#15

What did I discover this semester? I discovered that Planning ahead rocks. My procrastination skills took a blow this semester. Instead of thinking to myself, “hmmm do I have something due tomorrow?” I now think to myself, “I should plan to do that before tomorrow.” That’s a step for progress in the right direction.  In this class I also discovered tons of new programs that I’ve never heard of even if I hate one of them a lot now (toon boom). Using after effects for my third film was a cool learning experience. That program made candle movie magic happen, I hope that cs6 doesn’t suck. I think a new creative spot was discovered in my brain this semester too because I can’t stop thinking of funny animation ideas and imposing them on my friends. Usually inspiration hits me when I’m zoned out instead of listening to their banter then I interrupt them to tell them my ideas.

What did I leave behind this semester? Toon boom. I’m still angry that the free trial isn’t backwards compatible so the only way to remove the water mark off of my first film is to start over on the entire thing. I’ll probably do that in after effects. I had to leave to Hider-Simmel remake behind because I had bronchitis, a sinus infection, and a sound design mid-term that week. After three hours of coughing and key framing my remake was abandoned. My idea was to have the little circle and triangle pull out a string and trip the big triangle during the chase scene.

I left behind my history class this semester which wasn’t good for my gpa. I put animation first and other classes on the back burner. I had a history test the day after film number two was due, so that test didn’t go well for me. I feel like my priorities were in the right place though, my parents will probably disagree…but rewriting papers and studying a lot for the final exam is a new challenge accepted.

There are three things that a college student wants in life, sleep, good grades, and a social life, but you can only have two at a time. This past semester I gave up sleep. I’m prone to not sleeping now. My body is the most happy after a good five hours. I feel like crap if I sleep for an entire eight hours and I don’t know what that means for my health. Speaking of that, I left behind my diet and exercise this semester because there were a lot more hours spent sitting in front of a computer screen than expected. I had to much work to do in order to have time to cook a healthy dish, I just needed to tell my roommates to shut up and order a pizza.

#14

                So far I have a lot of animating left to do. I ran into some problems. Doing my liver movie idea was complicated because every time I moved a mouth piece or pupil everything would move. I even had a pre med student use his steady doctor to be hands try and move paper pieces but he would just breathe too heavy and blow the pieces to hell. Also that guy seems to have a bad temper if he’s going to be a doctor. You can’t slam your fist onto the table every time you blow a patients eye away. The liver movie also felt like it had too much dialogue and I want something with a more animated feel. Something to watch instead of just listen too.

                I went back to my ironic candle movie idea in the toon boom free trail. Toon boom isn’t backwards compatible though. This is pretty infuriating. I got mad at toon boom and decided that I don’t want to sit in the lab and restart my movie in there. I decided that I would rather make the art on illustrator then animate it in after effects. Hopefully things will go well in after effects or I will find myself sitting in the lab. Toon boom seemed a lot easier to use than after effects, but after effects doesn’t have water marks and I bet it has backwards compatibility with older programs and trials. I can’t even finish my first movie now because it will always have that water mark. Geez. Hooray for being available for pc's toon boom, but booooo for being crappy.

                So where am I? I am almost finished with the art so I can start animating everything this afternoon. I feel ok about this for now; I’m not in panic no sleep mode yet, but I might be there soon. Good thing that my first exam isn’t even until next Monday. I can animate all week then cram all next weekend and have fun sometime after next Wednesday. A girl gave me a free case of red bull that she stole (I’m not sure how she managed that) so I do have a freakish amount of caffeine to keep me going for a while. Sleep and non-microwavable food shall come later but for now I turn off Facebook, put my phone on silent and get in the animation zone!

#13

Hello Jan 2012 version of myself. Wait to get a haircut, the one you get over spring break will be totally awesome.  To make your life easier for this animation class do your blog posts earlier in the week. Aim for Thursday. You drink on Friday and Saturday nights causing you to either forget about blog posts or make angry ones without spell checking them.

                Rent equipment and do everything in advance because media services runs out of stuff. It is a gamble to shoot stop motion movies the night before you have to return it. You could always pay the five dollars to keep stuff longer and screw someone else’s project up but that would be a little douche bag like. Plus five dollars means a lot to you poor little media arts student.

                Learn that story boards are awesome. They just plan everything out for you. Thinking about stuff as you go takes forever.  Story boards are like rough drafts. You can revise scenes and come up with better ideas. They’re super awesome.  Don’t just scribble a story board the night before they’re due and scan them in to you blog. Take time on them and it will be worth it later.

                Weekly projects aren’t as intense as you think they are. They’re worth a small portion of your grade, still do them but don’t make them the most important thing ever. They don’t even take up as much time as you expect them to. Except for the first 2d ball one. That one takes forever because you will try to figure out after effects. You can watch videos on how to use programs though. Contrary to popular belief tutorials teach you a lot more then blindly clicking around. The toon boom tutorial videos were very informative but be sure to watch them about fifty times.

                Every movie will take you longer than expected. More days and hours and days than you plan for. Try to do more things in advance. Just try to make a better plan. Think about how you will do something before you go to do it and what you want. Just don’t take naps or play your xbox 360 anymore to plan ahead and stop procrastinating. You’ll never ever be productive after a nap. Trust me. You wake up feeling sleepier than you were in the first place then you will forget about what you were supposed to be working on before your nap.     

Film #3 Progress

Hard to process is about a guy who goes out binge drinking. As hes chugging beers we will see his organs. The liver will be processing alcohol and get drunk

#12

                                What film festival(s) to enter? Hmm good question. Where to begin?! The Charlotte film festival looks cool. Its location is reasonable for a poor student. My parents live in Rock Hill so I wouldn’t even need to find a place to stay for that one! The web site is really easy to navigate too. For one film festival’s website everything was in Japanese…so I determined that it wasn’t the right for me. The Charlotte film festival has a paperless entry system but the prices seem a little steep. $60 dollars for student films.  Ahhh!

                The Reel to Real film festival looks interesting. It is held near Ashville which is a nice area. It is near my uncle’s house so I would once again have a place to stay if my submission made it in. The web site isn’t as well put together as the Charlotte film festivals site but I guess that isn’t Reel to real’s fault. That’s a cute name by the way. To submit to Reel to Real you don’t need a withoutabox account, but you need an imbd account, which is owned by withoutabox. Hmph. I can’t find the entry fee for reel to real though.

                The Myrtle Beach International film festival looks a little intense. They have information about free food and discounts for flights and hotel rooms if you mention the MBIFF. This makes the MBIFF feel very inviting to me. Nothing says hey come here and do this like discounts and food. The submission fee is thirty bucks, which is ok. I feel like a hotel room there would be fun but still expensive, even with a discount. For MBIFF submissions need to be on a dvd or vhs.

                The beau fort International  Film Festival is free. I like the idea of that a lot. It also isn’t very far away. You need a withoutabox account to submit entrees. The BIFF looks pretty nice and legit based off of the website. This year’s BIFF will be the 7th annual one so I guess it is doing pretty well. BIFF doesn’t offer discounts for hotels or flights, but that was sort of expected. Based off of the web site BIFF looks classy showing a guy in a tux. The other web sites have pictures of  people in normal clothes. I'm not really sure how that makes me feel.

#11

Film two went over pretty well. There was a lot less criticism in the feedback for film than film one which can be perceived as improvement. Yay.  I was surprised that so many people thought it was funny but maybe since I spent sooo much time working on it couch fuzz just became super unfunny to me. Reverse abc order was cool just because the movies seemed to get better each time. If we started with couch fuzz and the talking liquor bottles and then watched all of the soundless movies then the class period would have been less fun.

Couch fuzz killed my back because the camera tripod was pretty high up off of the floor so I had to keep bending over to move everything on the floor to take each photo. Next time I would rent a tripod that could get shorter. Hopefully I’d have a remote clicker for the camera too. For the shots that were low I had to balance the camera on an object and hope that the camera would stop shaking before the timer went off.

I think I’ll ask a member of media arts to help me with my next movie instead of my roomies. They didn’t like helping out very much and tried to take over with their ideas. I got one roomie to hold the string for the bear’s shot when he swoops in to eat the fuzz and he told me that I only needed three shots for that part and we argued about it until he ended up pressing the camera button while I adjusted the bear on the string. Gosh I can’t wait to have a ta later in life who will listen to me and do what I say!

I’m not sure how couch fuzz was received. Everyone laughed at it but I hope that the story was understood. It seemed like a bunch of random ridiculousness to me, but I guess that’s what society likes. I plan for my next movie to be a little more complex. The humor will be different then just random cops being eaten and etc.

I’m glad that I didn’t give up on this film like I did with the first one. 3 am the night before film 1 was due I just didn’t care anymore. 2 am before film 2 was due I wasn’t going to let locked doors and closed labs stop me! I went to the lab down stairs and used the macs in there after finding out that adobe encore trials don’t let you export files. (laaame) The first time that I compressed my movie I realized that the sound didn’t work so I propped a mcmaster door open and went back home for the sound then came back to compress the movie again. When I got to the lab a second time a lot of students were in the lab so while helping myself get a better grade I also helped a few other kids with their grades. I also made sure the doors that I propped open were locked when I left mcmaster the 2^nd time, in case homeless men were around…I wouldn’t want those guys in there.