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.
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