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.