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.
No comments:
Post a Comment