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.)

Believe it or Not...

I am actually alive! Back from Berlin, finally got around to updating. Had an absolutely great time and I will say this: Berlin is a nice city, especially for a capital. Compared with London... yeeeeah. In London you get to be a sardine in one of the ugliest, most densely-packed, polluted and miserable cities I've ever had the displeasure of visiting. Berlin was much more pleasant -not as clean from what I could tell, as far as litter goes- but a lot more spaced out. It was artier, more free, more relaxed, more happy and though it kind of smelt of sewers a lot of the time I'd take that over London's smog any day. So yeah, I was quite surprised in that sense. It still doesn't quite beat good old Newcastle, but I'm probably bias. The festival itself was brilliant too; I sat in and watched most of the speakers and the screenings were fantastic for the most part. I think there were a few animations that a lot of people I talked to weren't too keen on, but overall they were great. I'll look at them in a bit more detail later *cough*whenIcanbearsed*cough*. For now, I actually have... Wait for it... ... Waaaait for it... SOMETHING TO SHOW.

Hehe, I love google. Anyway First actually coloured sequence from my animation; it's a scene in which Okri uses one of Ralla'ool's feathers to start a fire. I added a little glow in after effects.

Yeah, it's Been a While... Also, Sadface.

Okayokay. I didn't update for a bit. And you'll find that once again this will be more of the same.

Y'see, things have been very mad lately. I just can't seem to get my head around everything. With easter coming though that should give me a bit of time to fully organise myself and get everything up on here.

There is a bit of news, but its not good news. I spent a very large amount of money on a computer a while ago; I can't remember if I mentioned it on here, nor can I be bothered to check. But this computer was a very powerful heavy-duty thing and... its dying. The computer itself is okay, but a little while ago I began to notice some slightly odd things going on; odd popups opening in new windows when clicking on a site sometimes (and it doesn't matter whether I was actually clicking anything: a linkless border or actual links, no matter how official the site... popups). I stupidly put it down to my new version of Firefox being crap. I installed Adblocker and thought nothing of it.

Until yesterday when I turned it on to do a bit of work. It was fine at first, but then things started becoming slower. Internet pages first. Then it began to load more slowly. I scanned, it found nothing, but continued to become increasingly unresponsive. Well you can imagine my horror. All my stuff's on there! (and this, kiddies, is why backing up your data is vital!)

Well at this very moment its been left on safe mode with programmes running to try and bring it back to life. It's got Malwarebytes, Avast, SuperAntiSpyware and one I think is called Adware(?) taking turns to try and beat the issues out of it. Also use Rkill (stops viruses from operating) and CCleaner (I think it sorts the computer's registry) on it now too. I find it curious... my oldest computer had Avast. No problems. My old iMedia had Avast. No problems. My sister's two laptops had Avast. No problems. My mam's old computer had Norton. It had viruses. My new computer had Norton, and now its got viruses... pattern?

So hopefully I can get rid of the issues without resorting to a wipe. But if a wipe is needed... well it'll at least save my computer I suppose. It's gotten worse with every reboot, getting slower and now it refuses to connect to the internet (even though Avast's started behaving oddly and trying to get me to connect to unknown networks... I find it all a bit strange). Once its sorted, I'll be able to start uploading again. I make a point of not using my memory stick when its been used with a computer I know is infected so I quite literally have nothing. I'm empty handed and sad and... Geez I hope I don't lose too much stuff.

Yeah, Been a While...

And that's very much because I've just being doing the same thing continuously. I probably mentioned at least once in an earlier post what the game plan is: I sketch out every major scene in rough, line test it all, then colour those main scenes. Once I have that done wait, my last post was February?! Oh geez... okay, I'm going to start blogging. Every day. Just joked to my friend that I'm going to post a blog about every daily movement to make sure I don't let my posts slip. WHO'S INTERESTED IN EATING SANDWICHES? No one? Well poo.

Anyway, once I have that done, then I'll go back and put in the little niggly bits, depending on how much spare time I have. So basically, I'm doing exactly the same thing I've been doing since I last said I would be doing what I'm doing. I'll probably update this post later today to show a bit of what I'm happy with so far. I also have self-branding to finish (yes, I haven't actually finished that yet. I can't help it; I find branding hard to get just right). AND, I did say a while back that I was going to make myself upload my more personal projects and I'll get to that. ...soon. There's also a 3D model to make for the figurine, and 3D practice models I've been roughing out myself and the 3D mask for Varquer'eel to wear. Besides that, there's really just my own worldbuilding and character/species designs (I've also begun working on some clothing and armour designs for said species. Yay, I'm a fashion designer! :D ) and I've been looking into machinima again, but that's just for fun. Still, its timing and composition I guess.

My most recent issue with my animation is trying to figure out a way to get a background which is keyframed to move (hence moving it in 1s) and the drawn character frames to move slowly (in 2s) without a) the shot looking odd or b) having to draw what I can shoot in 2s, in 1s. So there's possibly a bit of problem solving to do on that one. ...Or just a load of drawing.

And that's about it. I have to remember to update more regularly. I should be back to edit this later on today. If I can, I'll get some clips uploaded. 'Til then!