*Sniiiiiiiff*

Well, everything is going pretty well for the most part. Except for my head cold which is kicking my proverbial bottom (which makes no sense, considering if anything it should be kicking me in the head... heh... ain't that a kick in the heeeeeead!).

But that's literally the only thing that's relatively sucky right now. I'm pretty much organised in what works needs to be done for my project and as my new theory test date draws nearer (which I ain't tellin'!) I'm having to juggle studying for that with finishing my presentation and continuing the animatic but it's actually not all that problematic. I think I'm just used to being left to my own devices and coping with various things.

It certainly helps to organise everything though. So on that note, lets figure out what the old SMART targets are for this week and plan my next few days.

S- Specifically I have to have the presentation for my work complete by this time next week, along with the new script, treatment, proposal and, at the very least, the animation for the animatic done (if I don't manage to get all the sound effects and voice work added. If I do, obviously this will be done by then). If i get al of these done, I will have a head start on working on everything else, especially if I add sound to my animatic. In terms of a non-college goal, I need to pass the criteria for the Theory Test study site I've been using so they can pay for my next three resits if I fail my test. I would prefer to do this before Monday at the latest. The reason I want to achieve this is obvious. I want to finally start driving lessons again and I'm tired of failing this thing.

M- I'll know for a fact I'll have done what I planned when the animation for the animatic is complete to go along with the presentation. I'm certain a week will be long enough for me to get everything done.

A-  I don't think this is particularly unachievable. The only aspect I am being a bit more flexible with is adding the sound to the animatic, which I would achieve in a perfect world but obviously I do not want to stress myself out and add more pressure to myself than I need to. If anything, the most stressful thing this week is studying for the theory. To achieve my goals, I will work on a plan that will organise what I will get done on what days and what specific tasks will be given priority.

R- The majority of my goals are relevant as we are presenting our ideas next week, which includes a Powerpoint presentation including a proposal and treatment. The animatic was also included in this and also gives us all quick start in animating the final piece. The theory studying is particularly relevant as my test is... soon. Like, very soon. The only thing not particularly relevant is finishing adding the sound, which I've already mentioned and is low on the priority list.

T- I've set myself a week in total to get the college work done and till Monday to get my theory studying done. This time next week I'll have the presentation complete with an animated animatic and (hopefully!) with my theory passed.

Normally I do a weekly plan but to be quite frank, I keep spacing out cos of this gosh-darned cold (which I still believe is the plague) and don't think I'll really be able to focus on thinking ahead in much detail right now. So I'll just discuss today's plan, which is studying my theory for two hours, working on my CV if I don't finish it at college and if I have the motivation and haven't bashed my head against the wall out of desperation, I'll finished some of the presentation work.

Hopefully my head will be clearer soon so I can think about organising my work in further detail soon. Right now, it's a bit too much like this. I'll get back to you.

So Far, So Good!

Well, I'm pleased to say I passed both modules. It was said on my feedback sheet that I didn't stray from my comfort zone, which I can't really deny. Yes, my strengths are in traditional/character design/2D/concept art, that whole general chestnut but I should have really taken the opportunity to try and expand my skills in other fields. I'd be lying if I said I didn't try to however, I kept trying to use Cinema 4D  for Erik and I did get to use a few sequences, even if they couldn't be used in the end due to... I'm sorry, I know a bad workman blames his tools but Cinema 4D is self aware and doesn't want to work if it takes a dislike to you. But damnit, I tried.

But I suppose they mean I didn't use the editing programs as that aspect was covered by other people in the group. So taking that on board and now that I am back to my own original project, I'm now going to have to gain better skills in using such programs. Up until recently, I had been using Jasc Animation Shop 3 to tie the frames together and converting them in various files to put them in Windows Movie Maker (I was young and naive!), add sound and then convert a ridiculous other number of times before I finally got a mov. file. You don't need to tell me that all that was needless and pointless; I just seemed to enjoy doing things the hard way back then. I've since grown sense and started to animate frames in Photoshop, which is tons easier and as I've acquired a lot of adobe programs, I've started to use After Effects to add sound effects and clips together. I was a little apprehensive about using it at first but I was surprised at how quickly it came to me. It was basically a case of importing the mov. clips or sound clips and placing them in order on the timeline. I did find it a bit confusing to convert the file back into a mov. at first but I got there eventually. Now that I can confidently use an editing program that's on my own laptop, I feel it opens a lot of options up and I'll certainly be using it a lot from now on.

Anyway, I'm nearly done with the treatment and I'll get to work on the proposal and the presentation later today. I'm feeling pretty good in terms of getting work done as the presentations won't actually happen until NEXT Friday as Dave won't be in at the end of this week to see them. Sometimes it's good when life turns out your way. I should definitely have the animatic done by then to present to everyone, voices and all. I plan to have all the animatic animated by Wednesday of next week at the latest, giving me Thursday to do the voices. As of this week though, the presentation and proposal are the main priority.

Now, I'm a bit stuck on something at the moment. As you recall, I've coloured the backgrounds in my animatic, being the odd person that I am. I do like how they look now but as I'm doing the pigeons in a lind of papery cut out look, I'm considering doing the backgrounds in a similar way as well. As of now it's just an idea, I might feel different about it later. I'll put the two versions of the same background up together for reference.

Both of them have their pros and cons... the main one with the cut out version being I'm worried it's too distracting and will divert attention from the characters. I think once I've featured some of the characters in both versions, my decision will be easier to make.

And here are some more pictures of the animatic. Just a bit of padding cos I don't have much else to say.

The Tweaks! No, not the Tweaks!

AHHH MY EYES

It's always amusing to see all the frames together in a tangled mess before putting them in order.I've more or less got the first sequence done, complete with sunrise and a view of the area, which I won't show just yet. Otherwise I'll be showing the whole animatic at this rate.

Speaking of the area, I've changed the setting of the animation. Instead of an urban town, the pigeons will now be residing in a park. And as the piece will no longer have narration, I'm thinking of changing the name from Pigeon Planet to Crumbs.

... ah what the heck, I'll show some stills. I'm feeling generous today.

As you'll probably have noticed, I've been colouring the backgrounds instead of the characters at this point. I'll save the characters for when I'm working on the real deal.

I'm starting to feel much more confident about this piece again! Here's hoping that'll last...

And here's Grayson again. Because I love Grayson and everybody else should too.

Another Caricature and Animatic Crumbs

Mum says not to call them caricatures because they don't exaggerate people's features that much but as of right now, I'm not really sure what to call them.

But yes. Today is Mum's birthday and Dad commissioned me to draw a picture of Mum for his gift to her. I actually didn't take too long to do this in comparison to the other caricatures I've done. I think this is because I didn't use a reference, already knowing what Mum looks like in detail.

I try to always go with a theme that I think the receiver of the art will enjoy. For example, Mum's favourite colour is green and the simplistic black and white background with added sparkle is a design she's quite fond of. So taking all this into account, everything was in the back of my mind already so this was very easy.

I'm happy to say Mum loved the picture. Dad felt good that he'd gotten something Mum would genuinely love and I'm now £20 richer. Everybody wins!

Now, onto my pigeon work. I've decided to redo my script. Not deviate by much but instead of have a narrator, I think I'll have the pigeon's talk to each other and have the animation just be how they cope with situations. This will mean I'll need to round me up some voice actors. I'll ask around and see who's interested.

The clips I'm about to show you are from the new script. Both Green and Pink are drunk from alcohol some one left around and Green convinces Pink to go and steal a whisker from the infamous angry cat. In his drunken, post-puke state, Pink doesn't take much convincing.

I created this to give a bit of context and explain why Pink does the dangerous thing that makes him lose his foot in the first place. I also think that having him hungover and woozy would bring a bit more humour to the situation than him standing there in shock.

Here are the clips in order. No sound or VO work is added just yet. I'll be voicing the characters for the animatic. And no, I'm not saying what the exact lines are just yet. Spoilers.

The Finished Idents (Now with the actual finished idents!)

Which I would have presented to you all sooner but I had to go to Scotland immediately after hand in and wasn't able to get online the whole time I was there. And I forgot to do it yesterday. Oops.

So here are the finished idents! Well... finished-ish.

OK, long story short, we felt that for various reasons we weren't able to have the idents complete to everyone's satisfaction. Now, as far as I'm concerned, the Library and Dragging sequences were fine. The Park one however just wanted to give everybody grief and eventually we just had to hand it in as is. I'm sad it had to be this way as this was the sequence that featured the flower I created. But hey ho, these things happen I suppose.

...Well this is embarrassing. It seems that blogger keeps failing my server or whatever so no matter what I do, I can't upload any of the videos on here at this point. Well that sucks. I suppose I'll have to try again later and give a detailed opinion of each one.

After a few days of unsuccessfully trying to use blogger to upload the videos, I decided to see if anyone in my group uploaded them onto YouTube. Rachel has all the videos on her blog linked from Youtube (maybe I should have done the whole unlisted thing she did... that would require using my brain though) and so I hope she won't mind me pinching them from her channel.

We'll start with the Park sequence. As you can see, it looks kind of trippy. We'd like to say this was because the point of view of the audience was high or something but it was because for some reason Final Cut Pro or After Effects or whatever abomination we'd decided to work with decided to create some strange effect. If we'd had time, we could have put in some weird sounding music to add to the freakiness of it all. Come to think of it, I did find some bird sounds and general background noise tracks but sadly there wasn't time to put it in... or rather if I'd suggested putting it in at the time, I might have gotten a Mac thrown at my head. Which probably would have been deserved.

Eh, maybe I'm being too hard on this one. It does create an interesting effect, even if it is intentional and the flower I animated does do its job at least. Not to mention Rachel's reaction to it.

And look at me in the background being dragged by Lien's box. Now THAT'S comedy!

Here's the one I was shown being dragged by the creatures. I love the character's movement, especially Rachel's character's tail and Ashleigh's little ball dude falling and being dragged along as well. So cute!

Not to mention yours truly kissing the gravel. And featuring the grungy MTV logo I threw together. All in all, good stuff. I like the music as well and the logo's movement.

And I think this one might be my personal favourite. I'm afraid not many of my contributions made it into the final piece sadly. The speech bubbles were scuppered by Cinema 4D and Erik was foiled by much of the same. However, you do see my back as the camera moves and the music playing was discovered by me. Check out idiotech sometime, there's fantastic music of various genres on there, all free moneywise and royaltywise.

I think what makes this one my favourite is the logo. Rachel did a top notch job there. I just love how it all works together with the music, which is top notch editing. Bravo!

It's possible we MIGHT be redoing some idents, even trying new ideas entirely. Zoe expressed an interest in light graffiti which brings nostalgic memories of a Photography project I did in Sixth Form. If everyone was interested, we might do that. Obviously depends on how much we can get done with our final films taking priority. 

As we are now off for assessment week, it's back to pigeons! Yep, I have to work on an animatic, storyboards, scripts and present all of them and whatnot when I go back next week. I'm unsure of what I want to do with it now though. My previous ideas don't seem as appealing to me as they did at the start of the year... I think I'll ponder it more over dinner but I absolutely must start my animatic tomorrow. No time to lose!

In the mean time, I found this on tumblr that I think could be very helpful to us all. It certainly has been to me.

As you can see, I even attempted some exaggerated movement with Grayson. Not sure why he's running so fast or why he looks so freaked. My best guess would be that he's either running away from his brother or he's late for work.

Huh. At least I can upload pictures...

Anyway, expect to see more pigeons from me soon, you lucky ducks.

Can't... breathe...

Fearsome workload... crushing the air from my lungs... *ack*

Yeah, I had one of those horrible moments about an hour ago. You know, the one where you're doing OK, just finding suitable music for one of the idents when all of a sudden, these horrifying thoughts plague your mind...

"Oh hey, remember that essay we wrote last year that we need to write again for some reason? Know how you haven't done that yet and it needs to be done in like, two days? You should get on that. And writing about the ident examples. And you should probably writeup about this project too, that would be sweet. Now, lets discuss the B-Movie stuff. Oh and your old friend UCAS! And you haven't shown Dave your personal statement yet, naughty naughty! And you're behind in your theory yet again. Also..."

I don't remember what the voice said after that as I was crying too loudly to hear it. Yeah.

So after that... rather harsh punch in the jaw from life, I've gotten started on some writing up. The B Movie section is more or less done, just need to add a bit to it. I'll talk to everyone in the group about what I need necessarily to put into write ups and as for the essay, I think I'll just smash my face against the keyboard and print it out. Can't do any worse than last time after all.

As for UCAS... I want to study my third year at Newcastle College again. Can't I just do that rather than have to apply through that monstrosity of a website and write another personal statement? Just seems unnecessary to me. But alas and alack, it must be done. I absolutely HAVE to show Dave my personal statement tomorrow. Hopefully it'll be good enough, I don't want to have to rewrite the whole thing on top of everything else I have to get done for Friday. Thank GOD I moved my theory date, that's all I can say.

... I'm sure that I have other stuff to share though, such as what I've done since the last entry.

Ah yes. A few things. One being that Erik might not be featured in the final piece after all. I'd been working on him in a different version of Cinema 4D from the Macs at college and therefore it wouldn't work when we tried to fit him in. I don't have enough time/patience/skills/luck/moneytobribepeoplewith to make another Erik directly into the college computers so its likely he won't be featured. And to be frank, by this point, I could care less. That little six legged wang has been an abomination from start to finish. Certainly won't be sad to see the back of him.

On a less bitter note, I've done some things with the other idents as well. One is a grungy MTV logo for the one where I'm being dragged on my face across the ground.

And in the library (although I'm not sure if we're still doing this, due to Cinema 4D being its usual helpful self) speech bubbles with little pictures will be used to represent speech between the characters. 

These ones are just examples, can't say for sure if all of them, or even any of them, will be used. I swear Cinema 4D is self aware. It only seems to work for certain people and if it doesn't deem you worthy enough, it'll screw up every time you try to use it. Tell me I'm wrong!

I'm sure there's more I'm supposed to mention on here but my brain is, quite simply, fried. I need to go lie down and prepare for the inevitable all nighter I'm gonna have to pull tomorrow. G'nite, lovelies.

Back to Being Awesome

I no longer suck, everyone.

After a less than motivational weekend, we all got up early and went filming for the other two idents. We needed to film us all in the park walking our 'pets' before an inside shoot that was originally going to be done at Ashleigh's house. I think we decided to change the location because of the size of the camera and no one wanting to be responsible if it got damaged. So we changed the idea to the MTV logo playing in the college library instead.

We all set off to the same location as the previous shoot, with Laura accompanying us as Lien wasn't at college at the time. This was so we could all play at taking the animals for a walk (once I get a hold of the video, you'll see me being dragged by an invisible sausage) and have Rachel, whose pet will be the one smelling the flower before it explodes, react in shock when it does.

Speaking of the flower, the collaboration is complete, with Ashleigh having done a fantastic job with the vines. The movement is really smooth and I like the colour transition of the greens. We can also see that the camera moves away from the bare flower stem and follows the logo upward, which I think will be brilliant to see once everything is added together.

Here is the completed piece!

As well as this, you'll be pleased to hear that the Multiple Eye Syndrome that Erik seemed to be ill with has been conquered. We now have a separate plane for his eyes which makes it look like they're floating off of his face.

To be honest, I'm OK with this. It means I can get away with quite a bit of exaggeration without actually having to move any of his body as I can't actually seem to. But more on that later. Here are some expressions I've done for him.

Not all of which will be featured, mind you. So far, he seems to be neutral (or most likely happy in the park ident as he's dragging me off my feet in excitement), annoyed or grunting.

These are incredibly rough and parts will most likely be changed but here are some actions I have him doing. The first one is him dragging me along the ground. Here you can see that his eyes have moved to the side. It's a new trait of his character that his eyes move rather than his entire head. It's much easier to do on such limited time.

Here I have two versions of Erik in the library. He's browsing the books until he hears the loud noise that the MTV logo blares, causing him to glare in the general direction the noise is coming from. The first version was from the front before realising he was supposed to be shot from the side. Darn, I was quite happy with this. But oh well, I can still show it as development.

And here is the version I will be using. Here you see his features movement in action. Have to admit, I kind of like it, it's so odd. Then again, we're talking about a six legged sausage.

As for my plans for the rest of the night, I'm gonna work on finishing my personal statement to show Dave tomorrow. Other than that, I think I'll just sketch some random stuff. Cos I haven't in a while and that makes me sad.

I Am Awesome.

How awesome am I?

I’m so awesome that after setting a plan for myself I proceeded to study some theory and... nothing else. At all. All weekend.

... *faceplant*

Hahaha I hate myself.

Still, I’m pretty sure this being the hand in week will give me the kick in the pants I need to get stuff finished. Not to mention I postponed my theory test date so I have much more time to really focus on everything. So I’m optimistic at least.

And if things go to poop, I have no one to blame but myself. But I'm sure they won't. Probably won't. Hopefully won't.

Fun Filled Weekend!

 I don't usually do this but I've made a basic plan of my weekend. I have a lot to work on, both college work and theory testing. I've already failed the damn thing twice and I'll be buggered if I do again. Besides, if I study this way, I meet the requirements for them to pay for my resits if I do fail so obviously I want that to fall back on.

But yes, it's pretty busy, with the occassional break slipped in as well. The work really starts at 1pm as I'm realistic enough to realise I won't be in any conscious state to really study. Of course, this all depends on the idea that I'll be awake by 1pm...

Plan for Today

1pm	2pm	3pm	4pm	5pm
Study 10 topic tests and do My Questions as I go along. If have time, have break til 2pm.	Ident research- show examples of MTV idents and animation style intended.	Break for an hour, work on writing up story ideas for Underdogs.	Study 10 topic tests and do My Questions as I go along. If have time, have break til 5pm.	Begin work on Timmy animation writeup for B Movie Module.
6pm	7pm	8pm	9pm	10pm
After dinner, work on personal statement and UCAS stuff.	Study 10 topic tests and My Questions.	Break to do more Underdog development and sketches.	Work further on UCAS stuff.	Most likely will be too tired to do anything work/theory related. Draw something.

Plan for Sunday

1pm	2pm	3pm	4pm	5pm
Do a couple of Mock Tests for theory.	Work on essay- how animation has developed over a decade. 1000 words.	Break from work, Underdog sketches/ writing.	Finish essay if not complete. Then finish file discussing animation jobs I want to pursue.	Do some more Mock Tests.
6pm	7pm	8pm	9pm	10pm
After dinner, decide once and for all the final plan for the pigeon animation.	Download and get cracking on hazard perception.	Underdog development.	Hazard perception practice.	Most likely will be too tired to do anything work/theory related. Draw something.

Oh boy, this is going to be fun... 

Flower Finito!

Or at least my work on it is. It still needs to have more detail and vines added to it, which I'm leaving to Ashleigh to do. I'll show you all how it looks so far.

After updating my blog and struggling not to cry over my list, Rachel, Zoe, Ashleigh and I went out to do some pixellation work while Lien stayed at college to work on some stuff. The pixellation ident was some poor sucker (me) being dragged along the floor by all the little creatures. It was quite interesting to do although very exhausting with how much shuffling I had to do on the ground between shots, not to mention the new rip in my coat. Shenanigans!

But the frames work together perfectly and we'll do further work on the idents on Monday. I don't have any of today's work to show you all so here's a completely unrelated song from Road to El Dorado. It's been stuck in my head so I might as well stick it in yours. You're welcome.

First Weekly Look-Back of the Year

This is notable for some reason I suppose. Probably the reason being that I can’t think of a better title. Maybe I’ll just start using dates or something.

I’m also typing this into Word on my laptop to copy and paste when I get home as the college computers refused to accept any password and now seems to have locked me out. So basically I can’t get online through the college computers or my laptop till I see someone about it. So off to a good start then.

Anyway, as you can see by my previous entry, I have almost completed the flower animation. After I typed said entry, I did a rough draft of the petals forming into the shape of the logo. The rest I will leave to Ashleigh after I’ve shown her the rough draft for her to see and coloured the frames. So I should have my part on this task done today.

However, I also have a lot (and I mean a LOT) more to get done. Thanks to my holiday to Tenerife (which I still enjoyed, don’t get me wrong), I’m behind in quite a bit. I’ll make a little list to really illustrate what I have to do.

AD (Pigeon Work)

Finish Treatment

Show Powerpoint Presentation of Ideas and what festival it will be sent to

Print Scripts

Do some storyboards

Animatic

Presentation about Animatic

File showing different job fields in animation

Research about festivals

Other Stuff

Set up UCAS

Personal Statement

AD (B Movie)

Print out how animated Timmy was done

Small Model Sheets

AD (Idents)

Research of Idents- 10 examples

Report- How animation has developed

Not to mention I have to shoot the idents with my group as well. So basically I’ll have to fight against crying in the corner in order to get this all done.

Oh yeah I also have to study for my upcoming theory test...

Belated New Year Wishes of Happiness!

Sadly I dropped the ball on drawing a Christmas/New Year picture. I could always just do one when I find the time for the sake of doing it or wait til next Christmas. We'll see. I still need to finish colouring that Halloween one now that I think of it. But never mind all that. We're in the new year now and I'm back and ready to work. I suppose I'll start this entry by showing what work I did over the Christmas holidays.

Yes, despite my previous entry, I did manage to do a couple of things. Namely Christmas presents for other people. My auntie wanted me to do a caricature of her husband for... uhh... over a year now. Eheh. But finally I knuckled down and got to work on it. It was quite an interesting task actually. I had drawn a portrait for a friend of the family some years previously when I was still using Paint Shop Pro and so with these new tools accessible to me, I was finding it much easier to work with, especially as Illustrator often automatically straightens out any wobbly lines you make with the pencil tool.

This is the sketch done in Photoshop. Basically I often use a colour that reminds me of the person. As my uncle is a Rangers supporter, their colour being blue, I used that. Just an idiosyncrasy of mine I suppose.

Look at those lines. Amazing straight lines, I must say. Now, I'm never one to say that only certain tools make your work better but when I used PSP, it would show the shakiness in the lines, which doesn't help as my hand can get a tad shaky sometimes. Illustrator corrects that, making it easier for me to work with.

And the finished result with colour and shading. I just did a simple blue background to sort of fit in with the colours but not make the shirt blend in or anything. Both my auntie and uncle were happy with the result so I consider this one a success!

And here is another gift I did for a friend of the family. My mum wanted to surprise her for Christmas and asked me to draw a picture of her daughter. The same methods were used to create this so I won't bother giving you the run down again.

Mum told me that her friend loved it. We don't know what her daughter thinks of it yet as she hadn't seen it at that point. Hopefully she likes it!

So those were my Christmas projects. Now, onto what I've been working on the majority of the week.

I'd intended to have the exploding flower, which will feature in one of my groups idents, complete by the time we got back. Originally I was going to trace the frames Ashleigh and I worked on traditionally before we broke up for the holidays but we accidentally misplaced them. We found them when we came back after Christmas but fat load of use they were to us at that point, although we have kept them for reference. So I decided to do them from scratch on Photoshop and colour them. Unfortunately, as I'd started to work on the frames, the files became corrupted and I couldn't work on them. This was pretty much the cause for why I was so unproductive in terms of college work. If I'd said much more at this point, I'd have probably gone into a fit of rage. As of now, I merely feel this way about it.

But it ended up being a blessing in disguise, I think. When I finally got the motivation to tackle the frames again (or rather it was the day before college started again and I didn't want to go in empty handed), I thought the movement and exaggeration was actually much better than my previous try. The lineart and colour seems to make it pop that bit more.

I haven't finished the cycle just yet, I need to do a few more frames and them give the file to Ashleigh to work on the logo as she has a very specific idea for it. Here's what I have so far, both the rough animation and the lineart and coloured version.

I had a problem with the flower rising off the ground in the rough version but I think I've corrected that in the coloured piece. And thanks to Callum for advice on how to exaggerate a movement, namely when the flower stretches upward and squashes inward, and cut corners at the same time. A very helpful life skill! And also thanks to Rachel for teaching me that the white square can be used for a second colour in Photoshop, that's another time saver! And another thanks to Ashleigh for helping me out as much as she can in Cinema 4d and not killing me for picking a sausage shape. I appreciate you letting me live!

... yeah, don't even ASK about Erik. The good news is he has eyes now. The bad news is they're not just on his face.