it to 25 fps, but surely that wouldn't matter? If anyone can help me with this I'd really appreciate it. Even Dave looked confused. No luck when googling the issue either.

 I might upload the animation I was doing later anyway, even missing these dodgy frames. As for my current targets... polish up portfolio, finish portfolio commentary, and then blast the handin with every single piece of artwork I can find that doesn't induce vomiting. Sounds like a plan to me!

 I'm really not this negative in person. It's the evils of Blogger getting in my head. Honest!

I Need a Brain

Brains are important for cognitive function. I need to buy one. I'll try eBay. So, a quick update at long last (again) just gonna really quickly plonk some animation I've done in here. I'm really going to have to focus on my portfolio, I haven't finished my commentary for that yet. So real quickly: Here's a little runthrough of animation I'm more or less happy with, in order. Obviously tweaks and things like camera shakes need to be added, as well as colouring. I'm thinking of changing Okri's colour to be warm, perhaps a yellow. The following is bits that either aren't in order or that I'm not including (the last few clips are essentially waste. It's animator poop.)