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.