I failed (in practice)

Up at 6:30am. It was time I got ready for the last ditch race to the finish at 9:00am.

At 8:50am I headed onto G01 and it was already snowing lightly. Already I felt anxious to get this all done. Getting to the studio room I promptly rushed to the lightbox Line-Tester at the other end of the room to export my previous line tests to my USB stick (as Uncompressed) and re-do the lip sync. Unfortunately, 'Uncompressed' file sizes are a fair bit bigger in size so minutes were being chopped away from the timer.

Johnny, Marcus and a few others arrived too. Also there is a girl with glasses (Don't think she's in our year) that, three times now, has come into G01 and promptly dozed off on the keyboard or light box. She must be burning herself away - proper commitment or falling behind on work? I'll never know! :(  Back on subject, the Line Testers were already taken up and it was 20 minutes 'till 10am - 10:30am being the final point of the deadline. Subaru texted me saying she had overslept and she arrived shortly thereafter. 

The lack of being able to use a line tester was detrimental but everyone needed one as much as I did - save for one of the French students who was using two at the same time - after nagging him various times I was able to use one of them (provided I didn't log him out, but that was ok). Marcus was gleeful about getting his animations burnt onto a DVD and I was replying to him like a stroppy emo in response.

At this rate, compiling, burning the DVD and all, I wasn't going to be able to make the deadline in time. Truth began breaking through my barricades of confidence.

Once I had finally gotten all the animations onto DVD I opened up DVD Studio Pro for the final straight. Subaru was in the process of burning her animations onto DVD as well. At this stage, Johnny was telling me that his friend from upstairs in B124 explained that the deadline was just a faux but I was reluctant to believe this. Luko also called me up at some point to tell me that the deadline was all just a trick but regardless I felt crumbled under the fact I would be missing the 10:30am hour (before, I was intending to email Andy to go ahead with putting me on referral). Whilst trying to figure out the over-all shenanigans of DVD Studio Pro, Su let me watch a tutorial on YouTube of the program with her. It looks simple enough.

I whipped up a rather crude menu (but menu nonetheless) in Photoshop. When popping the asset into Studio Pro, I found out that putting in the text beforehand on Photoshop was a silly mistake - obviously (I think) I couldn't change it to be used on the menu there. Regardless, working my way around using DVD Studio Pro was fairly straightforward and no real hitches until actually burning the DVD onto disc. It kept telling me one issue after the other (often that a QuickTime file failed to burn) and as such, I was getting a headache from it. It was 20 to 12 by this stage and I just wanted to get it on disc.

After taking some files out of the USB, importing and then deleting (etc etc) the disc finally burned. And boy, I was happy! The TV's DVD wouldn't work I went ahead and tried it on a Mac - it worked fine, even if the menu is buggy somewhat (and it crashed on my Laptop here and there). Su rejoiced as well, and since she finished hers (a while before I had) we both made our way to Andy in B124. Whilst going up there, the snow was really coming down. It looked really nice, not to mention surprising.

Up at B124 I saw Andy running through the various ideas with another student. Whilst waiting, Grace and her friend asked if I wanted to participate in the 'Secret Santa' - whilst pausing to consider it, "yes" was answered for me, and so I dipped my hand into the bag to see the name. It was Rebecca, though I couldn't (per usual) remember who Rebecca was. That said, Andy was free and I approached him rather, well...shattered. He told me of the 'good news' but I already knew of it. He stated if this was the real assignment I would have failed - but carried on take this as a good lesson. And how! I best leave a week for post-production just to make sure I don't get the same hassle with the DVD burning and such. Su was told pretty much the same thing.

Said a quick hi to Andrew and Marcus, and told them of the mind-fucks I had to contend with over DVD Studio Pro. The two of them were busy doodling up some drawings - I assumed it was design work for the 30 second animation or otherwise. Me and Su headed back and parted ways, intending to return back to B124 at 2pm in order to show Andy the DVDs. Popped into Waitrose for some snacks over lunch and popped back. Sophie was in the kitchen and we hyped over the amount of snow falling outside. By the time we finished, most of the Student Village was already blanketed in an illuminating white. It really was spell-bounding, especially since this was before January. I had to take a photo of the view outside the kitchen window for my dad and sister.

And to think at 11am, there wasn't any white on the ground whatsoever!

Spent the next 40 minutes 'till 2pm in my room and then headed back to B124. On the way there however, reaching half-way, Oscar was passing by telling me news of how the University is closed. After holding that thought in slight disbelief I asked him to repeat: sure enough, it really was. We sure are unreliable against the snow. :(  Oscar mentioned he'd spend the time to work on his designs (but I think he'll just be playing Gran Turismo 5) and I felt it would be wise to do the same. Carried on back, and decided that since Farnham already looks so picturesque in the snow, why not do some reference photography? By this stage, the idea had hit me to base the 30 second animation on our discovery of a snowbound Farnham, so some snaps wouldn't hurt. Whipped on my coat, grabbed my Canon and ventured back outdoors to head to the hill behind the campus.

On the way there I had gotten a text from Su asking where I was - I responded with the current status of the University (And Andy going home.) I headed up to the hill, and snow fights were already rampant around the student village. I had to be swift, and an artful dodger lest I become soaked in freezing substance. Up atop the hill of Farnham, still snowing, the view looked magnificent.

Suddenly Farnham stopped being boring

Su called up, and said she was down at the student village with everyone. Before this, she texted me to ask if I wanted to come to the park with them. I debated, but thought that with such a rare occasion like this it'd be wrong to waste a special day with my fellow animation friends. I headed down towards my house and found the gang. Su, Nikki, Sumaru, John Goodhead, Matthew Brookes, Nathan, James Lee (China) and Rebecca (As well as an MA student) were all there. Already snowballing one another.

We headed up to the park with Matt gracefully pushing a trolley of snowballs up the hill pictured above. It took a while as we couldn't go far without another snow fight breaking out. Finally getting to the park everybody pranced around frolicking in the snow like a painting from the 1500s - whilst the gang made snowmen and angels, I took the opportunity to wander around the hills of the park, seeing it's fresh, crystal white beauty. Primarily it was also to let me warm my fingers up in the pocket as they had become too numb to properly use the camera. I've never seen rural areas so dense with snow before though, so there was never a dull moment during the stroll.

After I wandered back Nikki and others wondered where I'd gotten off too. Nikki subsequently called me Dora the Explorer.

Brave or Grave!

I'm just missing days repeatedly now. That's no good!

Today was my last effort to get everything done and ready for some hearty DVD watching for Monday. My intended wake-up time for these busy occasions would naturally be 6:15am but the cold weather that creeps it's bitter, stinging fingers around my room prompted me to remain in warmth furthermore.

So, idiotically, I got up at sometime past 11am. My plan was to get the DVD cover produced in the morning and head over to town at 9am for CD cases - as well as to get and fill in a form for my electrical appliances. (New ones, anyway) Then arrive at G01 at 9:30 for some actual pencil testing.

Well, no. I got afraid of the busy schedule ahead of me, and tried to sway past my anxiety about the stuff that needs to be done. I left at about 12:00 and then headed into Farnham for the CD-Rs - heading back, I dumped my stuff into the room and made haste to G01. Of course, everyone else needed to get their stuff tested and exported for the DVD so the queues for the testers were rather large and foreboding. To pass the time I...uh. Didn't do much. I wanted to finish up the lip sync but my phone was dead on power, and I really needed a computer to accurately place the plurals and such - but all of them were being used also.

Marcus (who distinctly has two badges of Sonic the Hedgehog) was hard at work polishing up his characterisation motivation and Andrew (from Thursday) showed me his book of doodles and inspirations - he has some nice detailed designs. Maybe one day I can make the level of detail for mine, too. Andrew's designs typically vary from horrific alien/demon orientated to fantasy type. Together it makes for a sort of 'dark fantasy'. I'd like to see his future animations.

I learnt of Marcus and Andy's friendly rivalry starting back from their foundation year - and Andy made a bet to Marcus on which one of them could produce the better animation for their final major project. Andy won by at least a mile with his somewhat renowned 2,000+ frames of animation that he achieved in just 3 weeks. Perhaps his prime fuel had been reading the Animation Survival Kit over 3 times by that stage - start to finish. My condolence to Marcus though, as he too seemed eager on animation and his characterisation motivation snippet is a very refined piece of work. It shits on my scruffy attempt.

Luko Hawes was already in G01 when I arrived penciling away on his lip sync - most of the Year 1s were franticly finishing up their Characterisation Motivation pieces. Oscar turned up too - he's been scratched a bit by stress; his facial hair is in close to full coverage, looked exhausted and the voice was croaky. Yesterday he wanted to relax and finally play Gran Turismo 5 but the lingering deadline kept his primal fears on the edge of tension. He headed back to his place at some point to try 'line testing' his animations through a camera of his PS3 and light box. Avian arrived too - no longer is he crudely nicknamed TMwAH - I finally remembered to ask his name. And damn, Avian is a bitching name.

At some point I headed to the library to whip up a CD case cover. Matt Brookes was around there too. I tried to spend no longer than an hour on the cover and I think I just managed that despite the design of it being freaking simplistic. (Classy test and a few straight-forward illustrations) I saw Kaori working on her animation designs shortly after finishing, and Rob passed by. Likewise, two of the Year 1 students were also working on the computers - they were busy preparing their DVD using DVD Studio Pro but were experiencing issues in that importing the Quicktime files wasn't being allowed. ('Unrecognised format')

Heading back to G01, I had to simply wait for a line tester to be available. Through the day all I could do (like so many others) is linger around. I -could- of obviously worked on improving the animation, adding a few in-betweens, but I felt too tense to get things going. Luko's buddy was on a line tester at the far end of the room and allowed Luko to shotgun after him - likewise, Luko allowed me to follow suit on his part. Thanks, man!

In the mean time, I tried seeing on getting DVD Studio Pro up and running. I missed Jon's 'vital' lesson on Friday (in fairness, I had no other opportunity to use the light boxes + line tester) but Andrew was helpful in lending me some advice and notes he jotted at the time. The whole process was simple, in fact! Up until "Unrecognised format" - the error that was being foreshadowed back the library. In fact, it wasn't just me with this conundrum - most people in G01 were getting the similar issue. Sara was the first to come across the problem (being ahead of the game) and the answer would be from Jon's word of advice earlier today when he came in - he said that Liam's test run on the DVD player in B124 ended in negative results. Why? H.264, Quicktime's prime codec. It's pretty odd since that codec is regarded as an industry standard due to achieving the better of the two worlds that is compression & quality. The solution was to export the movie files as the forbidden Uncompressed formats. One's who do not hold back the beastly, formidably true file size of the movie.

Before realising Dragon would do just this, Andrew discovered the makeshift solution of running the Quicktime movies through Final Cut Pro, saving them as PAL-DV mpegs. Would it work? Yes! Result. DVD Studio Pro happily imported the movies from then on. It's too bad that Final Cut Pro wouldn't open for me from that point onward though... So much for preparing a DVD menu. :(

Subaru arrived in G01 with whooping chunks of paper to line test with. Fortunately by 6:00 a line tester (one without a light box, which most needed) was available and she leaped into the seat of it. I wondered if Su would be ok - she tends to come and go enigmatically from the groups and I guess she hasn't had the opportunity to test her animations proper until now. When she was exporting her movie of the bouncing ball, it had hit me. "OH! Settings!" H.264 could be changed to Uncompressed from Dragon itself! It solves the problem outright. I requested her to pick that choice and I shakily watched the result of the finished product. As mentioned Uncompressed format is, well, uncompressed. Simple 1.2mb files could easily blow up into 140mb. Quicktime player already looked as if it was suffering from he high size in file and lagged - Subaru was tense from the potential issue. I got it to close and recommended she save stuff onto the Mac itself than her USB pen drive.

Ah! And Luko finished on the line tester. I swept up and launched over to the other side of the room at speeds of a worldwide nuke launch. I roughly under one hour to get all my stuff tested and put on a DVD complete with a menu in this time - but I felt like I just wouldn't make it. I  rushed my Characterisation Motivation in for one last test run. The paper is still grainy and I missed the beginning eye-openings, but it'll have to do. What amazed me, though, is how acceptable Doll Face's strut the door turned out. It's NOT THAT BAD! It was enough to warrant a big 'WHAO!' from me, shaking up a foreign student nearby. I was pretty much convinced that the walk was going to look like shit from the rushed nature but I guess with at least some proper planning it can come out better than I think.

At 7:00 the security guard popped in - but didn't give us the 'ol boot out. He left, and I think he allowed us more time than usual which was great and noble. Not like that ass once during last week that kicked us out as early as 5:30. Still, I was done since I finished my Characterisation Motivation run but ultimately I still feel fairly screwed. Referral from Andy feels inevitable from either missing the deadline or handing in a rushed product - 1 hour 30 minutes from 9am will likely be not enough time, but I don't know. I just feel like a twerp for pussying on the animation for 2 weeks back in October. It would of saved me a great amount of grief I'm in now.

Regardless, Su came over to the line tester and Mac that I just switched off. She turned them back on again (oops) and went ahead on using it. I guess some of her animations needed multiple layers. Eventually it was just me and her left in the room - she was staying behind late to frantically finish things, and since she was in the same position as me a feeling of pathos compelled me to stay beside her for company. Luko popped back too (!) as he wanted to borrow a DVD from me - his task of burning a DVD was left in the hands of his housemate, however Luko told me if his friend ends up forgetting to do so (which, apparently, he frequently does) he'll be forced to speedily produce the DVD in a last-ditch effort tomorrow morning.


Su eventually finished her line test, and we headed off. I tried to joke to her "At the speed you work, you deserve another Niku Jaga!' but she didn't pick it up. (FAIL.) Told Subaru that I'd help her out with DVD Studio Pro tomorrow although that was a stupid, compulsive move on my part seeing as how I NEED advice myself on the program for missing Jon's lesson. We parted ways.

With half an hour to go before 8:00pm I headed over to Waitrose before it closes up, getting something for supper tonight. I picked up a Lasagne as well as a few bits and bobs and waited in the looong queue at the Basket Only line. Stupid folk at Farnham should use trolleys more. :(  Guy called the rest of us over to an additional till being opened. On the way out, Rob again! "Small world man!" He had a ring binder in hand.

Meandered back to my place, a little tired and flustered. After taking my boots 'n coat off I wondered up to the kitchen to prepare the oven for the lasagne. Kit was there also but shortly popped away to answer a call. Ah, our house has some cool decorations for Christmas now, courtesy of Georgia and Sophie! Sophie was upstairs for a bit too, as well as Georgia. Had my lasagne with some spaghetti. Rory turned up after finishing, and chatted with looming deadlines - the Photography course Rory is on is expecting a heap of projects completed in a short space of time, and Rory was just given a new one last week. In similar occurence to G01 being cluster-fucked, Rory is not looking forward to the Colour darkroom getting cramped like morning subway. Rory has also been enjoying Gran Turismo 5 over the last week.

So, tomorrow. I make it, or I fail it. I do need to push for using the line-testers non-stop, and devote at least 40 minutes of time to compiling the DVDs onto disk using DVD Studio Pro. I'd better make it! All I can think about is trying to make it in time! I have to!

Despite this Andy will probably tell us off for not animating our 30 second animations on Monday.

Nearly there!

Missed another day - I do blame this on general laziness. Worked again from 9am to 7pm, and took liberties of skipping the lecture (Of Daniel Greaves, an animator) and Digital Skills to get on with starting and finishing my lip sync. I don't have a light box to work with outside of the class so I had to use all the time I have.

I also had the time to (finally) see Andy and do some Q&A with him, as well as show the work so far. I showed him my Characterisation Motivation and liked the 'flow' of the animation and phew - he had no qualms about it save for the rather symmetrical pose + movement of the arms. (She looks and animates a lot like an advertising billboard at the beginning). He also had a gripe with the shrinking of the character when she lands and its true but I don't really want to fix that - it's not terribly bad and I fought constantly with circular volume to get it right.

Asked Andy various things about what he wants for the 30 Second Animation - he simply wants an animation of any sort that amalgamates everything I tried so far, be it the walk cycle, lip sync, weight and so fourth. Because I feel so tight on time from here till' Christmas, I asked him:

"Can I get 30 seconds animated in one week?"
"No. That'd be impossible."

He's probably right but I'm confident that if the animators at Warner Bros were expected 20 seconds a week (or be fired) there shouldn't be anything to prevent me from achieving roughly the same. Of course, I've been a slow drawer and only managed 12-17 frames a day (from 4-6 hours of work) which I whined to Andy about. He paused for a moment and then recommended me to simply do the roughs of the animation first - then clean it, give it some real quality. Not a bad idea! Granted, I think I have been doing roughs (that is, guidelines, circles and such) the entire time - most of my characterisation motivation is rough! This is one the thing that's been bugging me a large amount - my slow speed. Why, I'm not sure, but I do need to speed it up.

Yesterday I also got a call from my brother to see how I was doing - that was nice of him! He had grave concerns that I was practically working and not spending time to chill out. I DO spend time to socialise in the kitchen and such (whilst cooking) but admittedly I have spent most of my time sitting on my ass animating. And well, animators have to do nothing but animate. Richard Williams but it best: "Animation is nothing but work!" and the Animation course leader of SouthHamption University also made a true statement in that we won't have time to do anything as seconds have to be drawn and produced unlike filming (I mentioned that before).

Today I felt a little better in regards to where I am; the characterisation has one section left (the walk to the door) and lip sync is a matter of matching the lips themselves to the drawing which won't take much time - I wish I could animate the body but I just don't have the time. I was about to, but this time I pulled my Chain of Reality and obeyed the little time I have left.

Today I once again got up at 12pm and didn't head to the library (for a lightbox to animate on) until 3:30 or so which was really stupid of me. My excuse is today was a real dip in temperature and my feet never managed to stay warm whatsoever - granted it isn't bitter cold that it would snow, though apparently Sunday and Tuesday will be bringing the white rain. I doubt it will however.

So, I headed on to the library at 3:30pm and waltzed back because I forgot my peg-bar and tape, and animation book. Worst instance was yesterday were I went back and fourth between my house (getting as far as half-way through the student village each time) five times. I kept forgetting something, sometimes the same thing, over and over. At the library, I found a light box but was unsure of where a near plug would be. Asked a member of staff and directed me to one, plug adapters sitting plain in sight on a few of the tables. Whoops - but at least I found a nice light box.

Got on with planning the walk to the door as it requires perspective use (which will be done far more than simple profiling) and didn't...achieve much. I got the basic extremes down but the walk as a whole kept leaving my mind (and eyes) scrambled from the mess of differently roughed and coloured drawings. One page of the Survival Kit had a good demonstration of how to plan perspective walks but it didn't mean much to my current scene as my character is in a medium shot before the walk. (the lesson on perspective walking started with using a full body character as a guideline) I better animate it all tomorrow with the details to along with it.

The library closed at 5pm unfortunately (which I was aware of before arriving) and headed back feeling underachieved. Back home, I packed my stuff back and thought about what to eat tonight - eventually arriving to a simple burger. Before going, I searched my entire room for my headphones which have gone missing. Pockets, my bed, under its sheets, the floor, behind books, tables - all over but to no avail. I was confused as I was SURE I didn't take it to the library (I don't listen to music whilst working) and I didn't leave it in the kitchen. Asked Sophie (who like me was packing with snacks) and Yannis but they didn't see my 'phones either. Yannis has another cold, poor man, and is weighed down by heavy work.

Headed to Waitrose (with no music :<) and had this fucking tune stuck in my head. I don't know why - other than the track is based on snow which I'm anticipating for Farnham. Meandered around Waitrose for a while picking out the food - whilst checking out, the card machine accidentally processed my transaction as being £0.03...! I should of gotten away with it, but notified the guy behind the till (he just looked at his screen perplexed until bringing it up).

Headed back home, and was about to cook grill a burger until it had hit me that I forgot one necessity - BUNS. Buzzed back to Waitrose for some. Oh! I found my headphones too - they were in one of the other smaller pockets on my coat, somehow I missed it. On the way out, I saw Dan and we talked about looming deadlines, projects and the cold weather - not the nicest topics but he manages to keep a calm demeanour about him which always impresses me. Dan is in advertising - one of the tricker projects he needs to do is write an essay concerning propaganda. At 1000-1500 words, it's a short piece but he hasn't been given any example readings - he has to literally skim through the books himself. Ouch.

Rob also arrived at our house and he proclaimed that he drank too much, and he was drunk. He certainly didn't act like he was though. Becky was up visiting our place - Sophie planned to head to hers to play on PJ's new Kinect thingy which he had gotten free (along with 6 games) free from Microsoft. I cooked my burger with the griller kept close and as I repeatedly mistake, it's kept open to prevent steam building up. Of course, opening the door (prompted from Becky's "Who's left the oven on?") had smoke billowing out like a locomotive. Still, the burger looked fine and dandy. After it finished cooking I ate it with some red onions. It was yummy! With some bacon, it would of been a real treat. I'll get some tomorrow and have it with the burger.

After eating, and writing this blog, I headed upstairs and out of boredom played a word association game with Yannis and Georgia (though Georgia only for the first part). Good fun, although it wasn't so strict on the rules.

Tomorrow, I need (NEED) to finish the walk to the door by all means as well as add the rest of the details to the animation - not only this but also complete the rest of the lip sync (sans a light box) and design the box art for the CD case. I also need to actually compose a DVD along with a menu - Jon's lesson yestarday Friday taught this but I just couldn't risk missing time. Hopefully, though, people on Monday will lend me some tips.

Lazy Summery No.7

Working from 9am to 7pm must of worn me out more than I thought, I think.
Got up at 12:30pm today... (!!)

There was an essay writing lesson today at 2:00 - originally Jade Midson requested for me to show her where the room was but she skipped the session due to having to leave at 3:00. (We ended up finishing at 2:50, however)

Before that I took another shot at seeing if Andy was in his office - whilst ringing, some guy popped his head out the door. There was a pause at first, and he asked me if I was looking for Andy - yup, was he in? He responded with a no. Ok, but still - what was the point of him responding I wonder?

Also popped on by into the library to see if they had a lightbox I could use through out tonight but as I expected, they were bone-dry on them. Headed to the 2:00 session for the essay writing, and waited outside 15 minutes beforehand. Saw one of the guys I befriended, and waffled non-stop to the poor person. Got to her everyone else's current ideas for the 30 second animation. They're already getting a good grip on the planning for it all, as for me...

The session went quite a well with the essay writing - I had learnt a fair amount and it eased a few confusions with it all - being able to take a choice of referencing to a personal level, and that we should ideally use just 3-4 examples is great. I had thought we'd need a fucking library span worth of referencing to get through. My friend (John, I think) really doesn't like the woman that teaches us for her her use of big words, and (from later back) flaunting her degrees and expertise.

Headed into town with Andrew Stalley afterwards - a tall man, sporting long flowing hair and a taste for long coats. Before realising this WAS Andrew himself, I heard words floating around, mainly from Gee Saurez that there was a guy who craves for smoothness in animation and had done 700 (possibly an exaggeration) pages worth of animation in a matter of 2-3 weeks. When talking about his ideas and hints that he constantly animates (And I do mean to, shut up UCA staff) I began to realise it would be him - although, admittedly, the 'tall and thin' tidbit from Gee was the distinctive factor.

I asked his name, and when saying it to be Andrew I grin just sort of grew on my face, for reasons I'm not sure - I guess I was just antsy to actually see whoever the hell fits smoothness and fluidity into their work. On the way to Sainsburys and places, I asked him all sorts of questions on his past animations, how he goes about doing it, where he gets ideas and so fourth. An interesting guy, I just wish he'd put his work on the internets.

Headed to a shop that apparently doesn't just sell light boxes - sells them for cheap. Apparently it's near the Post Office and I eventually picked it out. Headed upstairs to enquire about the products and yup. They're sold out. However, they do have A3 but they got £70 upwards. Typically, animation students go after it. I sort of wish I never told anybody about the library loaning of a lightbox now, speaking of which. Any case, I walked out of the shop feeling botched. What now? I needed to get this motivation done by today but it appears I can't which is great - I only have myself to blame here for not drawing fast enough.

Headed back home, and grabbed my papers and bag, heading off to G01 to pump in more frames to the animation. Today, I've done about...12 or so. I still can't understand how I only manage 12 drawings in a space of 3 hours or so as I swear it only takes me about 15 seconds or so to draw in the actual character. Granted, I plan a lot - and test a fair amount too. That and I do waste time trying reorganise my sheets of paper which tend to go scattering off all over the table like a bomb explosion. Nathan popped in (From street dance) and mentioned his week's absence of heart burn + another health condition mixed in. Poor man has had a rough time being in hospital, getting no sleep from pain and so fourth. He hasn't told Andy about his condition (and absence) yet which I hope he does. He should get some spare time from the deadline.

Nikki was working on his 30 second animation behind me, far ahead of the crowd. I'm not sure how she managed it, but well, she has. Her coloured and detailed background impressed a fair few, Nathan in included. All her frames are, speaking of which, pencil coloured which is quite a feat in my opinion. I tried to help her with some advice here and there concerning stuff like wind effects, frames per seconds and blah blah.

There's a guest visit from Daniel Greaves who's an animator experienced in the industry. I may skip it though to work on the stuff due for tomorrow in Digital Skills which I just now had I found out is going ahead. They want a storyboard(s) print out for the Digital Skills 30 second animation which I haven't done yet since, well, my focus needed to be on the Characterised Motivation. (The frames are not going to draw themselves :<) I know what I want to do for the Digital skills animation, just not how to storyboard it since which I should really by now.

I Missed One

I skipped on yesterday - granted, not much had particularly occurred outside of animation. Saw Andy in G01 and I planned to get some advice on spacing, volume control and so fourth - he was too tied up reviewing everybody though, I so didn't get the chance.

Today I headed to G01 early at 9:40 (albeit intended for 9 'o clock) - there I saw Gee Saurez - a student from the US of A. She just came in as well, and was preparing a light box. We didn't exchange much words then, 'spose from that morning grumpiness.

From 9:40 onwards to 12:15 or so, I worked away on getting Doll Face to GET TO THE DOOR. As of writing this, I have managed to get her to spring off of the chair - the overall frame count here, from what I saw, is 17 or so and that's pretty meagre - not even sure if all of those frames are brand new from today.

Thank god for the line tester though - Richard William's preferred method of animating sure does the trick. Combining the planned posing of key framing with the improvised, magical flow of straight-ahead.

I tested my animation along the way, and it helps so much. I just started out, and seeing what has and hasn't worked is huge help. I found out the leap of joy only needed one frame (12 frames per second) despite adding in four, for instance. Mamoru Hosoda's style of 'impulsive' animating (he's a genius with in-betweens, imo) has been inspiring me the whole way through.

During the course of today, I had a lunch break at 12:15 and didn't return until 1:30 to 2:00. During these times I was antically trying to suss out Andy Joule. Multiple calls to the office (you have to call using the phone just outside) only ended up to the anwering machine. I tried at multiple intervals throughout the rest of the day up 'till 4:50pm, alas to no avail.

Animate up 'till 7:00, where we forced out per usual by the security lock up. I showed Nikki where the booking office was, and headed home with Matthew Brooks (he sure is a friendly chap!), Nikki and her energetic friend. The latter two live nearby, incidentally - Nikki in the house ahead of mine, No. 96.

Was feeling pretty tired, and I'm bummed and anxious over the lack of good progress today. I really wanted to get this characterisation motivation done today, but I just can't let myself half-ass it somehow. It's my own fault for wussing out a few weeks that I am in this mess in the first place anyway. Tomorrow, it's GOT to be completed so I can hopefully start and complete the lip sync on Friday.

Ah, and I have an essay-writing lesson tomorrow on Thursday. That should be helpful.

All Night Long

I was up working until 4:20am, last night. I didn't even plan to, the sad irony given that the intended all-nighters beforehand never took off. Georgia, Yannis and Sophie were up pretty late too, though, going to bed around my time. I wanted to clean up the kitchen for Monday - it wasn't done yet - but I got tied into my animation. Georgia finished it all before I had the chance though and I'm in her debt. We talked a bit on the coincidences of unintentional all-nighters and it appears Georgia is well aware of forcing it to happen never does make it. (Anxiety and such, I suppose)

The 13 frames (22 if the eyes are counted) are finished. Finally - now I can rethink a better, more stream-lined system to working the animation. Having the line-tester certainly helps for quick fixing!

Headed to sleep at 4:30am. 6:30 waking time was past the point, no way did I want to do that! Instead, I figured 8:30am-9:10am being preferable - I get some good shut eye at least. Sure enough, 8:00 came quickly - though I'm getting better at anticipating morning sabotage on sleep. I got up at 9:20 or so giving me about 40 minutes before lesson. Didn't before washing myself, I just wanted some tea for the ol' wake up boost.

Headed off literally at 10 'o clock thanks to extravagant time keeping. Rushed to B123 for Life Drawing, and on the way I saw Sue walk on ahead. Upon arriving in B123 it turns out Sue wasn't our teacher for today's lesson - it was someone else, a latin sounding (sorry that's uneducated) girl who looks to be in her late 20s/early 30s. I crashed in late to the party like a bumbling twerp and sneaked to the nearest easel. I didn't bring (again) any newsprint paper with me but fortunately, there were spare scraps of it left around the easel I chose.

Life drawing today wasn't exactly intense, but the teacher did often push on 30 second drawings done with us looking at the subject dead-on (no peeping at the paper!) and/or drawing with a continuous line. Or with the 'bad' hand. It's the typical life-drawing protocol challenge here and as brain numbing it may be, I did learn a lot. I feel I've gotten better at the proportions from the waist down and that's awesome; it's an area that I often slip up on, and irritatingly botches up my character designs.

Despite my late comings (after the lunch too) the teacher was sweet. She pushed me in the right directions on the task (kept mishearing, maybe from late night) and appreciated some of my earlier drawings. She showed one or two of my drawings to the class as an example of the outcome intended. It should be honourable but I felt like hiding behind an easel from embarrassment to myself. She picked a whole bunch of people's work for examples though, fortunately, and we also frequently laid down our work on the floor for others to look at.

I frequently conversed with TMwAH over the course of today about various going-ons of University - be it life drawing, character motivation/lip sync, accommodation and all other things. Another chap, too, although I need to catch their names at some point.

After finishing life-drawing, I promptly headed to G01 after dropping back the light box. Really wanted to test out those frames! See that careful work turned out. I dropped in at the wrong time though - there were only four people in G01 but all of them were intentionally using the lightbox. Hell, I think one using the Mac wasn't even using it FOR Dragon (pencil testing software). Another girl from Year 1 came in, also intending to test her animation. She nabbed a light box ahead of me from asking, something which I, for some reason, didn't feel inclined to do. Chatted with G01 Sophie in the mean time. She's a nice person to just talk to! I could easily spend hours conversing with Sophie.

Whilst doodling Sonic (an animation of him is really inspiring me at the moment) a group of 2nd year students came in - they (or at least, those lot) have come from their Crit. Many are relieved to have finally  got over and done with it. Man, I wonder what that means for me when the time comes. Some said they can finally sleep, and I wouldn't put it past them to not actually be joking - at least not entirely.

One of the light boxes became available after they left, and I promptly jumped over to use it. When compiling my layers (frames) animation on top of one another, I noticed an issue regarding the transparency - or rather, it's noticeability. I should have known that one paper atop another would fade those beneath it as I saw this occur enough with the light box over the weekend. Regardless, I carried on ahead. I switched off the lamps by the side, it and it helped suss out the frames beneath a little better.

After I finished snapping all the shots and tested it there was yet another issue that passed by me - the grain/noise of the paper. It wouldn't be so bad on the normal basis that the animation just goes from frame 1 to frame whatever but I snapped the same drawing a number of times to give the sequence some pause. The noise of the paper grain stops to a halt as well the inconsistency is rather jarring. I thought the movie crashed or buffered at first!

Still, the animation looks almost there so far. I think I just need to cushion in some in-betweens tomorrow and it'll look spick and span. Also need to re-draw in the entire frames which is going to be...ugh.

Checked out Sara's lip-sync animation. Looking pretty good so far! I was relieved to find out she was still working on the character motivation like me but she is nearly done with that. I asked her she went about animating the lip-sync: Sara is doing it through timing the frames through stop-watching the words and sentences itself. Nice and traditional approach compared to some who are using Flash as a crutch. Who can blame them? I hear lip-syncing is pretty tricky to get right.


Dropped my stuff back home and went to Waitrose for some supper tonight. After some mindless meandering around the place, it struck me that a Fajita might be a nice change of pace. World cuisine always helps to inspire me. Got some typical waffles and snacks as well.

Almost immediately started with cooking the Fajita when I got back. Cooking took much longer than I anticipated though. I tried to take out the rubbish from one of the bins but the fact it was overflowing should of been a big enough hint that help was necessary. One of the sides to the bin liner was buried all the way into the rubbish. An attempt to try and pull out the liner (my left foot to hold down the bin was needed) resulted in some trash tipping onto my leg including the expensive jeans. It would be Saturday night's indian of all the fucking things, too.

Just before eating the Fajita, I put sunk the previous bin bag into another. I formed a meta-trash. Fajita was really quite nice, I'm surprised I had managed to eat all of it. Later that night, Holly gave me a call (or I called her back). She advised me to worry, yet again, but I took it to heart. She's right. There's no point in anticipating the consequences when I can just be ignoring them, working which'll ultimately avoid it all. I also desperately needed the loo, but I think Holly wasn't (fortunately) noticing from the sound of strained voice. The call took to long though and, well, TMI. LULZ!!!


Tomorrow, it's to G01 for 9:00. I sent Andy an email over the weekend asking for advice on spacing, volume control and other things. He responded today that it's a bit of a large topic so I'll talk to him tomorrow in G01 about it all.

FYI, MIA BBL KTHX

God damnit! Where did I go?

I spent the better part of the weekend just flat-out animating my Character Motivation - although not all the time. I woke up at 12:20pm today, for instance. My intent was to get it finished by Monday, but I haven't even gotten to the 5th of 9 storyboard keys yet. I've learnt SO much though in the principles of animation - I've feel that I have developed, even if just a little.

On Friday, I was going to trace over the head-turn I had done - it was 24 or so frames - almost an entire second. Unfortunately I didn't think to mark out other facial details (like the hair) during the turn, so as a result the animation in its preliminary stage just wobbles rather distastefully.

The hands also animated just terribly.

Regardless, I needed to crack on with it and besides, I could probably just fix up the consistency issues as I went along. I planned to do an all-nighter on Friday, thus the purchasing of a four-pack Red Bull. Georgia, at about 9pm informed me of an event at the SU bar that night but had to pass on the offer.

My courageous 'all-nighter' plan didn't get far, however. At 1:00am or so, I just felt way too tired. Of course, that's why I bought Red Bull but my greater conscience told me that, in the long run, I'd work better from a 7am to evening schedule than potentially half-assing my work from a brain-dead instance.

So, I dropped to sleep.

At 6:40am, up I got. Showered and such. I was ready to work when, right out of no where, the penny suddenly dropped with a horrible clang. The 'Character Motivation' exercise is meant to have us animate a character getting off a chair or similar and walk to the door in a manner related to their condition. (ex. Stroppy teenager, old man, playful child) I had gotten the 'Girl on a date' - and I decided on a close-up shot of her sitting on the sofa. Chest upwards. 

But duh - I haven't actually SHOWN she is sitting on the sofa, at least not clearly. It's implied to some extent that she is (the sofa behind her, of course) yet this clearly isn't sticking to the intended brief - not close enough anyway. The legs aren't in view - there is isn't a full enough shot of her. I can't really take the risk of being vague about the setting here.

So I fell into dismay. Other than this implication, the head-turn just felt too screwed over to try and fix (although I could, even simply, but nah) I laid on the bed, head into the pillow, and just thought. I tried to relax myself. My mind laid the conclusion to these mistakes: "And now I've learnt." I wasn't banging my head against the wall with frustration - I was more afraid and fearful towards the mishap I'd created, and so for two hours I thought about what to do. I glanced at my storyboards, and crunched at what I aimed for vs. what is required. I could just animate the scene with the girl further back - either from the sofa itself or the focal length/zoom, but the face would be smaller and I'd loose that important element of clear facial expression.

But then something else had struck me - something I decided to just skip from self-assurance - the body turn-arounds. I was so fixated on pushing the narrative with facial characterisation that I ignored this pre-requisite to the scene. And now I've learnt. If I had actually taken the time bring into account how tall I want her to be, what her overall shape is and everything else - design her actual body itself - I would of foresaw the issues that would arise now. The sketchbook was still missing due to assessment (Which I also suspect a bad remark/grade is going to occur) so I instead grabbed some paper and started roughing out the general design for this character - named Fish Face.

Because I still intend to display emotion with the necessity to draw her away from view, I shrunk the body proportions to almost Super-Deformed levels. There would of been better ideas, for sure, but this one did solve two problems: one being the mud above, and the other to underline the fact I am animated a girl going on a date. Not a teen (although acceptable as well, no doubt) and definitely not a woman. I've seen two people animating the same character archetype as me, and they both tip more towards teen/womanly.

So with that said, I sketched a few designs on the proportion and landed on one to my liking - one that ultimately allows her to sit on the sofa in current view-point and yet still show her legs for sitting down. It reminds me a lot of the funny proportions in the Wind Waker, and is very much similar. 

Finishing the designs, I could move on the next stage and actually start the pencil-test animation. Paranoia from my previous mistakes lingered however, and I was set on not repeating the same problem. I was hesitant to get going, so I stopped and relaxed on the bed. I thought about what to do, exactly. I thought, and thought and thought. Read a couple of pages over in The Animator's Survival Kit to reassure myself on what to do, and also unintentionally dozed off at about 8:30 or so. Awoke at 11:00, but still felt reluctant to jump off the diving board in the deep end. When it came to 1:30pm, I finally felt eased enough to know what I wanted to do, and how to go about doing it.

Originally, the animation started with Fish Face putting on some earrings - now that I think about it, I think this was, of all further actions, the defining point that you could tell (or at least get the idea) she is preparing for a date. But I skipped it, at least for now I am. Carrying on from there, I I decided on animate part 2 to 3 of the storyboard keys. Relaxing, eyes closed and looking all rosy - to the door bell ringing and opening her eyes. Only her eyes and mouth would move, so I drew the body sans the facial details - I'll template those on top. 

When drawing the eyes and mouth, it gave me the opportunity to try out one approach to animation I hadn't practiced yet - spacing. Or rather, spacing in a controlled manner. I've begun to notice that the difference between the animation of your average-Sunday TV episodes to the anticipated climax special is the flexibility of the spacing - more on that later. Spacing is something I do wanted to try and become versed in since my walk cycle - while not bad, certainly had a very static feel to it. It looked like a wind-up toy doing a Samba inspired march across the screen! It's not what I wanted - what I wanted needed that special essence of spacing! (Yet again, now I've learnt)

Once the eye-opening bit was done, it was onto another simple action - although I say simple, I made this far more planned and 'set-up' than I think it needs to be. (- but then...) Doll Face raises her head in excitement to the door bell. Doll Face? Yes, not Fish Face. Why? Partly because the way she sits on the sofa. Her proportions and small size means her legs don't event flop down at 90 degrees as typical to sitting - they literally stick straight out! Her face, at least at that stage is jarring, like an empty void - that of a doll Of course this is clearly showing bad character designing but hush now - I am using this to my advantage. Doll Face is also somewhat of a pun to the nickname of pretty ladies used in Brooklyn during the 1940s.

As I am writing this now, I am still working on the head-raise. It's 13 or so frames (but likely more) and it's not even finished! Because: Above trying to avoid a repeat of wiggle-vision, I want to make different actions happen at different times during this rising transition. When I boil it down, what I want is the head-raise to be enticingly subtle.  This requires spacing, and that has certainly made for a drive through death valley.  Not only does Doll Face's head rise - her head tilts upwards. If any experience from the last attempt at turning head mass has taught me it's to plan everything first. Not just the eyes but the eyebrows, mouth, nose, ears, cheeks and blah blah. Everything. Otherwise I get unsure on where to put the shapes and how to change volume = wiggle wiggle. 

The preparation took just way too long. I think I spent most of Saturday yesterday planning out the frames with guidelines. I'm not trying to animate a city scape here, so...I don't know why this took longer than it had to. My aim for subtly I guess. Often the case is with most animations that the subject is spaced enough between each frame that consistency, whilst very much the crux, isn't such a huge disaster if it isn't perfect since even at 12 frames per second, it goes by fast enough that we miss it; the flow comes ahead of detail. This isn't entirely true if the subject is in profile (amongst other things) but that's why I hated the two-dimensional walk cycle. But here, the start and end point of the head rise isn't very far apart so the finesse of the pencil line had to be delicate. I also haven't got the line-tester to lean on for ironing out mistakes bit-by-bit - any slip ups I make over the weekend means more time wasted trying to rectify it.

Which, incidentally, I didn't exactly spend every hour of my time on this animation. At various points I would suddenly become afraid and hesitant again, and sort of run away from the challenge due to the above. Basically I pussed out and took a few hours break. On average I spent about 4 to 5 or so hours each day. I guess that's not bad but it certainly isn't using my personal use of the light-box to the best of its worth. 

Back on topic - the 13 frames of head rise proved a little tricky. From frame 1, along with the guidelines, I marked out dots (think dot-to-dot) on where the other details need to go; I saw this advice brought up in How to Draw Anime and Game Characters Vol. 1 of all places. Before actually animating, I first thought "Oh no, that's too much hassle. Why would anything bother doing that?" And here I am. I didn't dot out the details on all the frames since the seeing frames beforehand thanks to the light acting as a good guide unto itself, though I bet I'll see why cheeping out like that is going to bite me tomorrow once I see this tested out.

Once the head itself was roughed out, finally, I moved onto the details of the face itself. This was quite fun! The eyes were fairly scary to draw in as they were the big perspective show on the face. I had these blink a couple of times for character, and tried getting in a smooth movement of the iris. The eye-brows (as mere lines) were slightly more irritating in that, for such a simple mark, they kept on becoming inconsistent through the Extreme/Breakdown frames. Well, again, I should of marked it out on all the frames ahead of time.

Ah, and spacing the facial details. I wanted to try flexibility (or better known as overlapping action) to here, and I hinted about this above. After reading Animator's Survival Kit numerous times, I rested on the idea to do one thing at a time with the animation - animate the body and head shape first, then the arms, then the eyes/nose/mouth etc and then any drapery or hair. It's a rather sure-fire sounding system, but its catch is taking baby-steps eats a lot of time as I've come to notice.

But why flexibility?

Because living things aren't machines. We're not machines, and I certainly don't want my character Doll Face to be viewed as such. What I mean to say is that nothing moves at the same time when we animate as beings - it's one of the biggest aspects of the kinetic reality. This is also why I brought the difference in animation quality. Typical episodes of a cartoon show - Nickelodeon, anime or whatever - maintain a cheap and workable budget by using less-experienced animators. Spacing and timing is fine and straight-forward but what I notice lacking is flexibility. I don't stand with enough ground as to why, and it's also arcs, weight and easing things in that ignored often, but without flexibility - overlapping the action - I think a lot of believability is lost.

Anyway, the mouth, eyes and arms all move at separate times during the rise. With 13 frames, I thought about what would be best for what to move and open when. The mouth doesn't start opening until half way through, the arms rise 1/4 of the way in and stop 2/3 through, the eyes blink twice near the beginning and so on. When I test this tomorrow, hopefully it'll come out the way I wanted it. Easing in and out was vital to the spacing, and I can't stand stop-start start-stop jerkiness. Fluency, man!

Right now, I'm currently drawing in the actual frames on top of the 'drafts'. It's 10 to 2am, and I wasted nearly 2 hours writing up this blog. That's what I get for skipping, though. Aiming to get this done before tomorrow as I have life drawing nearly all day. Sticking in in-betweens would be nice, as I effectively want this animation running on 'ones' - 25 frames per second.

After I do the head rise, I need to rethink the system for drawing in the frames. Fortunately, action is here more spontaneous - at least until Doll Face starts walking (and in perspective dimensions too, GULP). It took way too long last time, I need to start the lip sync effectively on Wednesday as both have to be in for Tuesday next week. There's the 30 second animation for Principles (and Digital!) to think about as well.

I'd better speed up!

Alarm went off at 6:30. Alas, I ignored it and was up at 11:30.

Didn't particularly achieve anything on the way up to 1:45pm, and I'm irritated with myself. Left the house at said time, on the way to Jon Weinbren's lecture. Got there about 5 minutes late - but the lecture didn't start yet anyway. Got a space next to Luko who arrived before me.

Things kicked off with the first few minutes of Alfred Hitchcock's film Vertigo. From the title sequence (which is apparently the first to use computer graphic-y visual effects) up to the lead character fainting into the distressed arms of his lady companion. We laughed frequently at the now outdated cinematography of the film - if Hitchcock saw into the future of his film's impact, he'd be aghast.

The lecture today talked primarily about camera - angles, shot types, depth of field, 'Line of Interest' and so on. The last mentioned element there - line of interest, was an interesting one. I didn't know about it, yet heard Andy Joule bring up something relating to it during the presentation on Tuesday. "Don't cross the line" - so I recall. I threw my hand up and mentioned this to Jon, he asked "Do you know what he meant by that?" "Nope." Andy wasn't referring to the deadline, he already made that point very clear. It was relation to our 30 second Animation project.

'Line of Interest' refers to, for example, a line between characters in dialogue (where the camera if facing), path along which the actor is moving, direction in which the subject is looking etc. One point that the slide mentioned is the 'key principle of montage is to AVOID crossing the line'. I sort of see now - granted I swear I've spotted one or two directors break this rule before. I guess it would happen.

Lazy Summery No. 6

Man, quick tired. Sorry, will have to make this a short one again.

Wanted to be up for 6:30, and the alarm clock sounded the strum as well. But nay - up at 9am. I'm not ready for this yet. :(

Cooked the rest of the sausages and bacon, which took longer than expected. At around 1:00pm I headed over to G01 to crack on with my character motivation animation. Progress is ok, and I'm animating on 1s/singles. Unfortunately though, I haven't even fully finished 25 frames today - one second worth of animation. It's of the girl character turning her head to put on the other earring. Yeah, I better speed up. But not 2s! I do not like 2s.

Towards 7pm, me and Manjit were the only two left in the room. Poor Manjit was having difficulties in trying to get her walk cycle's frames ordered correctly - she kept making a mistake and because of Dragon's stiff way of working, she had to start again repeatedly in shooting them. She also can't get much of proper sleep due to main hall being a loud, irritable place.

Security guard came, and I left. Waited for Manjit outside, and we parted ways. (That's a cool white fleece she has) Back home, I saw Yannis and Sophie hanging on the 1st Floor foyer upstairs. Their Asian friend (forgot his name) was taking portrait photos of Dan. Oh. :o  Headed on into my room, and began charging my phone. Shortly, I ordered a pizza with potato wedges and a 1.25 bottle of Coke. Since it was buy-one-get-one-free in student offer, of course I took up the opportunity.

Whilst waiting for the delivery to arrive, I chatted with Dan outside. Apparently the photography shoot was in fact for his course and not Photography's. We chatted about the University workload and it's painful weight on out chest and shoulders. Dan has to juggle between projects as much as I do. Incidentally, I apologised to him for my absence in last week's lesson and told him I'd try and go to the next. This week's routine was, apparently, quite hard!  Still, Dan was chilled as ever about it all. He always is, and that smile just KEEP'S ME TRUCKIN'.

The pizza was here! Took it upstairs, and offered the free one to everything to chow on. They were quite guilty about the idea of getting a free pizza - but it's cool. It is my intent. Gave them the potato wedges as well, which didn't help the guilt of theirs anymore.

Nobbled the pizza and wrote this blog. Unexpected cop-out end. :(

Tomorrow, I better get the books out for the essay to write. I decided on Topic No. 5 - ah, and also the lecture is later in the afternoon.

The thumb is out! Nearly!

Couldn't sleep too much through last night despite the early night. Not sure as to why, although I guess part of it was due to Yannis and Georgia making a lot of noise throughout the night. Both noise, and you know - noise.

Woke up this morning past my allotted 6:30am waking time. Upon first inspecting the clock, it was 7:30am. But meh, oh well! Boy was this morning misty. Farnham looked like it swallowed into a cloud.

Shortly before lesson, I put my diary comics/autobiographical strips into a ring-binder. Because I didn't have any stickers and, for reasons I do not know, I couldn't be bothered to go out and buy some, so I cut out small rectangles from a sheet of A4 and with some glue it made a pretty good substitute to labelling my work. Put on my student number as well, although that probably wasn't necessary and I wasn't entirely sure if the number was right.

Headed onto B124 with 3 minutes past 10. More and more I am slipping away from Course Leader Leslie's words of "arrive 15 minutes before the start of the lesson" (because - "we are really anal about time keeping" that is word-for-word). There, the entirety of Year 1 was there, being the hand-in date for our sketchbooks and the like. Eventually, the boxes with the books were shifted away to the office by Ron and Andy, after a bit, told the other group that they are free to go.

Now, Andy turned to us. The 'lecture' today was pretty important as it was explaining the 30 second animation project. It's a bigun and also occurring amidst all the other current projects - Andy of course realises this. With the presentation at hand, we were run through the steps for the animation for what we are to do: a script, storyboarding, time-scheduling, animatics, animation and post-production.
Andy states that a script is to come before storyboarding.

Also, a script suggests the necessity for voice-acting and sadly that is so. I'm not against the idea of including some voice-acting and a lot of simmering ideas equate its fundamental need - it's just none of us are trained in acting and a bad performance can jeopardise and ruin a good animation. (That's not to say mine will be though, of course) We can't simply just commit the time to learn either which is likely what the staff will turn to advise us - time is everything in animation. I don't really know what to do...

The next big point was, of course, time-management. Or 'scheduling' as I prefer! Andy brought up again the very revelation that shambles us all: just how little time we have in the remaining weeks. I went on and on about my cold over the past couple of days and this is why. Our teacher ever so wonderfully put it that "you're really gonna have to pull your thumb out at this point." ...and he's right, as much as we haven't be telling ourselves that enough. Andy recommended using Excel to plan out a timetable for the next few weeks in managing work and self-set goals which is a fair option, although I prefer Microsoft Entourage - the peak in a suite of day-to-day, spick-and-span time planning. The student email system is also operated by Outlook which features a condensed version of Entourage of sorts.

At this point, I tensed up in neither a good or bad way. I just realised at least a little bit more the gravity of the whole thing. I thought I'd better get scheduling. Andy talked us through further about animatics - the process of getting the basic pacing and flow of the narrative (drawings) right and the actual animation. There were other pointers as well, but straight-forward. One of the things that Andy did talk about was acting - how we should refer to actors for our animations, how they do it, how they get 'everything' in. Theatrical actors were suggested however as Andy felt that film actors do not accentuate their gestures, emotions and everything else to the degree of theatrical. True indeed.

Another pointer Andy mentioned was something to do with narrative - I couldn't remember the details to precise measures but it was how an apparent mistake students always do at first is not establish what is happening, or what is going on in a scene enough. They cut or move onto something else. I see what he means and it's noticeable, not to mention questionable why they let it slide. But my gut had churned when considering the other side of the coin - when the flow of the narrative is at the rate of the morning rush-hour, when something is established longer than it should be. I noticed these in some student showreels and it out-right annoyed me. It could be due to simple structured plots on part by the students, but some films have shots where, for instance, a man will just stand right in front of a door for 3 seconds before opening it. I really hope this isn't what Andy meant to push for in rectifying the mistake. It may be just paranoia and not at all. Subsequently, Felix raised a hand and said he prefers quick snappy shots.

TL;DR - I don't want my animation to sit there establishing actions for ages. Smoothness, man!

Before finishing, Andy did some Q:A time. I asked him how we're to improve on something when realistically it isn't possible coming towards a deadline. His solution: finish it earlier and use the spare time to then fix up and polish things further. It's an obvious solution but I'll see if I can use the Christmas holidays for that period of additional details. Actually, the question was more of a deliberate jab at Andy's "You must never be too satisfied with your work" vs "We expect you to meet the deadline. You don't want to cross it."

Various other questions were thrown around - mainly regarding the occurrences of snow in England how our nation typically goes into critical-lockdown from the appearance of such anomaly. Apparently, it has occurred before, last year, that a deadline had to be rescheduled because the University had to be closed for a week. Andy's answer to this years was that he'll give a prize to anyone determined to hand in at the day of the deadline despite the potentially ridged conditions.

After the session finished, I asked Andy about the time-tabling plan. My question was admittedly quite cheesy - if anything can be done and passed with a firm time-table. "I don't see why not!" I recalled to him a course-leader back in SouthHampton University saying to us (after the interviews): "You won't have the time to go out drinking with friends from other courses." He added, "This isn't like film-production where minutes are recorded with a press of a button; in Animation, every drawn frame count towards a second of animation needed for completion." This nugget of forewarning stuck with me since. I'm glad it did - now I'm beginning to realise what he secretly stressed.

Headed back to No. 92 with Oscar and his pal, TMwAH. Oscar took him over to his place to give him a copy of a couple of Adobe programs. That's cool - and I need to fish Adobe After Effects from him at some point as well for obvious reasons. Headed onto Waitrose for a few nuts and bolts. Heading back, I went into my room and relaxed for a bit, calming myself a little. Later on in the day, I began composing a time table in Entourage for the next few weeks, tweaking it constantly. When looking good, I tried syncing it onto the iPhone...but irritatingly the iPhone was scrambling up the calendar events. I tried various acts to get it fixed but none to my prevail. It's a bugger since the iPhone is essential what I'll be keeping with me the majority of the time but never mind - I'll work out another way.

Went over to the library to print out some storyboards, and had a £5 note to use. The credit machine upstairs was under repair so down to the one at the ground floor. It wasn't able to process my fiver though most likely due to the crumpled and aged nature of it - so I turned to the reception desk as an option to pay credit. Instead though, the woman took me over to the machine to demonstrate how to put credit in...uh? She quickly noticed the £5 note was going to work it so yeah, manual transaction it was.

After wasting extended periods of time trying to find the storyboard templates I eventually tracked them down and printed them stupidly in colour. It was £4.00 for the job of 10 sheets and I didn't argue a lot against that. Mono prints would of been a lot more economical since 10 sheets costed a mere 50p. Having a green UCA logo on the storyboards just isn't worth the budget. I'm already learning.

Wanted to go to G01 for some animation but it was already a little late and I just wanted to relax for a bit. Besides, I need to actually plan the storyboarding for the Character Motivation first. I went upstairs to put on some supper, and decided on some tasty braised steak with mashed potato. Ready meal, but of course! It slipped my mind, however, that it needed to be defrosted (throughout the day/night) before cooking. Not all ready-meals are a simple freezer-to-oven approach of course. I'm such an idiot. I realised my mistake when taking it out of the oven after 20 minutes of Mark 6 action that the meat was STILL FROZEN TOGETHER. Whoops. Put it back in the oven to accidental Mark 7-8 for another 20 minutes and thereafter it was fine, somehow. I haven't had any stomach problems either, so hot damn.

Oh and saw Kit in the kitchen. He was on the phone to his friend at one point and they were discussing about an event tonight concerning pyjamas and a t-shirt. Sounds like the Carnage in Guildford is on.

Plonked out on my bed for an hour or so. I heard Sophie, Georgia and other housemates tweeting around in the foyer outside my room. After a bit and starting with the blog entry it became apparent that everyone (sans Rory, I'm guessing) was planning to head to the Carnage event up in Guildford. Many of Sophie's friends were hanging outside of my room at one point awaiting her. One of them had pretty colourful pyjamas. White with many bold coloured shapes. That guy in particular, actually, asked who's in No. 5. Louie responded my name, and as the typical confusion goes - "As in, Pierce Brosnan? Like, James Bond?"

Tomorrow is my first proper day in enacting my time table. It's to the core, but not quite hardcore. Even then, I'm nervous about the workload I'm committing myself to - even if it's the only way to get this all done before Christmas. I'm sure it'll work out fine, though! I believe in myself to get everything finished up. I know I can do it. It just takes faith. (God, that was ABYSMAL, but I need to let that spark of bravado speak)

Cycle of Walk

Well, I planned for shopping in Farnham at 9:00am, to then work before 10am in G01 but I got out of bed at 11:15.

Cold has, for the most part, cleared up now - which is great. Whilst making my tea the cleaner came up - a different one than who I usually see. Whilst waiting for his bucket to fill, he told me "this place is usually clean compared to others" - it was a nice compliment. I said we try, and although he admitted again that whilst it isn't spotless, it's still a fair job.

Sometime at 12, at headed into Farnham for a spot of shopping. Mainly - DVD-Rs (cases for them). Quick snoop at Waitrose had the discs themselves. of course, but they were in the 'cake' packaging which wasn't what I was after. Headed instead to WHSmith - and there I found a variety. Picked up a pack of 10 for £10.99. Ah yeah, before heading to town I also dropped the lightbox back to the library. Lacking any hole-punched paper (it has specific to the peg bar) made it useless. :(

So with that done, I rested a bit and headed to G01 to finish off my walk cycle. Not a lot of light boxes were actually being used at the time - only about 6 or so. Everyone else were working on their sketchbooks. Added in the last few frames, and waited about for a line tester to be available. As it happened, one eventually was - at the far end. On the flop side, this was a line tester hooked up to a Mac, whose Dragon software failed to export the animations last time. But this time could be different so I re-shot the frames; plus the resolution and picture quality is better.

With all the frames taken, I eagerly hit the spacebar to watch the result - the walk was silky-smooth, and character illuminated from my efforts. I did hick-up on about 4 frames - one misplaced a little near the beginning, and three were a back-to-front on a leg lift, but they didn't detract too much from the believability of the performance. I'm glad I gave the stickman an eccentric jive to its walk in the end - it has added a lot to the essence of the animation. Drawing this simple walk cycle and seeing its results has given me confidence that I can leave as fluent and strong impulse to other next exercises. I can't stop watching it!

With that out the way, I went to export it to QuickTime and...it failed. So: don't use this line-tester again. I shoved the Dragon files themselves - both the ball bounce and walk cycle - onto my USB dongle and shifted to a Mac next door. Alas, QuickTime exported them fine and even better, I finally got the ball bounce done too.

One of the guys (who has frequented G01 as much as me, as of recent) told me that tomorrow Ron and Andy only want the sketchbook and comic-strips handed in. Well damn. That's good news but threw me off a touch as well. Besides that, at least I don't have to stick the animations on disc quite yet. I could get on with the character motivation exercise now but I didn't think to bring the frames with me.

Instead...I tried animating a bit of my own inspiration. Just passionately going for it - just whatever I felt could and should be done within me. That said, I tried roughing out some sketches for a punch scene I had in mind. Inspired by anime (Yup.) and director/animator Mamoru Hosoda, I wanted to see if this 'energy' of movement in mind could translate well into paper. Did some rough guides, going from a stern, standing position to a broadly-hunched wind-up to a punch and finally to an almost fish-eye perspective of the punch about to be delivered. These words are hard to follow, basically one of the things I had always wanted to explore is bringing the exaggeration and the energy of a fight into animation. Of course, most animations and their fights are exaggerated to begin with - but I want to refine the subtle details. Impacts of a punch, for instance, must be irresistible to play around with.

I'll scan and show the work done so far in any case at some point - and maybe even a line-test if I get far enough with it.

Headed off shortly and silently without saying a good-bye. Reviewed my animations a couple of times on the laptop. Eventually headed upstairs to put on some dinner. Sophie, Rob, Georgia and Yannis got back with shopping. It was nice to see everyone together again after a good week or so - in particular Rob and Sophie! Put on the spaghetti bolognese and caught up with everyone. Rob noticed my apparent cold. After eating my dinner, Jamie popped up. "McJAMMIN'!!" gleed Sophie, and Jamie snarkely responded "...Who're you?" I love it when he shoots her down like that. :(

Doorbell rung and I popped down to see who it was, probably a friend of Yannis or them lot out for a smoke. Nope! It was two Fashion students selling Krispy Kreme doughnuts, door-to-door, for a pound. (to fund their fashion show, if I recall) No thanks. I "reassured" them that I'd tell my fellow housemates upstairs. When I returned to the kitchen, they asked me right off the bat who that was. I told them "just two people selling Krispy Kireme doughnuts" - "Krispy Kreme!?" asked Sophie in a surprise. Yeah, and I told her it was for £1. Surprised by the apparent great value there (I didn't think so) Sophie reached out the kitchen window to call for their response. When confirmed of their whereabouts in the student village, Sophie darted out the house in an act to get her hands on some delights. She returned shortly - with two of the confections and a balloon. Yannis returned from his room to the kitchen and witnessed Sophie with them and further enquired how she obtained these items. He himself followed suit and went looking for the fashion students. The two of them outside kept screaming out their selling of Krispy Kremes which grated on Rob's nerves. (I almost got him to belt insults at them through the window - one of his more noticeable traits)

Man, after looking at the website though...I feel inclined to go hunt some of the places down when I return for Christmas. Mr.Donuts in Japan was awesome - irresistible places to visit and eat, my two companions would agree as well. Krispy Kreme looks just as good, so.... :(

Tomorrow I'm to hand in my sketchbook work so far. I've done most, if not all the required stuff so far - it's just a case of binding together the diary comics and tidying up the book.

Lazy Summer No. 5

Didn't do a whole lot today. Just resting for the most part. I got bogged down by the stupid cold that developed from yestarday. Took a shower and some hot drinks as a means to melt away the 'goo' blocking up my head. I wanted to go to the library today, and get some books necessary for the essay. That didn't quite happen.


Headed to Waitrose at 3:45 and got some marmite, waffles and cheap custard creams. Not bad! Put on supper at 7:00 or so - an indian pack meal from Waitrose. The packaging it came in is cool! At 7:30, dad called me up on Skype and we had a chat - mainly because he was going back to work in India the following day. He brought up the idea of using a taxi (that he uses for the airport commuting) to head back to Farnham from home each weekend (under his payment). That's kind but I'd feel to guilty. He reassured me about the work for University and that he'd help with the essay. I think dad has misinterpreted my stress and anxiety coming solely from the essay - it's generally from having to shift through all the work up to December.

Tomorrow, I must get the Walk Cycle complete, put on a DVD with a case and labled - the same for the bouncing ball exercise.

Lazy Summery No.4

Jumped out of bed at 10 past 12 today, that's pretty bad. Slept a little better, though.

Called up my father and sister - but to no answer. Tried the house phone too, and no luck. At 1:20 or so I fried up some sausages and bacon - a good time to eat some of them. Sausages cooked fast and well (and I nearly burnt them) but the bacon took longer than they often would.

Later that day, at about 2:30 my dad rung up to say he was about to head to Farnham with Holly - about six minutes or so. 45 minutes later, he called up again to say he was coming up to the car park. Walking into the car park behind the Student Village, there I saw him - with Iggy hopping around. Gave him 40p change for the ticket machine, and took guided Iggy to the car. Saw Holly in there, looking well! Iggy promptly hopped right into the car, back onto her lap.

Leaving the doggy friend in the car, we headed to a cafe down around the arcade. Candy...Twist, I think it's called. Not only was it a cafe, it was a shop for sweet confectionary as well. Dad and Holly got to see how I was doing; I behaved a little bit tense, especially for a minute around my sister but I cooled. Tea was nice, and my dad had a "really strong hot chocolate" along with a coffee. Caffeine, it gives mankind power.

Afterwards, Holly and dad looked into a couple of shops on the way up to Waitrose - a perfume/fragrance and clothes shop to be precise. My sister saw a coat that caught her eye, and my dad put an order of some sort on for it for Christmas. (Along with a 'royalty' card or similar - something to get a discount, I think) At Waitrose, I picked up some goods for me from an Indian meal, stuff for a stir-fry, milk and so on. Taking the opportunity to, dad and Holly did a shop up there as well. I really appreciated how easy-going dad was with this food shopping.

After packing the goods into the car, I kept my shopping and headed back to my place - Holly, dad and Iggy followed. I was a little cautious on Iggy coming along (He tends to get hostile around teens, and barks) but he was fine. He enjoyed stopping mid-way often to peep at students hanging outside their house. We all headed into 92, and dad needed to go for a whizz (as did Holly). Iggy hopped all around the room checking it out, and probably lavishly investigating student smells. Before leaving, Holly and dad reassured me about staying on top of University work and figuring it out - that I'd do fine. I really appreciated it!  In particular, dad often talked about the essay. It isn't top priority for me...but I would actually like to start it at least by the end of next week.

Followed the trio to the door, and gave them my farewells. My dad is heading back to work in India on Monday. Packed my shopping away and started up the stir-fry. Jamie popped up, having woken up recently; he had to film his documentary at Woking from 9am and didn't get back 'till 10am the following day for reasons involving some shootings happening only past midnight. He talked about how weird it was to fall asleep during the day and I talked about the new Winnie the Pooh film. (Traditionally animated! ENGLISH Christopher Robin!)

As I was eating up my stir-fry, Yannis popped up. He sounded a little grumpy, and wondered "why is there a cup there?" Cup left in his cupboard, I believe, but it might be the sink. Likely the latter. Oh, Yannis got back yesterday if I recall. Not only did he head back home this week, he also went to a gig featuring his favourite band, The Foals. One of his friends during the event had pissed in a cup ('Weenier cup') and placed it near the legs of a seated girls without her notice. Yannis himself didn't see the result - but he expected it to of been good and bad. Yannis spent much of today asleep as well, since he was both up through the night for the Foals, and spent a good portion of the time travelling back to University the following day.

Yannis wondered if I had a cold - I confirmed it (it started manifesting today, actually) and he offered me to use some of his cold pills. "No thanks" - but I do appreciate the offer. He dumped his washing on top of the stuff that was mine in the sink - he must of not noticed I was going to wash my stuff up soon. :(  Finally did so after consuming the entirety of my stir-fry. Even now, I feel full!

I could Georgia outside of my room moments ago so I guess she (and maybe Sophie) is back from Brighton. Tomorrow I'll head to the library to get some of the readings for my essay - albeit I need to still choose a question for it first.

Don't cross over the dead line

Much better rest last night.

Got up at...11:55. Irritated, as I wanted to go to G01 for some animation. On the way to the 2:00 session, I came across Oscar (with a funky new haircut) outside the library having a smoke with others. Waited a little bit longer inside the library - Luko came out of his lesson. Again he looked tired, and apparently fell asleep (hypothetically) in Jon's session.

In Jon's session today, speaking of which, we were taught the basics of the Puppet Pin tool! This versatile feature allows inanimate objects to get bendy flexibility for the purpose of animation. I learnt a little bit about this ahead of time on the Adobe Workshop website, but not to the extent here. Because of Jon Hunt's fandom to Formula 1, and the upcoming big race, Lewis Hamilton was used as the example demonstration.

We needed to quickly grab a character off of the internet to use for puppet animation. Jon made an emphasis on quickly here as the last group took around 10-15 minutes to use a workable image. Nabbed an image of Mickey Mouse, seeing as his limbs spaced apart enough. Placing pins on him and animating the parts were fine - things got muddy when the left hand (or theoretically right as Jon felt necessary) couldn't be tweened without the ear being pulled with it due to the 'mesh' overlapping onto the hand. Raising the mesh/triangle amount wouldn't help. Further more, the thumb of the hand wouldn't follow along and stay stagnant. It was weird considering the other hand moved fine. Jon suggested to edit the picture back at Photoshop into multiple layers. And Jon was annoyed with the previous group taking so long with their images.

In regards to the issue that me and everyone else was having (China James was using the same Mickey picture too) Jon went through the process of, incidentally, splitting an image up into multiple components (eg. layers) for puppeteering. From the sounds of it, multiple components sounds necessary regardless, just for the sake of making things simpler and further flexible. Mr.Hunt brought up an example, for instance, of a characterised water drop with a bowling ball. Splitting up the image into several pieces really increased the fluidity and dynamic manipulation of the subject as opposed to being restrained to working with a stiff piece of mould.

Finishing up the lesson, Jon took us through how to use the omnipotent camera tool of After Effects - possibly the bread and butter of the program. We were already taught this briefly by Will but Jon gave us a larger approach to it. The 'virtual' camera shared many of the same properties and options a real industry camera would with film size, aperture, lens and so fourth. This would make sense, I suppose, given that After Effects is used so heavily to apply, well, the after effects to a film. Despite turning 4:00 we had the opportunity to play around for a while with the camera function since we were the last group for today. I didn't have long though as I wanted to get to G01 - and also to call back to my dad, as I purposefully missed the call since I was in class. Dad sent a txt this morning at 7:00 concerning my grouchy voice and coughing having heard it from Holly, offering to come down and visit.

Called up my dad again outside of the library on the way back and asked about my preference on seeing him and Holly. Had to be busy over the weekend(s) and so I suggested maybe to visit tomorrow Saturday. Look forward to seeing him. After the call finished, I stopped and...oh yeah. I wanted to see about borrowing a lightbox from the library. Heading home, I stopped and turned 180 at the student village and headed back to the building to enquire - indeed I could! But I hadn't brought my wallet that had my student card. Back I go. Too many times now I keep on disregarding my wallet when I had in fact needed it for something. Got it, and had the light box. Nice! And so I headed to G01 as I can just keep it with me until I get back. Oh, wait. PAPER. Back-track again. Dumped the lightbox in my room, got the heap of paper and headed to G01 for real this time. Familiar faces were working in G01 again, which I'm beginning to like.

As I worked on the walk cycle, I nearly finished it until I bad revelation came about - on Fridays, G01 closes early at 6:00pm. This severely hindered my plan - my previous line-test was good enough, but I wanted to give it more. True enough, at 6:00 on the spot the security guard popped in and, in friendly, courteous manner asked us to pack up by about 5 minutes. I frantically asked G01 Sophie if this place is open over the weekdays, and the earliest it is open in the morning. Q1: It isn't. Q2: 9:00. Both answers I was afraid of. Hmm.

Headed out and...ran back in, almost forgot the paper. Headed back to my house in a strop. So what now? The deadline is on Monday, for (I believe to be) 9:00-9:30am. I do have a lightbox, but I didn't get around to punching holes in the paper. Besides that, I don't have a line-tester. Arguably the most important thing, to me, about producing the animation. The iMacs hooked up to the testers have the software Dragon on it, too, which have necessary exporting functions - both for AVI and MOV. Avi is important for the DVDs I think, which are a requirement for assessment. Anyway - another penny-drop occurred. I over-heard the American student mentioning that not only was the walk-cycle due for assessment, so was the ball bounce exercise. Crap, I completely forgot about that. I've done it - but the iMac that it was on was having no luck on exporting it in anyway without corrupting the file. Of course the studio is closed over the weekend, so I'm pretty much screwed.


Headed back to my house, and shortly thereafter went into town. Headed to Subway, and used my points for a free footlong 'B.M.T' sub and with my student card, a free drink. Payed just 50p, and that was for a donut. Got back and my contained anger petered out a little bit. Read some weekly manga and felt calmed down. Began thinking of some ideas on how to tackle the problem. Dropped a message on Facebook asking people on my course what the time and place for the hand-in is. Checking on UCA a surprise came about - the deadline is Tuesday 16th. It's for 10:00-10:30 as well! Well, that's great! It gives me a whole day not only to finish the animation but also to get them on DVDs.


It's 22:22 now, so I'll be ending this blog here so that I can shave and shower up, then head to bed.
I'll work on some designs tomorrow, print out some storyboard templates and get to work on the essay and Digital animation.

Lazy Summery No.3

Uh oh, already on the third one? I am pretty tired right now, though, having gotten little to no sleep last night despite heading to bed by 10:30. Scratchy coughs (anxiety, I guess) are a pain but hey ho!

Got up at the best time yet - 6:15am! Nice! And what better way to start off my morning than with a shower. All the housemates would still be asleep so I tried to be quiet even if a shower is going to do absolutely no good on that regard. Whilst washing away, I heard a knock on the door and as I feared, someone wasn't liking the racket. It could of just been paranoia or I am delusional - pretty sure there was one, however. I froze on the spot in the shower immediately turning it off...and turned it back on again after a minute or so as I still had shampoo on my hair. I had to cut my morning shower early. :( Who WAS that, though? I'm guessing it was Yannis.

I glided back into my room, still in a weird semi-drunken state that you get from a night of illness. Dressed myself with some new clothes reeeaaally slowly from the state of mine. Still a little startled from irritating a housemate, I passed the time in half an hour (or an hour?) by reading Animation Survival Kit. Tried to find a section of the book listing the tempo of a walk - how many frames a paced walk should have, indeed. Eventually found it - casual strolling (Which is what I want) is 16 or so frames a step. Well, dammit. Should of planned this out better.

Come 7:00am I strolled upstairs to get myself some much needed tea and toast. I really didn't feel like being awake with a lingering sense of illness simmering within me. Noticed one of the sinks was brimming with unwashed stuff with a bit of paper that at first I didn't notice was a note. ("Are we that bad?" - I first thought) Somebody noted that they'd clean the rest of in the morning. Judging by the zany writing style and 'by the Lemon Monster!' I guessed it was either Georgia, Yannis or Rob. Or Sophie? (She's not like that however)

After peeling off some slight mould from the last couple of pieces of bread, toasting it and preparing the tea, and I paced my way back down in weird, dazed steps. Like a zombie butler. Had some SolapdinePlus to hopefully ease up that stupid throat pain. At 8:00 I kipped out a little bit for an hour, it felt quite nice. Come 9:45 I departed! In windy, bitter cold rain! Luckily I had a hooded coat, so annoyances aside from wet jeans.

Got to Maltings for Jon's lecture just in time. Sat somewhere in the second row, and Luko turned up a little bit after me. The lecture today was on Realism. This was a pretty interesting subject since it is of course so debatable. What is 'realism'? Mr.Weinbren typically starts off the session, like all good lecturers, with a titular question. Most answers had, in fact, happened to cover resulting bullet points on the next side. I liked one particular response by the American student: "Natural flow following a logical path."

Most the slides talked about the French theorists - and one french man in particular, Andre Bazin. He proposed in 1946 that the goal and ambition of cinema is "a total

I couldn't jot down the rest as Jon kept moving the slides forward. The underlying term here, anyway, is Cinea Verite. There's a lot to this but Jon's quote that slipped his tongue summed it up. "Post-modern ironic trick." One of the interesting things he had us do was showing us a photo of a group of 'extatic' children - ones who look eastern european in the 1920s. He asked us - what's going on with the photo? Somebody stated that one of the children were superimposed to the photo, despite Jon correcting that statement. To get the responses interesting, he further asked what's going on behind the camera. Only then did suggestions of warfare (or celebrity on one answer) arise.

The next topic was great. In a...um. It was this: hyper-realism. Example? Disney Land. Disney characters in costumes. Hyper-realism right there. The term here was coined by a Paul Wells. Here are some examples I jotted down: Deers move like deers. Sounds are as they manifest in real-life. Snow White moves like Snow White. Obviously there was actual slides with real examples but I needed glasses and he moved on quickly.

Went on a break, and sat in the lounge with Luko. Poor guy still had a cold torturing him , and couldn't get much sleep. (Because as most students do....he stayed up! Watching something. Forgot.) I discussed this hyper-realism nonsense with Luko, debating that it's just a blowhard way of saying 'really realistic'.

Back in the lecture things moved onto categorising animation realism. Visual realism, aural realism, realism of motion and so on. By this stage the walls of text were past mammoth proportions, so I just listened in and jotted in doodles. We were shown a trailer for Bambi for the example of all this categorising put together (Bumper's foot bumping looks so lewd by this day). Some guy behind me kept putting his feet on my chair, moving it a bit. Pissed me off. The hunch that anyone who gels their hair up is something of an arrogant prick is sadly coming to be true. He openly bitched about Felix's barrage of question and examples though.

Speaking of which, Felix did also consult Jon on 'uncanny valley' which spoilt the next slide's case. Uncanny valley. Man-made imagery of something so realistic like a human, but...it's not quite there. Some ever so slightly looks off and the entire illusion is broken. Mr.Weinbren brought up a great example of this with a 'technical demo' of a videogame, Heavy Rain. I heard about this game from my older brother. Apparently it really showcases ultra realistic visuals...and boy, did it ever. Shame the actual 'actress' animation looked pretty balls, especially on the face. (the most important spot for believability and empathy) Story looked interesting though.

At the end of the session, I wanted to catch Jon to ask him some questions regarding the essay. Two or three other students jumped up to his side already however, each avidly enquiring Jon if he "heard of this game" or "that game" based on HYPER-REALISM. When it came to my turn (and 1-to-1 by this point) I joked to him being a fan of the pixels and all. With the essay, we can of course start it now as I guessed although Jon brought up that he was going to cover all the questions (that we did each week like realism) before letting us kick off. Still, stuff is gotta' be done before Christmas.

Luko went to Boots for some heart-burn pills - buying 'TumTum' because he was appealed by the name. I headed to Waitrose for some snacks and told Luko I'd see him in G01.  Back home I headed upstairs to the kitchen for a drink and Sophie popped up. She was quickly irritated by Yannis's (it was him!) mess and we both agreed that blockading a sink with unwashed stuff is a slap to everyone else. Coincidentally, Yannis popped up. He picked up his notice and put it in the bin. Then, he added an extra plate to his sink of unwashed things. Sophie didn't bring up the issue with him and neither did I - we mutually wanted to hold on to see if Yannis was actually going to do something about it. I headed down to my room after a bit though so never saw. Right now I didn't know if it is cleaned yet.

After a small break I accidentally fell into a resting snooze and eventually headed to G01 at 3:30 or so. There, I worked away more on adding frames to the walk cycle, trying to find methods of making it quicker without initial guidelines slowing me down to almost unproductive levels. Luko wasn't anywhere to be seen though...oops, I guess I let him down by not turning up sooner. Shoot.

Worked away, and come 6:00, checked other peoples walk cycles and/or Character Motivation. One of the girls has done over 100 frames for her motivation already and it is key framed. One of the other students whose name I need to catch (feet on chair, attends street dance) mentioned Ron told him to start again both for the walk cycle and character motivation. Ouch. Nikki's (Philippine student) finished her Character Motivation of an old man. Looked great! When I was eventually the only one left after Nikki's departure, I got a text from my sister if I wanted to talk on Skype. Suggested for about 7:30. Janitor came along at about 6:30 to ask if I'd be any longer in G01, and promptly packed my stuff (and switched off the iMacs) to head off. Apparently I'm not meant to be the only one in G01 or something? What the crap.

Got back home and waited for sister to call up on Skype. I managed to doze off my desk like a lazy sod, and even migrated to rest on top of the bed still fully clothed. Left the volume on my laptop loud to see if she'd call. By 8:20 I got up and started with writing this entry. Gave my sister a call (who wanted to call back in 5 minutes at first) and didn't sound to avid to talk with me due to god-awful scratchy, raspy voice. Told me not to work too hard and take a break. Well, I've been taken to many of them, even today. :(

It's 9:30 as of writing this and I'm just going to shower up and head to bed. I just don't feel appetised or inclined enough to eat dinner tonight. I need to work, lots, for my sake.