Next on the Agenda

I need to do more painting in Photoshop and work through some tutorials . . . need to get a graphics pen.

Want to get closer to the kind of artwork that I have in my head. Need to find time to paint by hand too. Want to do more textured work, giving a more 3D look to 2D work. I was happy with the full length figure of Moe, could even do more texture, especially on his face as that was a combination of raster and vector drawings.

I need to severely edit the Cosmic Cat narrative as it is still at the first draft stage . . . but as it is 8500 words, this is going to take a while. . .

The script is going well at the moment, half way through first draft . . . which will be finished today and ready for editing tomorrow with a fresh mind.

End of term . . . can't believe it !!!

WANT TO ADD A PICTURE

Presentation

Well . . . its over!

I do still think presentations are evil, BUT I have to admit it was a very useful experience.

There are two problems with doing presentations, one is standing in front of people, being looked at and hearing your own voice, but the second is talking about your own work. This is something that I have always had a problem with, producing work is so personal and releasing it to the public is terrifying, but I do know that it has to be done at some point . . .

I nearly re-inserted my video clip into Powerpoint just before starting the presentation, but as I had tried it in the laptop at the rehearsal and it played on George's laptop I thought it would be OK . . . so typical that it didn't play. So for the future I will always re-insert just before.

BBC Bible

Had mostly planned out the bible in my head so I knew what I was aiming at . . . it took longer to actually get the pages done just because of having to re-size or re-arrange the artwork to fit in to the space around the text.

Printing out didn't go to plan as I wanted edge to edge on the full page colour pages and as I know now you have to print on A3 rather than on A4 and trim down . . . so I had to re-size all the page documents in Illustrator and have an A4 outline to cut to. Which was fine except it had to be done during Sarah Muller's chat, but I now know for next time.

I printed out a 1/4 scale bible at home to proof read and order the pages, this helped a lot.

Animatic

On this animatic I was suppose to make 'a really nice animatic' . . . hopefully I did!

I have enjoyed watching it since, so I think I did achieve something.

I think as I enjoy pencil drawings it is probably a good style for me to develop. I did have a thought of using drawings like these with some colour over certain elements, ie: turquoise colour for the Turquoise planet and just a base colour for the cats.

The whole animation would look interesting in black and white or with these basic colour scheme.

Photoshop Artwork

Artwork for the Cosmic Cat project didn't quite go to plan, I am happy with 'Moe' because he has the texture effect I was after. But its the look i wanted for the rest of the artwork as well as on the landscapes. Ended up with more vector pieces than I would have liked.

I really needed to have about 6-8 weeks to do the colour work and had about 6 days! Not so much bad planning as just not enough hours in the day, and not enough days!!

I had to use a mouse to paint in Photoshop as I don't have a Graphics pen at home, which made things a lot more difficult to do. But also it was my first time of trying to paint in Photoshop which is a huge learning curve for me. Hopefully it will get easier and I will get better.

Colour Illustrations

Just starting the colour work for the document and the presentation. . .should have started last week, so no pressure.

Hopeing to use hand drawn illustrations, scanned in and painted using Photoshop. . .as I haven't used Photoshop before for painting and as I have only just learnt about this programme on the IT training courses, it should be fun to see what comes out.

Presentation document/bible

Found this quite difficult to write, starting to get there. . .at one point I was putting too much information in and then not feeling like it was enough!

Don't feel I can write as if I am talking either. . .what I have written so far isn't quite corporate but it isn't that loose either.

Also found that I was repeating myself in the different sections. . .trying to write something in brief at the beginning and then in more detail.

I am not a sales person and never will be!

RENDERING - Oh. . joy of joys!

I always get to the point of wanting to export and render and a cold sweat brakes out, and fear grips me to the core.

Spent a day rendering trying to understand the process, kept getting the wrong size output. . .still don't understand it but I have at least cracked it. On the 18th of November 2008, a Tuesday, a most auspicious day, I successfully rendered my BBC Animatic as an avi file, with no compression (as it was made up of bitmaps) at the correct frame size 1024 x 576. . .hurrah!

Somethings which have been understood by most people for so long now, are at least not completely out of my understanding now. . .that is until next time!

Anyway. . . I felt accomplished.

Really annoying though. . .when you 'test movie' in Flash it doesn't pick up the odd mistake, like a frame being out of sync, nor does it show up in the preview window in Premiere. They only show up in the rendered piece. . .so you go through the whole rendering process and only then find all your mistakes and have to go back through correcting and re-rendering until its right, but at least I can now render under my own steam!

In fact I can now render away to my hearts content. . .happy hours spent rendering!!!!!

BBC presentation project-1st entry

I had decided on a story which I wrote a couple of years ago, it was developed into an interactive CD project which used all vector illustrations. At the time I was more concerned with getting the interactive story and audio sorted, wanting to get to grips with vector drawing. I was never very happy with the illustrations so I thought this project would be a chance to develope the project visually and edit the story (which needs a lot of editing!)

I also want to write the script, but I know this will tak a long time as the narrative is currently about 8'500 words.

I started with the animatic as I thought this process would kick start the whole project.

I am quite happy with the result so far on the animatic, found some music, which will probably sound inappropriate when played on the big screen in front of everyone, but I like it! If I have time I will include some sound effects, but I know that this is not my area. . .so I don't want to ruin things.
I used Flash to animate some of the scenes in the animatic, hand drawn images in pencil scanned in and resized where needed. Because these images are bitmaps there are some that become speckled. I tried to resize where I could, but because I wanted to use zooming in and out from shots it was difficult to always have the correct size required. I managed to get the correct size of images in most of the shots by using smaller psd files in the background and when zooming in swapping over to larger psd files by deleting the smaller files on one layer and beginning a new layer with the larger images. So that at least after the motion of zooming has finished the viewer is at least looking at a better image.

I really like working in black and white, and using hand drawn illustrations. This process did start to bring my story to life which was great.

Became more familiar with Flash through this animatic exercise too.

I WILL UPLOAD SOME IMAGES WHEN THE INTERNET ALLOWS ME TO!!!!

Soundscape and Editing

I didn't find these projects difficult as such, I just don't think in terms of sound.

My soundscape wasn't very good I think, I did the editing and recording at home. . .but my computer processor is quite loud, which isn't a problem went dealing with images. And the speakers are just the internal ones on the computer, so I found listening to the finished piece at home was completely different from hearing it on speakers in the studio.
Suddenly all the breaks in the music and joins of the sound effects really stuck out like a sore thumb! Oh well. . .didn't think I had done great anyway!!

But it did point out exactly how important good speakers are, or at least equivalent speakers to where you are going to play the track.

Some of the soundscapes were great, Adam's and Jacob's, imparticularly really brought images to mind which matched their intentions.

Conlusion : don' mind editing sound from already recorded pieces, that can be fun if you have sufficient time to get into it. . .but the whole recording foley effects and dealing with trying to evoke atmosphere (which I agree is so important) is just not a skill I have. I find I just don't really know where to start. . .

2nd Year

My first entry this term. . .its taken quite a while to get to do this!

A very slow start to the year for me and an even slower start to getting back to work.

End of Year Thoughts

Well I didn't think I would make it through the first year, so it feels quite strange to be here at the end.

There is a lot of stuff I have enjoyed this year, imparticular life drawing which is something I hadn't done for years and really feel a strong connection to, which probably isn't the main aim of the course but it is my favourite topic. I hope to improve my drawing and general artwork next year further.

I have struggled with technology this year because I had limited experience when I started and having to get to grips with so many programmes all at once caused my brain to crash several times. This is still a mine field for me and I have come to the conclusion that this will never be a strong area for me.

Some of the storyboarding and scriptwriting work was enjoyable to do, but I don't know whether I could do that much of this work as it can get a little tedious.

Overall it has been a difficult year because of doing so many different things which use so many different sections of the brain, which is fine if you can multi-task. . . .but I can't!
I did survive though so I guess that is an achievement in itself.

End of Year Thoughts

Aaaargh Nuts

Final Scene

Group Project: Post Production

Editing and Sound

I continued to work on the elphant t-shirt project to do editing, foley and and compositing.

We recorded some sound effects for the elephant ( James is now the voice of the little blue elephant!) and edited the results in Audition. There are 6 sounds in all, including a drumroll, nervous 'oooohs' for the elephant and audience applause. This took quite a while to do, trying to get some atmosphere and character into the final film. But I am sure a proper 'sound man' would have done a much better job!

The final stage of exporting was a painful process, it turned out that the original Flash file was over a GB in size for some reason, so the rendering was taking over 2 hours. So in the end I exported the Flash files as a PNG image sequence, which was of more normal size and then could render from Premiere in a few minutes.

I enjoyed working with Charlotte as producer, as she helped when I needed her to do something and left me alone when I needed to just get on with things as I wished to.

Things I learnt:
More timing in animation, as just reading about it in thoery doesn't get it into your head, only doing it does that.

How not to work with too many images from hand drawn to computer vectors, there must be another way. . .

Some stuff about rendering but this is still a mine field.

And how I am not too good at sound

Group Project: Production

Production - Animation

Animation of 'Aaaargh Nuts': I decided to do the animation for the elephant using traditional method of animation with drawings on peg paper, for two reasons, one, that I felt I could work out the timing better and two, that I wanted to get some fluid movement into the elephant which I didn't feel confident I could achieve in drawing straight onto the computer.

I decided to use peg paper to do the animation as I thought I could achieve the movement I wanted better, it had been a while since doing the animation practice exercises in the first term, so it took a while to get into it again. I don't think I could have done the movement straight into Flash in the same way and I didn't want to have a cut out, dis-jointed look to the animation.
So althought it was a good way for me to work it was a long way round, and the scanning followed by converting all 207 frames was annoying.

I had hoped that by using the scanned bitmap images and converting them to vectors rather than drawing them as vector, as I did for the OSTN project, that I would cut down on the work load and therefore it would be quicker. But unfortunately the conversion process did not go smoothly! The scanned images picked up some marks on the paper from rubbed out lines and so when converted and coloured in there were gaps left which needed to be filled in manually, this added so much time to each frame and felt like my life was ebbing away. The lines of the drawings became grey and not a smooth line, so I think I just don't have the experience to have known how to sort the settings out. The converted images didn't look as I would have liked in the end.

It was difficult to get the positioning of all the frames into the right place, I used a box drawn around the animation to act as a guide but this didn't always work and the animation jumps around a little.
I would have liked to use more movement in the body as well as just certain parts, but getting everything to move at the right time is difficult.

I was satisfied with the line test but less so with the Flash test, due to the scanned converted image artwork.
I do enjoy using the hand drawn peg paper process, but getting to the computer stage sometimes is less satisfying.

Group Project: Pre-Production

Moonut T-shirts project - Elephant on Diving Board

I worked on several thumbnail storyboards for various t-shirt designs with the team and then drew up 2 design concept ideas in more detail to submit to the client.
The 'Aaaargh Nuts' idea was accepted with some ammendments to the story. Following on with some character drawings and colour tests using illustrator.

Maya Animation

The jury is still out on maya animation. I think I got the hang of the programme and I can think in 3D, but at some point it all got very complicated and life seemed a bit too short!

Doing the ball bounces was fun. . ish, and I felt I understood what was going on with the key frames, the graph editor and some form of animation timing.
The flour sack was a completely different thing altogether, maybe because when you are animating it you want control of what bits move and how, which means you would have to do the rigging yourself. I decided not to use a cycle for the walk because it is very difficult to get rid of the sliding appearance, the limp walk ended up being a bit too slow, I thought I could use the graph editor to move the key frames closer together, but unfortunately this send everything off sequence. . .so that didn't work. I was satisfied with the walk though as I had one foot turned forward with his heel lifting and his toe slapping down and the other dragging behind which took a lot of limping round my living room! The jump was really difficult to do as things started to go haywire, parts of him were being left behind, so after losing some patience the jump and landing are not what I had planned. . .but at least it got finished. I could get into it more but it would just take a lot of practice.

Storyboarding and Scriptwriting

I enjoyed these assignments, but don't know if I am any good at either of them.

Storyboarding the 'Mark and Kevin' story:
I liked the process of drawing up the scenes and it seemed relatively straight forward. After I had finished though I thought one of the scenes should have been done differently. Following the close up of Mark with a fist, I think should have been just a close up of his fist filling the screen, but I did a profile shot instead....oh well.

Scriptwriting:
This was quite difficult to do at first as I tend to write in book form as a story, so trying to just write the essentials stumped me for a while. Ben suggested drawing the storyboard first which I did, and this made an amazing difference. In drawing out the story I got all of the discriptive stuff out of my head and wrote all the camera angles and cuts for the scenes, which I could then just use for telling the story in script form. I think it is 100 times better than my other attempts, but then I did start from a low point so anything from there was up! Don't know if it is any good as a script, a story or as a storyboard, I am just relieved at getting a result.

Ident - Final thoughts

After having some time away from the final result and having viewed it a few times since, I can appreciate what I have learnt and try to learn from the mistakes, and although I didn't get everything done the way I would have liked I should not be so hard on myself for the result I did get!

OSTN Ident

Well, the last week and a half has been so intense that now I feel exhausted, a little dissatisfied with myself and full of confusion about technology.

Various stages of the journey: I did all the action sequences on peg paper to test which worked well up to a point, but when I took the vector drawings into Flash and set up the scenes as the drawings they didn't seem to work as well. I think you can get too close to a project and lose sight along the way. I am not sure now if my project is the way I intended or not, think it is too soon to tell. But I definately wasn't able to concerntrate on the look of the finished work because of trying to fathom my way through the jungle of technology, which I feel really hindered by. Even when you know what your're doing things can go wrong with computers, like software crashing etc, so adding that to not being knowledgable enough can be a huge headache.
I really felt the lack of technolgy knowledge throughout this project, there is so much that can be achieved but it is knowing what the software packages can do and how to do it.
I couldn't remember how to use certain parts of Flash and I feel that I didn't use it to the best effect when I did get into it. Perhaps I am more of a pre-production person, as I really enjoyed the early stages of the project. Writing the idea down, creating the first character drawings and sets, designing the look and doing the story board. I don't know whether over the course of the next few years if that will change as I become more experienced on the software programmes or not, it feels like there are people who are naturally gifted at operating programmes and those who get some one else to do it for them! Overall I found it difficult to estimate how long each stage was going to take because I didn't know enough about the following stage. I don't feel very happy with the final result, at the moment!

The last day was very difficult, as the DVD burner decided not to work, the exporting settings of Quicktime movies from Premiere squashed my final work, and I exported it at various settings in the end trying to sort this problem. I had to change the settings from the notes on Moodle, so it took most of the afternoon to export the file. The second DVD burner set up wouldn't accept my + disc and I had to get a - disc instead. When I finally had my DVD some of the line tests do not play from the disc and apparently these will have to be dragged onto the desktop to play properly.

Lastly on a good note, the things that I will take from this as a positive are that I liked my idea, (even if someone else would have produced a better finished piece) I am happy with the planning stages and my thought process. I managed to learn alot about Illustrator in doing all the vector drawings, as at the start I had never used this programme before. I think it helps in getting to grips with a new programme if you already know a similar programme, in this case Corel Draw. I do feel alot more comfortable in opening Illustrator now and with using layers, which is something I had not worked with. So this is the main achievement, which is good, but that took alot more time than it would have done, and therefore caused me to get behind schedule.

I did enjoy most of the project and I do think it is a really good idea for a project, but it was quite stressful in the second half.

OSTN project update

So glad to have the extension, I would have finished the project some how for the original deadline, but this way I feel I had more time to plan and really get to grips with my idea.
I spent 3 days wanting to get started on the animation over last Friday, Saturday and Sunday but ended up still thinking through the process, which at the time felt over indulgent, but now feels like time well spent. I finally started the animation drawings the following week, on Thursday and felt I made good progress.
I felt sometimes that I was putting off starting the animation because of the fear of getting it wrong or the fear of technology. I wanted to use Flash in a certain way, by using the pivotal points and gaining the smoothness, but now I realise that even if it is possible to do my project in this way I would not feel confident to do it. I am not sure I understand all the ways that are available anyway! I hope in the future that I will be able to decide on a style/technique from choice rather than reduced options due to limited exsperience and knowledge.

Anyway, the animation process has begun, I am drawing all the characters and the movement cycles by hand using peg paper and will scan all images into Illustrator and create vector drawings. I used my digital camera to import the images into Premiere and imported the sound effect that I edited of cowboy boots and spurs walking to match up with the movement. This seems like a good way to work on timing for the opening sequence, don't know if it right or not.
I have just about finished the first 3 seconds of 6.5 seconds of action and will then start the vector drawings which hopefully will go!

OSTN Ident

I think I am looking forward to getting stuck into this project, but I really want to do it well, so there is some fear of failing mixed in, as I have a strong vision in my head as to the desired effect.

In answer to your question Andy on creativity: the best thing so far in this project is that I actually have a vision in my head as an idea, which is amazing for me. This is the first idea I have had since starting at Uni. so I feel relieved because I thought my brain had dried up and that I had lost my 'creative mojo'. I think my brain has just been surviving in trying to deal with all the new stuff because change can be so exhausting!

So the idea is the thing! Now I just have to do it justice! I know I will get alot wrong but hopefully somethings right and learn from all the mistakes. I am planning to keep the technology simple to take the pressure off and try to concerntrate on getting the idea across. I want the story to be the main focus and keep the visuals quite basic and simple. The theme is to create a series of stories that could expand and evolve with the characters. I hope I can acheive something close to what is in my head.

After Effects Session 2

I have already expressed some of my views with Andy on these sessions so I will keep this gripe brief.
There is a huge difference between teaching and imparting knowledge from the basis of industry experience, and knowing how to operate, in this case a computer programme, for your self project work. My only motive for this opinion is from the fact that I am here to learn as much as possible from industry standard people and unfortunately I feel the days spent trying to learn After Effects have been wasted for me. I know that I am on a steep learning curve as far as the programmes are concerned due to my lack of computer experience but there is a distinct difference between my understanding of Maya and Flash now, and After Effects.
Bascially the best solution in teaching programmes is to cover 2 angles:
1. to demostrate the programme on the projection screen whilst the students are following the instructions (as James White did with Maya and Andy did with Flash)
2. to have written instructions to accompany the demonstration, to follow if you are slower or for students who are more advanced to work quicker
It can be very helpful to have another person in the studio as well as the tutor if possible to help individually, and keep the pace of the lesson going.

I thought this was going to be brief!

Reading notes from the monitor is very tiring and the notes should just be instructions with screen prints to show anything complicated as the Maya and Flash notes. Not everyone will need written instructions but they can be helpful to keep people busy if the pace is too slow. And most importantly the notes need to match what is being taught in the demonstration which in the case of After Effects did not and the session became totally confused.

Gripe over!

Journalism Project

This has not been an enjoyable project for anyone in my team, including me! Don't know why really, prehaps as it is set up to give students experience of working with different people within our own group and having to work for another course but as someone with work experience already it just didn't seem necessary. The idea of working for TV within the studios does not appeal to me because it seems a very hyped environment with lots of egos floating round! I can hear some people saying 'how cynical of you', oh well! I know some people did enjoy the experience though and so for them it probably opened a window of opportunity.

I think I am more of a solo project person and so that aspect of the project was difficult, and although I enjoy taking charge of a project that is based on my ideas, I did not enjoy trying to movtivate people who clearly were not going to take part no matter what I said. I think it felt like alot of pressure also because the After Effects session did not give me enough information to feel confident to go off and produce a project after one day's confusing tutorial.

Not looking forward to any more work on this project.

Self Protrait Lip Sync

I found this project quite frustrating as I didn't enjoy doing a self protrait, just couldn't get my face or character down on paper, felt a bit like revealing your soul!
So spent most of the time that I would liked to have spent on the animation just trying to acquire an image that I felt comfortable with. The lip sync part was much harded to do than with 'Lola', maybe because of the extra work involved in having to draw all the mouth positions and get them correct. It seemed OK drawing the mouth postions at first, but then when I took them into my animation, I found some of them didn't really match the required sound. Also I was trying to put too many mouth positions into a word, perhaps 4 or 5, when only 2 or 3 are required, less works much better....
I have started a new Self Protrait, which I think will work better than the one I finished, it is a much better composition, so when it done I will put up on my blog. But this will have to take second place to the 'OSTN' project work.
To conclude, I hated my final project, it wasn't what I wanted to do at all, it ended up a mish-mash. This is because I didn't have a vision in my head and was thinking about driving the vehicle rather than looking where I was going!

Early CGI Animation Session

I have now watched some of the short films of early CGI that I missed in the screening session.
Panasonic 'Glider' directed by Robert Abel 1981, the paper glider planes flying through mesh buildings, smooth animation but rather monotonous.
Macintosh 'Pencil Test' 1988, a clinical film, simple graphics but I liked the link between crosssing over from hand drawn work to computers. As I discovered computers quite late I missed the developement stages of computers and what they allowed peolple to do for leisure and work and this short film seems to sum up the bridge between the two mediums.
'Megacycle' directed by Don Mitchell 1989, this film was rather depressing to watch because of the monotony and the thought that life could be so mundane as nothing more than a series of the same path travelled by people who are all the same, with no distinguishing features. It is very clever but over whelming, reminicent of Kraftwerk music videos.
I watched some other films on the Computer Generated Classics DVD but found most of them used the same themes of monotony and continuity, some were interesting, like the Rolling Stones video using real footage of the band with computer image figures interacting with them. The figures were imaginative as they were just coloured lines, very fluid and transparent so you could see everyting else behind them. Probably looks dated now but it still seems clever to me......

Flash - Lip Sync Session

This session was great! When Andy was demonstrating the lip sync in Flash I thought well this doesn't look too bad, but it is harder to do than it looks! Getting to know a small part of Flash is bad enough, but I did really enjoy it when I eventually got going.
The session worked well because of using drawings that were already done, and so you could experiment quite easily, once you had got over the initial timing of the frames to the sounds of the vowels and the consonants. It is difficult to identify where the sound falls, ie; on what frame, but after trial and error it seemed to work.
I hope the 'Lola' version I did worked Ok, it looked fine to my untrained eye.

I really enjoyed the session and I am looking forward to doing the face lip sync but not the self portrait bit! I think it is going to be harder to do because of having to create all the mouth postures as well as synchronise.

'Lola' (lip sync by a novice)

After Effects Session

Photoshop, Premiere and After Effects all on the same day, well this really did stretch my small brain and computer experience to the limit.
I am afraid I did not enjoy this session at all, it really wasn't planned well in my humble opinion. For anyone who is experienced at any of these programmes already, and there seemed to be quite a few who are, then it was fine, but I really struggled to follow what was being taught. The tutorial notes to follow were very confusing, if an operation has 4 parts to it then only 2 parts were explained, there aren't consistent names for the files through the sections, when there are more than one area for lists of files in the programme it isn't clear which list is being referred to, there is too much chat about what you are about to do, so that you are reading unnecessary sentences, and I could go on. People were at different stages by the end of the day and at one point no one knew what programme to open next.

I will say that I wasn't in the best frame of mind yesterday as I was very tired from finishing the projects but it wasn't made any easier by the style of tutorial. Maybe I have a different way of learning as I felt more comfortable with the Maya and Flash sessions using the large screens to project the programme. I know this was difficult for some people who were sat at the back though.

I think I am the only one who had a problem with the session but unfortunately I really did have a problem. So I just hope it gets better in the next session.

Flash

I just want to know all this stuff now, only a slight amount of impatience there. A really good learning session, I liked way the information was put across, as some one tried to show Flash to me once and it didn't make sence so this was a relief.

I really want to get used to the drawing tools in Flash and feel confident using them, but I know this will take time for me as I am not quick at learning new programmes. I liked using the brush tool to draw with freehand and using the 'wacom' pen produces a different effect, so I want to spend a lot of working on this at home.

Flash looks very complicated and is but I am looking forward to getting to grips with it.