Animatics

It has been a week of inactivity but finally - animatics!

One of the most crucial stages in the production of our film, the animatic has to be done right - as mentioned in earlier entries, the timing is a big factor for how well the humour can be expressed.
Chuck Jones, who had directed several Merry Melodies cartoons (Road Runner, Bugs Bunny etc) was a master of timing the humour in his animations. His cartoons have several tricks such as delaying the inevitable misfortune, giving the actions a tempo and most commonly tricking expectations - one of the older tricks in the book.

Having mentioned this, these are the tricks we intend to use with our team's animation!

Today, we went into G14 once again to re-record the voice acting one final time. Issues with the track's 'bouncing' from last time meant that the animatics couldn't be created - the animation is certainly one key factor, of course, but the timing with the audio means everything for this feature. Ben and Liam were charitable to come along in the morning for one final round. Unfortunately however, the recording studio had difficulties with correctly sending the output through to the speakers from the main mic. Sara, our producer, was frantically trying to fix the cause and eventually turned to finding some technical support. Al Green and James - both technicians for the sound studios, were away though. Sara eventually requested Jon Hunt to see if he can find a solution, despite sound not being his area of expertise. Jon resolved the problem - restarting the computer. Hurray!

We jumped right into recording the audio once more and finished in suitable timing. The lines were done so often that Ben, Liam and Tom had no difficulties in delivering them. We finished somewhat early despite the issues, so what better way to spend time in the recording studio than to sing some of our favourites?

Later in G01, Ben processed the sound recording and as a group we pieced together where to put the audio in for our first draft of the animatics.

Tom had some issues with the continuity in the later scene of Bruce dropping his trousers; he believes it couldn't make sense that he's still there and decides to drop them suddenly. I gave my two cents, stating that the shock factor is more important at that stage of the story than why he'd do it.

Next week, we can finally begin the animation! Flash is a versatile piece of software, and we spent most of last week getting to grips with the program, working on the Animatics as we did it.

Can't wait to get this underway!

Making Progress

Team 3 met up in G01 today - today isn't Acting Workshops for us so we took it as an opportunity to start cracking on with learning Flash and Animatics.

We headed over to the IT building, to room W104 so we could use the computers there for Flash and other means. During that time I meandered over to my home to pick up the graphics tablet mainly for helping some of the team members get a gist for using one.

Sarah Pollard thankfully put together the 'character bible' - the assortment of character designs both finalised and scrapped. Using these, I got to work with the character turn-arounds, finishing two of the designs at about 4pm. I sketched them first, and then traced over the top using Adobe Illustrator.

Voice Recording Take 2

This Thursday, 24th, was the lecture for 1pm but before that, we met up in room G23 for another take on voice acting.

Due to the changes within the script, it was necessary to re-record what was done before - any tweaks and amendments to bolster the strength of the plot would also help a great deal. Sure enough, there was one major change to the performance; Ben Greenwood (courteously helping us again) changed his initial voice (low-tone, randy) to a royal, upperclass and regal sort.  Reasons for this - other than simply being all the more humorous, is because we realised that the ludicrously of the scenario wouldn't flow too well with the former personality, and the context of a some-what forced woman voice fits in context with the male lavatory.

It took quite a few takes to get the voicing just right - sometimes it would be received too quietly, or there would be moments of staccato. Ben had to put some light strain on his throat to present the voice, so naturally the poor man would slip on some cases - thankfully it didn't take too long, otherwise he wouldn't of had any voice left at the end of the day.

Once we finished up with The Presenter's lines, it was onto the two focal characters - Bruce and Timid Tim. The former played by Tom and the latter by Liam, who again took time out to assist us. For the most part, there were some only slight (albeit still necessary) changes within the dialogue, but the big break was during the bum-squeeze scene. For this part, we deemed it best for Liam to improvise the reaction - and how, and from what? Real-life bum squeeze, of course! Liam's reactions weren't just hilarious, they were genuine which is was all too important in making the humour believable. Again, this too required quite a few takes mostly because we wanted to see would we could get out of Timid Tim's shock but also because some responses weren't what we were looking for. Saying that, however, the best altogether was Liam letting loose a plethora of naughty swearing which brought the performance home. To cover up the swearing, we cut off line delivery before it jumped into Grade A language.

We finished at 12pm, just in time for an hour's break before the lecture.

Foley Recording

There are visuals to present the audience that the location is in the men's lavatory, but what about audio? Without it, there isn't the extra dimension - the sound - to immerse people into the setting.

With that said, I headed down to G23 today to meet up with Tom, Phil and Kamil at 2:00pm. The actual scheduled meet-up was for half-past two, but I decided to get the room unlocked and recording equipment from the booking office. The booking office itself was closed early today (missing the sign in a hurry) but fortunately, the Equipment Hiring desk were able to carry out the rest of the plan. 

There were some slight confusions with the booking (Ben Oren booked the studio for today) but regardless, it was cleared up and I began setting up the studio, microphones and all. Phil Farmer turned up and helped out further - he also brought along a bowl and 6 packs of bottled water for the peeing effects! Thomas and Kamil arrived momentarily, though we were lost somewhat on getting inputs and outputs to correctly work and configure - fortunately a staff member associated with Sound recording was nearby to get us going.

We cracked on with recording the various sounds of urination. Initially, Phil tried squeezing the water out of the bottle and into the bowl but the microphone picked up the cracks and squeaks of the plastic. Moreover, despite the sprinkling of water sounding quaint on Phil's end, it was a deluge on ours. It was far too heavy to sound natural - something that editing wouldn't take far enough to fix.

Phil headed back home to pick up his plastic measuring jug; pouring the collected water out of there has a much greater control over the velocity and force of the, ahem, stream. I also scurried home to pick up my HandyCam for more documenting. Back in the studio, Phil experimented with various means towards getting the flow to sound natural. Better results came when the water began by hitting the sides of the bowl, then flowing into the body - this sort of process does came when weeing into the urinals after all. Characteristics associated with urination were applied as well, such as the last-second pauses. The urination sounds that were on target were the ones that enticed us to go spend a penny. Tom couldn't hold his bladder after a while when hearing the recordings over and over.

VIDEO HERE

When satisfied with the final outcome, we moved onto the other important follies - the most important being the jeans dropping. Getting the right sense of weight and power was harder than we had first suspected. Often, the initial drop would be too soft and staggered, and the actual impact was too rugged. Phil's belt also didn't have enough metal to achieve the jingling, so in its place he used a pair of keys to simulate the effect. Likewise, clothing outside of trousers were experimented to attain a heavy feel.

Views on how the jeans should actually drop were also contested; Phil was satisfied that sound of impacts were good enough to give a believable sense towards the trousers touching ground - Tom however wasn't satisfied that they matched the character and shock-factor of the scene. Saying that, we settled on splicing the better parts of the 'drop' and the 'crash' together to compose the right form of sound effect.

We finished just in time for the studio needing its equipment back, 4:25pm. Tomorrow, we'll be doing the next part of the Voice Recording though it largely depends on whether Ben Greenwood (who voices the presenter) can make it for 10am. Sarah Pollard will be back with us too as today was her big day for net ball.

Design Stages!

Despite being a straight-forward narrative with a simplistic setup, an important aspect we're still working with is the designs - since the visual aesthetics are kept to a minimum for Flash (where it is to be animated), easy readability in both the scenes, perspectives, and most of all - characters - is important not only for the audience's attention span but also the humour, which is course an integral part of the movie.

Today, we met up at the usual time and place - 10am in B124. Since Tom and Phil were missing in action yesterday, we had to post-pone our plans, but nevertheless, we made headway! Our plan today was to record both sound effects and voice acting in the recording studio but unfortunately it was booked up today; Andy however brought it to our attention that we need to suss out our character's profiles before heading on and he was right. 

Zodac star signs, as he recommended, were a good starting point for drawing the personalities, behaviours, likes and dislikes etc forward. We decided the clumsy Australian be named Bruce (despite it never being mentioned throughout the story), and be an Aeris - a masculine, neurotic/task orientated, positive star sign. For the protagonist himself - the inferior, extroverted corner-dweller, we're still in the process of filling in his personality to the fullest.

We also decided to keep consistency in check. Originally, the film opened up in a 1900s silent-film era title screen - following with a monotone, scratched film. The design style was ditched since consistency ran awry with the presence of urinals and characters dressed in present-day clothing.

In the afternoon, we decided to work further on character designs. Phil and Kamil worked on digitising the designs in Illustrator, and I did turn-arounds for the character Bruce - although his clothing design were to be changed at that stage from a jacket to a white vest.

Speaking of designs, here are Kamil's works so far:

Side view of the urinals.

Behind view of the urinals - the wall is transparent.

Profile view of the urinals and the cubicle.

Semi-final design for the presenter.

Early sketches.

Various face designs - inspired from multiple CGi films.

Designs for the protagonist.

Tests for the proportion.

Cleaned up illustration for the scene - note the brick wall.

Early sketches of the protagonist.

Three urinal scene.

Tomorrow, we'll be doing some further sound designing. Sarah, our producer, may or may not be there depending on her games for Net Ball. The room will be booked out for Wednesday and Thuresday to do sound effects and voice recording, respectively.

Active Acting

As intended, today was for some reference in acting!

Met up with Kamil on the way to B124, but apparently it was being used - Sarah was on her as well, so instead we headed to the life drawing studio next door and waited for Tom. During that time, Kamil showed us the character designs he whipped up for the presenter - he essentially stuck to the sexual appearance that Tom was after, drawing from inspiration such as The Incredible's Elastigirl and Edith Mode. Sarah took the most liking to Elastigirl's design inspiration, whereas I felt that another design of his - a lady of Victorian-era civility - nailed the feel of her juxtaposition. That said, the choice is down to our director, who arrived shortly thereafter.

Our plan was to have Tom, along with Phil Farmer, act out some of the scenes which are now in the early storyboarding stages. Phil wasn't available however, as he is ill. Instead, Tom gave his friend Ben Oren a call and he popped on over to lend a hand. Ben was the original partner to Tom during his pitching act, so it certainly helped to retain the same essence that was presented.

I was a fool and forgot to charge up my video camera, so it only had about 12 minutes of power left! Even then, I managed to get all of the important shots in. We tried a variety of different acts, recreated, and filmed in different angles - some had to be changed and modified though. One in particular was the rule of "no touching"; at first, the antagonist would shake around the unfortunate protagonist next to him with his spare arm in a rather crass and flimsy manner. When acting it out however, we felt the action wasn't getting across the "no touching" rule in a clear enough context so we thought about other ideas.

I suggested the antagonist wipe his hands over the protagonist's face, or maybe crossing streams. The latter wouldn't translate well into the humour, and whilst wiping a hand on somebody's face could give shock and disgust, Sarah brought up the point that it would be too hard to animate. (And given my record for the 30 second narrative, I'm unwilling to task risks this time) Eventually, Tom decided that the antagonist give our poor hero's bum a cheeky squeeze. The idea is simple enough to shown through the film's simplistic visuals but punchy enough to warrant a surprise.

We took a couple of takes on this act, with the 3rd going forward on Ben's input of the protagonist letting out a gasp. The extra sound and bounce really added a lot more to it, and is easier to express in our early years as animators.

We finished up, and Sarah had to head off for her game in net ball. (Hope it went well for her.) Tom and the gang were hungry and felt inclined to head over to a McDonalds or Nando's. Me and Kamil headed back to our homes, though.

Urinal Studying Day

The title should give it away, but also we got the voice recording underway.

Today we were meeting up at 11am. Sarah Pollard and Tom showed us a reworking of the script, tweaked from the input of Phil and others yesterday. Sarah managed to book the sound recording studio and even get Al (second name here) to give us a run down of using the controls. The sound studio has been refurbished since last term, since the room beyond the computers was full of junk, mess and such.

With my camera at the ready, me, Tom, Kamil and Phil cracked on with a necessary task towards the project - studying the mens lavatories. Actually it was more or less to take photos of them since trying to actually design the scene will be tricky without some reference shots. The first one we found and already a woman came past and questioned our motifs. Trying to explain our reasoning for investigation was tough because, well, we couldn't really give one. Even then, this is the University for the Creative Arts, so people should expect students to be undergoing inane antics like ours. With each lavatory we found, they were thankfully empty. I hustled with the shots to make sure no one would walk into 4 men standing around.

Reporting back to Sarah Pollard, Andy Joule came around and gave us some advice towards time management - mainly to organise what to do each week rather than specifically go into detail for each day. It's true, since our plan is to evaluate what we've done from the previous work and from there onwards, plan what to do.

We went on a lunch-break and at 2:00pm, met up at the sound recording studio to put the draft of the script into action. Doing so, we can get a better feel for the visual input and progressing narrative once the voices come into play. Ben Greenwood was there to provide some assistance in voice work - he's in fact a Director for another group but stealing him payed some good money! The sound technician arrived shortly and (re)taught us the basics of setting up the sound studio. He also showed us how to tweak the audio output until the levels were just right, and didn't question our animation subject.

Speaking of our animation, the beginning is going to have a woman of high-cultured, posh background to present the film's namesake and teach the audience. Initially, Sarah Pollard was going to be the voice behind this character (for obvious reasons) but after hearing Ben Greenwood's first few lines of delivery...we were settled. Ben has to be the voice! It's too spot on for anyone else - at least at this stage.

Tom voiced the awkward Australian man that invades the protagonist's personal space - and his friend voiced the protagonist himself.

Group 3 initial work on sound recording.

Due to Ben's performance we've decided to change the visual look of the presenter to a sexy broad, Jessica Rabbit type for now. 

Tomorrow, we're going to film some basic facial expressions as well as acting to help get the subtle gestures down in our animation. Also, the character designs will be further developed and Kamil will of sketched up some designs for the scene.

It has been 400 years!

Of course the last entry joked that I wouldn't finish it and how.

From this point onwards, aside from getting the blog's heart to be beating once more, it's also going public; this will be the first entry my animation group (more on this later) and course friends will be likely to read. (HELLO HI!)

To sum up last term for everyone else, I was assigned a project to produce a narrative with exactly 30 seconds of animation. My idea was to produce just a simple animation of a person waking up grumpily to find, from his kitchen window, the locale covered with snow. Animation-wise it was to include walking within spacial depth (towards and away the viewpoint) along with subtle body gestures - just some daily stuff. Though boring, the idea was to help me to practice the basics in movement and animating to perspective, the latter here being the most important aspect to me.

Naturally, though, setting a challenge is easy enough - the sheer complexity of trying to animate something in perspective movement, the amount of minute details you have to adjust, is damn overbearing. I put off trying to do the animation in fear of screwing up the designs and ending with a result I hated. Nearing the deadline, I had no option. But having no option was the only motivation that got me going in the end as I had to watch my animation result in the character wobbling and mutating in some grotesque fashion - and this was the result of clockwork hours, where drafts would be done over and over until the finished line. It was painfully obvious that I didn't know how to draw or animate properly, and that I should be sticking to bouncy exaggerated forms that I detest so much.

Despite the sleepless nights, it eventually dawned on me that I wasn't going to be reaching the 30 second mark by Monday (Library would be closed over the weekend, where DVD burning is possible) so I neglectfully sent my course leader an e-mail to go ahead and put me on referral, though he couldn't do that before assessment so that was a bummer. Despite that, I rushed through with what I produced onto DVD and I fell into complete dismay with myself, over my lack of confidence from before. The projects were due in for assessment around January 10th.

Well, come the dawn and referral doesn't mean I'm off the course. Several breakdowns and support from my sister, I handed in the work for my Digital Skills and essay (which I passed, I'm surprised), and took two weeks off whilst waiting for the next semester to begin at the 31st of January. During that time I practiced drawing and finished the rest of my 30-second narrative, due for February 11th. 

Anyway, so begins the new semester!

The next big three projects are Movement, Story and Structure - a continuation of Animation Principles where we are now put into groups consisting of a Director, Producer and a team of 3-4. Digital Skills 2 were this time we're learning 3D CGi software - mainly Autodesk's Softimage. Finally, Mediation and Meaning - lectures about animation given by a new staff member who is nice, and fairly well organised!

For this post I'll focus on the Movement, Story and Structure project, as it's (unsurprisingly) the biggest out of the three. As mentioned above, we've been put into groups but before this we've been tasked with presenting a pitch based on our idea for an animation. The idea has to revolve around the themes of either time, family, phobia or an infomercial (which arguably was mistaken for Public Service Announcement). Before then, we were given a week to come up with some ideas and frequently we were split into various different groups in order to encourage various opinions, feedbacks and inspiration from other students. Some ideas I heard were pretty good!

The pitches went on throughout Monday, and everyone had different methods of explaining their idea. Personally I wish I wasn't so stuttered. Luko's idea was pretty solid and he kept himself fairly smooth and controlled. After the pitches finished, we received our group listings the following day. Some of the choices were pretty surprising! I'm happy that Nikki and Luko get to realise their ideas. I'm in Group 3 - which to the side of the blog will show you who's role is what.

Thomas Jennings the Director - and his idea is, as the title pretty much sums it up - urinal etiquette. (Ur-EYE-nal) If you'd of seen his pitching, it come as no shock over his position as director. With the help of Ben Oren, he acted out most of his idea with some intriguing subtlety (which we hope to match in the animation). It was damn entertaining to watch, and no one could his trousers drop coming. My hunch is that Andy's past experience with being an actor helped him to better resonate towards Tom's idea but he certainly showed a lot of bravery regardless.

As Group 3, we first got together on Thursday before the lecture for Mediation & Meaning. It was just Sarah Pollard, Thomas Jennings and me at the time, but the producer sorted out a rough plan and schedule for next week, as well as discussing what we should focus on first. Tom recommended bringing some Haribo on the odd occasion for us and I whole-heartedly agreed. In the planning was some character designing, a script and what to do generally for the story.

I bet this post will be incomplete too!

I wouldn't put it past me to suddenly stop writing this entry and slam-dunk my mind into dreamland.

But anyway - I slipped a few more days again from the exertion of working. If I really wanted to be committed to my blog, then I wouldn't keep on letting these instances take place. Saying that, it's just one week to go until Friday 17th - the day I break up for the holiday. From the current position that I stand in with my work, I have to say, I don't feel too ecstatic about this.

This morning I was up at...well, there wasn't any awakening whatsoever since that requires falling asleep - something I ignored doing altogether. Throughout the night I had worked on my storyboards and designs, ideally to try and hit a good enough spot on where I want the story to go in context with the movements.

In case I haven't wrapped up the current plan for the 30" animation yet (probably not):
The animation, of course needing to be 30 seconds in length, also needs to demonstrate an amalgamation of previous exercises done before into the feature presentation. This includes a variety of techniques like the lip syncing, walking and squash/stretch.

Many a person studying in my course of course have both large ambitions and high expectations so a powerful story or cool scene paves the way for their plots. I went with various others - going the simpler route. In my animation, there is no particularly exciting backbone to the story, or over-arching character issues...

Nope - it's actually just me waking up to discover snow in the morning - basing it off the recently occurred weather event. The reason here is essentially down to my desire to use backgrounds, as well as having something logical and manageable for voice acting. I'm no professional, and I can't see any reason to prepare a potentially inciting piece of movie to only have it shattered by unbelievable voice acting. That's pretty cynical of me, but really - I'm in no shape for voice acting yet.

Since my ability to draw wasn't sufficient enough, I turned to How to Draw Anime & Game Characters, as well as Mamoru Hosoda's designs. I think I mentioned this before. I feel my drawings have improved vastly though, so I'm keen to continue practising from the book(s) over the Christmas holidays when I get the chance.

Inspiration!

Up at 12:15pm again today. I did get some good sleep so this is becoming inexcusable.

Because I just wasn't sure which direction to take my design for myself as a character, some obvious Anime Design 101 was essential. I love Mamoru Hosoda's design work so I punched a few of his films into Google image search to find various screenshots. I sketched/traced a number of screenshots involving Makoto from The Girl Who Leapt Through Time - as well as any other characters of the film that were included in various shots of her.

To try and understand that Hosoda magic of the designs, I copied various emotions of Makoto (and I believe it's a principle in design work to draw different emotions) and I was sort of beginning to pick it up. When it came to drawing the leading male characters, it struck me how dimensional the sides of the face are - it's not simply a case of "Well here is where the ear would be when the face wraps around...", there is some bizarre feeling of depth to the face.

Before moving onto some more of Hosoda's filmography, I whipped out Tadashi Ozawa's 'How to Draw Anime & Game Characters' Vol. 1. Whilst flicking through the earlier pages...I was shocked. The basic face structures, including eyes, nose and dimensions were pretty much line for line to Hosoda's  designs - granted, his designs are fairly generic in terms of anime but I had always thought there was more to it. Well, his mouth shapes and opal eyes are fairly distinctive; but the fundamental to drawing things in 3D lead to exactly the same results.

I carried on further with drawing some of the characters from Summer Wars - the leading male character in particular. When drawing him in various shots where his head is faced oblique to the left or right it surprised me how much difficulty I was having getting the distance of the ears to the eyes correct - as well as how far apart the eyes had to be from one another. After too many occasions of rubbing out and rectifying, I finally got it right.

My mistake? It's my old nemesis. I draw the back of the head too small.

Last year I toppled the issue by learning to draw the outline of the face much smaller to the initial circle but often still run into issues where I just cannot correctly 'hinge' the ears to the jawline. Often, the ears end up being too far back and the balance of the face is resultantly thrown off. I'd have to practically scratch in some extra skull with the pencil! Now I am getting a little bit better at maintaining a sense of balance to the head of the character.

John and Nikki wants our family - the Siresu-Mani-Jajopi family - to do something together before we break up for the Christmas. When John requested for some ideas on a date and what to do, I suggested that on Saturday we go ice skating or eat out. Sinoun jumped out to the idea of ice skating, loving that kind of activity. Eventually, Nikki came along and decided on plan of eating over at someone's place, and then playing pool down at one of the pubs (Forgot the name - I played there with Luko. William Cobbet?). Everyone decided it was the best, most suiting plan for the day. I agree.

Later shot to the Waitrose before it closed. I brought a pizza, and back home whipped it into the oven. Yannis and Georgia also were having pizza - but theirs was from Dominos. Unfortunetly, Georgia's was cold, they didn't have any dips and the side-dishes were also lukewarm. It's just as well I got mine from Waitrose of all the times. On the flip side, Georgia and Yannis did get a free drink.

Scooby spooked!

This isn't anyway to go back to a normal schedule! I don't have much to say!
Well, mainly because I spent most of today not doing anything mostly because, once again, I'm cowering over the challenge of the 30 second animation (among other things).

I got up at 12:15 or so which is bad but not so much as the 1:15pm (!!) waking hour made last week. 7am to 8am was my aim but it didn't happen and most of my blame could probably go to Sophie and everyone getting back late from Becky's party up in Guildford. Actually, my blame is mainly towards Yannis and Georgia sexing it up next door. It's TMI, and they will likely kill me for bringing this up in a public place like this, but I swear on some occasions I woke up in the middle of the night to it. They are no where near as noisy or 'showy' as Nat was though.

Got up and had some tea, my hair was a mess. At 1:00pm I got out my camera to take some reference photography of my room for the animation. I had done Graphics GCSE before, but I got an F for it - found too hard. To the point though: I'm certainly no experienced person to perspective drawing and architectural design despite doing it frequently before, so for this animation I'm somewhat cheating the system and using my photographs as a reference to digitally paint from and over. I would LOVE to design my own scenes but for now I want to play things nice and safe.

Took various photos from different angles, with various lighting conditions (such as my sink light) and I even included myself in some of the quirkier perspectives to get a good grasp on the proportional basis. The outside hall way was included into the photos as well. Of course, I'm doing this with the assumption that I'll be including backgrounds. Given however that I need to actually practice actual movements with perspective use, it's a no-brainer that some actual setting is needed for justification. The problem is that I'd like to take my pencil tests further and draw them into the computer. If I do that though, all sorts of other cool possibilities open up!

On Facebook, Nikki brought up that Taekwon-do was on at 6pm tonight. She of course wanted us to go, or else threatened to beat us up with her mastery of the self-defense arts! I wanted to go but I felt too bummed out and afraid (of the animation) to do anything. At some point before 6pm I heard Sophie bring up Taekwon-do, and I rushed out to ask her about it - I assumed she was going. Nope! One of the chaps next door in 96 was, and Sophie merely found the idea of practising Taekwon-do in casual clothing absurd. I do to, but I don't feel in the position to chip out money for the gi/uniform though.
Yannis, having done this kind of fighting style at young age, tempted Sophie to go. "No way man! *kung-fu stances/noises* - isn't my kind of thing! I'm contemporary! *ballet pose*" She disappeared upstairs.

Later on I felt hungry and felt it was time to eat. I wanted to get my other blog entries written up before then, but once again procrastination was making its rounds. Sophie had her friend Kalem up - the two along with Jamie and Yannis were up in the kitchen. Decided to have a sausage and onion casserole with potato dolphena-something. Me and Sophie took a while to eat our dinner as we were so engaged into talking. Of the things we discussed, I brought up Yannis and Georgia's pick 'n mixing at night. (keeping me up and all) Fearful that they might of not known this (and thus stir up bigger talks) I gulped a little - but Sophie was aware for what seemed as long as I had. In fact, she and Rob would be frequently bringing up their sexsation. We all know however that Yannis and Georgia seem to be believing that we are unaware of this - unless it's just that they do not want to bring it up.

Lazy Absence No.1

I'd apologise for almost a week's worth of AWOL material but as of writing this there isn't anyone viewing the blog. (But that's fine!) The snow really kicked in and any attempt to be productive - aside from the odd character designing - was out the window.

Throughout the week of the snow, it was a marvel. It's one thing to see so much snow collecting here in the UK, it's another to see it before three to four months in the new year. I partook in a bevy of snow related shenanigans - namely snow ball fights from the kitchen or outside. I also attempted to roll a snowball to as big as I could be bothered to make it multiple times.

Here's a summery of what occurred:

• Character designing
• Trying to throw snow balls through our kitchen window at Rob and Chris
• Building a great big snow ball and ditching it in the car park
• Rob and Chris sniping people with food from the fridge (sandwiches, frankfurters, salmon etc) from the kitchen window.
• Making a bacon sandwich.

I'll be resuming as normal now. Fortunately, not much had actually occurred despite the occasion. Days were quite fast, but slow in pace.

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.