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.