A Quick Glance Back

Ah man the things I've had to let go this semester. The biggest I let go was the idea I had for my 3rd film. It was an idea I had well before the semester even started and I really reaaaaaally wanted to do. But when it came time to start of the 3rd film realism set in and I knew there was no way I'd be able do this movie the way I fully wanted to. I knew I'd end up having to shortcut in it, shorten it, or something and in the end I wouldn't be happy with it. In the end I like the 3rd film idea I had, I may have been unhappy with its outcome but it is something I could, and should, revisit one day. I abandoned a few things in my first film, which honestly, turned out to be a huge mistake. I tried to simplify it too much. Luckily I learned from that.
Something else I picked up on with this course was I'm not sure I like having to deal with software too much when it comes with animating. Which points me to the beautiful form of stop-motion. It is such a gorgeous form, but boy is it a painfully long process. But it's a lot easier to work with a puppet, in my opinion. I just have to work on timing, but hey, that is something that everybody has to work on, amirite?
Possibly my favourite thing I picked up from the class didn't even come directly from the course itself: voice acting. I've heard from quite a few people before that I would make a decent VA, and I think I got the proof I needed this semester. From what I've gotten to see people tend to get a good chuckle out of my VA work.

So yea, I think that just about wraps it up. This was a good, but painful, experience.

The End is Just the Beginning... or something

I have most of my film left to do, but considering it is only Saturday I guess that is ok. I've got a pretty simple set up going. I figure I'll officially get it going Monday, as soon as I finish astronomy. With my figures being odd little slimy doodle figures I'm thinking the pen tool will help bring out some charm in them... as much charm as a gelatinous blob and snake figure can possibly have. I keep working and reworking story boards, not really changing the story, just adding little bits of close ups and such. With the lack of classes and not having anything else to do work for after monday I should be able to devote, like, most of my time to this thing. Hopefully it is going to turn out great. I'm hoping to have a fairly smooth road ahead with it, and any animating quarks I have be worked into the film. I've did that quite a few times so far and they always turn out reaaaalllllly well. Amazing how that stuff works.

so yea, I think that's about it

A Peek Back in the Wormhole

Well look at you, you look a little too relaxed right now. Come on my end, I'll trade places with you in a heartbeat buddy. You think you're stressed right now? Nope. Once you get here you will be. Not from the workload, you're fine. Well except astronomy. You really should have stayed on top of those tests a little better... a lot better. You're doing ok in animation. You're films turned out ok... but only ok. You end up "settling" for what you can get done on both of them. Start a little earlier, not much earlier though. As for that first one: stick closer to the storyboards AND USE WAY BIGGER PIECES. Also, you're idea for the 3rd film that you were so excited about? Well you had to put it on the backburner. I'm still planning on doing it but it is way too big for this 3rd project. You don't want to shortcut that one. But, I won't tell you what you do come up with, maybe you can come up with something else. Simon actually shot the idea at you from some doodles you had. It was damn brilliant and simple too. Oh that's one more thing, THINK A LOT SIMPLER THAN YOU DO like seriously... slow it down a bit. Other than that man you're doing good. Also, treatments are still going :/ but they seem fine.


oh, and stop forgetting about the blogs. stay on top of those too

I got this... oh, maybe not

Boy, oh boy, what comes easy? I get inspired to do stories pretty easily. The problem is, I don't think them out all the way. I get really excited about various things I can do with it and forget to think of an ending. Seriously, I have been having trouble with endings all semester. Another problem I have is I want to do neat stuff... but I don't always know how to get them done. They seem like really great things to do but probably not realistic in the amount of time I usually have. A plus is I pick up on how to do a lot of the things fairly quick though, once I figure out where/how they are done. 

But one of the biggest problems is getting started... bro my god does it take me a while to get going. Once I get started I get most of the exercises done in a day, no matter how long they take. I once shot for 13 hours straight. I hated it in the end but I got everything done. 

I think that sums it up... I feel like I forgot something though. 

That Empty Feeling

It's hard to say how I feel now that I am done with the scar film. I know what I have learned from it, that's for sure. The reception didn't seem bad exactly... I mean it wasn't praised or anything. It could have stood to have been longer but I was running out of time. Granted, now that I think about it I could have set it up a little differently. I would have made much bigger pieces, MUCH bigger. I thought they were sizable enough when I made them, but 8 hours later I was getting angry and just glued some of the pieces down. I now have a bit better of an understanding as to how I should move bits frame by frame. At first I thought I was moving the pieces too slow, so I changed up the pace. After uploading them I realized that I should have kept up what I was doing. I liked the few times I zoomed in, but I think I should have did that a little more. I had too many wide normal shots. I reaaaaalllllly should have followed my storyboards better. I cut out the story bits that you suggested but from there... well I don't know. Not following them as closely was just dumb on my part. And looking back Maybe I should have kept all of the story or at least trimmed a little less. I have some smoother ideas for my object film. I'm going to take some time over spring break to mess around with a camera I checked out. Poke and prod at the Super Nintendo and see about getting that going. 

Thank God for Netflix

I get a lot of practice from the weekly exercises we get. I take that time to focus on whatever software I am using for it, be it Maya or Toon Boom, and fiddle around there for a bit and then get to work on whatever the accident is. It's a really odd way of doing things, I know, but I tend to come across things that way. That and getting absorbed into YouTube tutorials.
Something else, I don't know if you would count this a practice,
but
<_<
 >_>
I do, I've been watching A LOT of cartoons. Just Futurama, King of the Hill, and Looney Toons though. I've found that they cover the best of 2D animation that I like. Looney Toons has the wonky exaggerations, Futurama isn't completely realistic so it has fantasy touches to it with the in-world realism, and King of the Hill is the closest thing to slice-of-life that isn't in anime.

so yea, that is my way of practicing

Scar Materials

I have my materials ready

My Peek at the Universe

The movies were neat. I always find it pretty cool to see what others peoples take on experimental film is. That is the whole draw to experimental for me. It becomes less interesting when I don't know the person that did the video. There was something though, something inspired me. It wasn't the films themselves, it was something you said. "I make these movies to show people what I see. That is all that matters" or something along those lines. Right there, something clicked. I personally don't want to work with experimental. I'm willing to try it, but that is not what I want to focus in. Those words though, I feel like they apply to anything. As I said in another blog, I've always had sort of a weird way of looking at things. And of course, showing people what I see is what matters but it was really the "that's all that matters" bit. Somebody will get it. If they don't get it then they don't need to. But, that is not an excuse to just make bad films. Just an excuse to really try different things. And really understand that I am going to make bad things and that not everything is going to go perfect the first time. I really do have to make a lot of crap to get to something good. 

Though I do have a question about the first film, I'm pretty sure there was some slowing of time, but did it speed up and slow down at different times? 

What Am I Doing?

Why am I doing this? I ask myself this almost daily, and I have a new answer for it every time. Like most things, I think it boils down to my childhood. I grew up on cartoons, old and new. My dad still loves them to this day, I always enjoyed that as a kid. It was like he was just as much of a kid as I was. As I got older the cartoons started to change and for a short period they faded away. That stupid teenage period where I thought I was too cool for cartoons. It was about this time we (my family) started watching movies nearly every night. I think that is where it all began to take root. I guess in a way it is me trying to hold on to my childhood, by hoping to make somebody else's childhood. 

But

I don't think that is all. In a way I also think this is a bit of rebellion. Weird, yes, I know. My father... a very... redneck of a man, doesn't really think much of the artsy crowd. Sometimes I think this is my way of showing him... something. I don't know.

I've always had an odd way of seeing things, and when I say odd I just mean that it seems to be different from the usual way of thinking. Sometimes it isn't a very good way of thinking and it turns out dumb. Other times it is some twisted but cool way of doing things. 

Did I Tell You How I Got These Scars?

        The scar film took quite a bit of thought to get to the scar I got to, I have a good many of them. First off I had to choose what kind of scar I wanted whether I wanted to do a physical or emotional scar. I suppose I could have ran with the cancer as a scar bit, or even used a scar I got from its surgery, but, honestly that felt too easy... and not very fun really. So I sat back and poked about thinking of the various idiotic things I have done and the harm they have brought to me. The first that came to mind was the one on my very upper thigh, but I had a certain way I wanted to do that and it didn't work well with the way the assignment was assigned. This posed another challenge for me. In retrospect it was probably better this way, it led me to think of how I wanted to do things stylistically to make it a bit more interesting. So I went back to the mold and looked about. Then came my elbow scar and I remembered just how much fun I have telling that story. From that point it became a matter of just how I needed to break it down. This, honestly, has been the hardest part. Stripping away the useless bits of the story that usually get a laugh hasn't been easy. Thinking of the pacing for an animated short is much different than blabbering about to your buddies about your bike trying to kill you. It has always been about how I wrecked and what almost happened, not the irony of the bike wreck vs the skateboard. Then I have to think about how I want it to look. When I made the decision to make my dad look drastically different than me it kind of helped me decide what I wanted to try for this film. Dad looks like a Canadian from South Park so I think I will sort of take inspiration from that. Along with my love for stop motion animation I am going to try doing this with construction paper. With that in mind this is going to be set on a 2D plane, so basically a side scroller. This is going to take some serious thought if I want to do it and do it right, but that is what make this fun. 

The Wrong Scars (tentative)

Oh look, it's the wormhole

Hey buddy, how's it going? You feeling a little run down? I know how it is, it is April after all. Time to buckle down and get all of those papers done. You look a little sad, whoa man, don't start any water works on me. I know, this is a little harder to handle than you thought it would be. Turns out using the computer to animate isn't as easy as you would have thought. You knew a stop motion project would be really hard. It's fine. You've got this, you can pull through. You always do. Right now, me, I'm sitting on the couch blasting music and slowly working on that damn flip book. Remember that thing? You thought it was going to be rough, turns out you handled it a bit better than you thought. It looked like crap but you learned a lot from it. Just remember what you got out of it and push on through.
How is that final project coming anyway? Did you get to stick with our original idea? You did? Awesome. I bet it looks sweet. Did you get the right music into the right parts? Ah, only some of it. Well that’ll be fine. I’m sure it still sounds great. Are you still trying not to cry? Dude, you have got to chill out. I don’t know what is going on with you right now but everything on this end is looking pretty swell, and you know what I mean. Think about it man, let that give you a boost. Is everything still as good on that end? Ohhh ok, that is good.
You know, do you think you could do more than mumble and shake your head? This is making it a little hard for me to carry on. Is that your room? What the hell happened? That wall looks crazy different. OHHHHHHH he finally got on your nerves, huh? Yea I am amazed it is taken this long. How does he watch Netflix? I bet the living room looks empty.
Did you get to finish Astronomy like you wanted? Ah, I see, still have to do just one lab? What happened there? Actually, no, don’t tell me. I will try to fix it myself when that time comes.
ANOTHER THING, how the hell is the Vita? Does it have games yet? Did you get to hack it yet? Geezz I hope so. I don’t want to pay all of that money for games.
So I am rambling now. How long do you think these things last? Is this like some Harry Potter business where we just go in a fireplace until we run out of powder or a professor comes? I was hoping you had an answer.
So tell me what is going on in April, how is the weather?
Oh n...#...t. D...de.... b..d s...r...ce....wh....t h...pen...d