Meetings, Testing Clips, and Music

Hello again!

So just a little update today.  We were due for a meeting to plan our 'This is Not an Exit' show at the... [insert correct combination of words here] cinema so that was something interesting to do yesterday, though I apparently missed the first meeting (oops!).  Unfortunately, only 4 of us turned up, so I'm feeling a tad concerned about how smoothly this organisation is going to go, but hopefully we'll be able to get everyone together and have a more focused meeting on what we all plan to bring in and the like.  It was a big space but kind of run down, with random bricks missing and pipes sticking out and I'm pretty sure most of the lights were out of action.  So we might need to think about better lighting too.

In any case, that'll be something to think about.  My job today is to continue to work on my animation, order myself some business cards, try to take over the world and think of interesting things we could do for the show.

So I sort of lazily arranged some of my new clips for my revamped opening so that I could get a better idea of the flow of the opening and length; obviously this isn't final at all so there are going to be a few changes/additions/polishing-up-enings here and there.




Also, lazy rain in After Effects is lazy.

Next is my progress so far on the fight scene, which I really just started a short while ago.  But I'm fairly pleased with it so far.




I don't know what it's called, if it has a term at all, when people draw the blur into the picture like that.  But I'm going to dub them Lazy Lines.  That accurately describes them!

Edit:  I forgot to talk about music.

So I've been trying to save Paul a job because I know he's going to be doing loads of people's music, so I've been looking for major tracks myself, like for the battle sequences.  That means he won't have to make big tracks, just ones for when things are calmer (much easier I think!) if he has time for it.  Mostly I've fallen in love with Shockwave-Sound.com which has lots of royalty free (but unfortunately not free) high quality music.  Go take a look!

Light Experiments

Hey there.

So as a part of my rethinking the opening scenes I've also been remaking some of the environments and experimenting with light in After Effects.  Here's some of my results.  Anyone who's reading, your criticism and suggestions are welcome! ...and needed.


   

Reworking the Opening Scenes

Hey there!  I know what you're thinking; 'Two posts in a week?  Oh no the sky is falling!  AAAAAARGH NOOOOOO!  Oh no, now giant cracks are appearing in the ground and molten lava's melting my house!  EEEEEEEEEARGH!  Oh no, now Voldemort is marching on the last bastion of humanity while giving the Grim Reaper a piggy back and shooting lasers from his eyes!  NYAAAAAAAAAARGH!'

Don't worry, the apocalypse hasn't arrived yet.  So in the meantime, I have some new bits and pieces to show.  I decided that my opening scene (arguably one of the most important scenes in any short!) was far too brief.  I've decided to rework it a bit, and here's what I have so far.  Mind you, these are just line tests and have a lot of tweaking to be done.

Ralla'ool searching for shelter.



She spots a small cave and flies back; a fade out to the same scene during the storm hinted at beforehand will follow this along with a slow zoom-in to the cave.




I also have some test walk cycles of Okri and Taln:




As you can probably tell, they're both based on the same cycle to save time.  The scene will be fairly brief, so I'm hoping with the background added and Ralla'ool included (her walk cycle is still in progress) I can just make sure that the two are out of step with each other and it shouldn't be too jarring.

And to show myself up, I have a present to leave you all with!  Watch this; it makes my innards churn with hate and envy.  That means it's awesome.

Final Show

Well, Final Show's come and gone, just like that!  But no worries, we essentially have another one.  Well, some of us.

As for the Final Show itself, it was a great time.  My classmates' work was top notch and it was really interesting to see what everyone had been up to, and more than a little humbling too.  As for my work, I wasn't really too happy with it... My board felt a little lifeless next to everyone else's, as did my portfolio and... well, I sort of felt like a bit of an underachiever, definitely.  It was an odd contrast of feeling shameful of my own rubbishness and impressed by everyone else's work.

I mean, really, really deep shame.

It's sort of sad.

But despite it all, I've got a good idea of what I need to do to stop being ashamed.  I need to get smart now; I need to get smart and organised.  There are lots of options I hadn't even considered before - I mean c'mon, Paul's portfolio was a book!  I wish I'd gotten a book made.  It looked awesome!

Then there were postcards, business cards, t-shirts...

Well, time to stop mourning my incompetence and get on with working to overcome it.  Here's the trailer I submitted:




I have some pictures too, but I took them on a dying phone that seems to hate my computer.  So those'll have to wait.

Next stop, Shadow and Star Moon and Shadow Star and Moon Star and Shadow That place that we're doing Final Show V2!

Time to prove I can be competent!

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!