07/24/04 Wow, One year ago I was storyboarding.

Remember when I had time to update my log frequently? Those were the days...

One year sounds like a long time doesn't it? It's amazing how long a year can or cannot be. One year ago a year was A LONG TIME, but looking back on the past year I don't even know where all the time went. One year ago my film was VERY different, was still in my head and paper only. I was starting to construct my armatures to get a head start on my production even though school didn't start until September. The head start was so that I would be able to finish by May.

Well, May came and went and my film was not finished. However, this was because I reworked the entire thing at the last possible minute when I should have been animating and added 4 more minutes to the film. Then other various issues came up that prevented me from getting hardcore animation done until mid-January, and then I had to go and get a professional gig on top of everything else. But we don't have to finish our films to graduate so it is not bad, and I had a wonderful time, the most fun I've ever had in my life. Why do I enjoy living my film when I'm not doing anything else including eating and sleeping? I don't know why, but it's why I'm an animator (which means I'm also a bit crazy).

I know people must be wondering what the hell I've been doing since May and when the hell I'm going to finish my film. I'm finally settled into my new apartment and working hard again. I spent half of June on some sort of vacation, whether it be visting family or lounging on the Caribbean sand. Needless to say, swimming with sea turtles was a welcome change to my previous 8 months of living in a hole with no natural light pushing puppets around. I got enough sun to bring back the color to my then hermit-animator pale skin. The rest of June saw some work on my film. Then I moved into my new apt, and had to get unpacked enough that I wouldn't have to dig through boxes every time I needed something. Once that was complete, the film called.

And I answered the call, I've been working and unpacking. The cat is in all the shtos that it needs to be in, some matte painting needs to be done to add the final touches, but the cat is basically done. It's eyes are all in place, though I still need to make them glow (they're glowing in one shot right now). The lantern light is in all the shots that it needs to be. Any streams of light going into or out of the lantern need to be done still, which I will get to soon. The light in the door will also be added very soon.

Once all these effects are complete I will color correct each shot so that they all match up, make sure that all little extra fine details like editing some masks in a shot is complete, etc. Once I'm happy with each shot I'll add motion blur. Just a little bit, but a little goes a long way. This is very RAM and Processor heavy so I'm leaving it for the last step. Once each shot is complete I'll switch from After Effects to Final Cut Pro and edit it. How short will it end up? 6 minutes...maybe less, maybe more? Who knows? What will get cut, how might I rearrange the sequences? Well, I don't want to think about it until I edit, but when I DO edit, I will try to be objective and not think "this shot took 3 days" but instead think "Does this really need to be here?".

Look how much I blab when it's been two months since the last update. Well, I'm sure you noticed the graphics to the right. I put up two shots, one to show the look and style I choose for the cat animation and one to better show the lantern light. These need to be color corrected and get some motion blur still, but they're almost complete.

This shows the cat

This shows the light.

05/28/04 WOO HOO! I'm a GRADUATE...

It's been a long time since I updated the site. There will be more to come in the future when I get the time to just sit down and add content, but I have been meaning to at least update in May, so it needs to be done soon.

Where does my film stand as of now? It's not done, but it will be. I have all the stop motion animation done and have the cat keyed out. I also have a stand in for the light FX so that the film makes sense when viewed. I decided that I did not want to post the rough cut which is 6 minutes 57 seconds here, and that I'd rather wait until the film is finished and present it in all its glory. I need to edit it still, and I figure a good 40-70 seconds will be cut. I animated more than I needed at the heads and tails of each shot so that I have more options when editing. a lot of this will be cut and make this film a lot tighter.

I needed a break from the film and didnt even look at it since May 5th (final class screening) until I showed it to a friend yesterday. I needed that break to regain my "objectivity". Suddenly the film is better then it was when I looked at it EVERY DAY for months and months. I'm ready to start working on it again soon, most likely next week.

What else is keeping me from getting a lot of work done? Since graduation I was searching NYC for an apartment. This is no easy task, especially when one has no job, limited funds, and just got out of school. There's also the issue of my job hunt. SHAMELESS PLUG: Anyone need an animator? There's a handy "contact" button to the upper right of these words. I'm open right now and looking for work with stop motion, CGI, and after effects. I'll update my resume soon on the site, and put up my reel.

COOL STUFF: In addition to graduating and finishing up a life of school, which is pretty cool by itself, I got to meet Ray Harryhausen in the same week! He's making the rounds on a tour of the country signing his new book "An Animated Life" which I need to read soon. I got to meet him at a book signing at B&N in Manhattan. Then the next night I got to goto a screening of "Jason and The Argonauts" with Ray there. He showed a short he had started and finally was finally completed after 50 years by two younger animators who had heard about it and the fact that he still had the puppets. They contacted him and offered to finish it for him and he agreed!! Some animator's have all the luck... It's called "The Tortoise and the Hare" and I'll let you search for info on it as I do have another little animation I need to finish in the next 3 days. After the screening he spoke and answered questions and even showed one of the skeleton puppets from "Jason" and the medusa puppet from "Clash of the Titans"! It was a very fun evening and I'm so glad I was able to make it. If you can get a chance to hear the man talk in person, DO IT.

04/9/04

Just under 4 weeks left. 5 until I move out. But we don't like to talk about that.

I finished shooting just about every shot now. There is just one more shot left, and that is the very first one, the estabalishing shot. If it weren't for other classes I'd shoot it today, but it has to wait until tomorrow. So, this weekend I will have a finished rough edit, and the cat has been keyed into every shot already (except the 5 shots it's in that I am reshooting). Also, once I have all my shots done I am going to start reshooting, and get rid of those shots that I'm not so happy with.

New cool toy: a dolly. A dolly is what you put a camera on to allow it to track(move along side characters), or move in/out of a shot. This makes it possible to do some shots that I wanted, but couldn't do otherwise. This is great and I had a lot of fun building it. Basically, there was an old broken optical film printer that was going to get thrown out at school. Instead, my professor, who also teaches the stop motion class, thought it could be turned into a nice stop motion dolly. I was working the other night when he came up to me and said "I have a project for you."

So, I took the printer, broke it a lot more, took a broken tripod apart, and put together the dolly. It works really really well, and the only complaint I have with it is that the track is only 23" long, and I'd like it to be longer. You can see the dolly to the right. You just turn the crank on the side every frame, and after many hours of animating both the puppets and the camera, you've got yourself a nice cinemaitc camera move.

The light is also starting to move along, and is just about finalized. It's almost what I want, but not quite. I have a friend who graduated last year and is now a freelance compositer who thinks he can get it just right for me(I think he can too), which is awesome because I don't have time to sit down and play with after effects right now because I need to get all my reshooting done.

This baically leaves sound as the one area not going well, but that's because I need to get an edit, more or less, to give to my sound designer and composer. Hopefully I can get some of the sound design and a temp track composed for the end of school, but I know the final sound mix is a few months away.

this is "my" stop motion dolly. It's a shame I have to give it back to NYU eventually.

Here is a picture of an optical printer I found online. It's not exactly the same as the one that is now a dolly, but it's similar.

03/27/04

I slept in today. Something that I've needed to do for a looooooong time. I started working professionally 3 days after my last update as a model maker for a stop motion commercial at Curious Pictures. I'm finished working on it now, but for 3 weeks I was working full time on it and then going home and working on my film. I'm actually still on schedule much to my surprise. I managed to not get behind, when I really should have gotten farther behind over the last few weeks. Of course, I've been working on stuff a little bit out of order than I have on my schedule, so I'm not done shooting my stop motion yet, but I have the cat blocked out in almost 2/3 of the 37 shots that it appears in. I should be finishing up the stop motion shots this weekend, and hopefully starting to reshoots some of the more embarrassing old shots. I really only need to reshoot about 5 shots, but I'm planning on at least 8, hopefully 10. I'm a perfectionist, what can I say?

I'm also hoping to have the cat blocked out in every shot within two weeks. There are five stop motion shots that I am reshooting that the cat is in, so those will be getting blocked out as I work on my reshooting. With the cat showing up now my film is really starting to come together. All the missing elements made it a very weird viewing experience, and now the only visual element missing is the light. I want to try getting the light into some shots in the next two weeks as well and get a rough cut put together. I may or may not put my rough cut online, but if I do it'll be posted here. the running time is still manegable: 6 minutes 10 seconds so far. We'll see if I can keep it short like this, after editing I'm hoping to get it more into the 5 minute 40 second range if possible. I want it to be tight and coherent.

So, basically I'm moving forward full steam ahead (the steam is from the 10 cups of thick-ass black coffee I drink every day now) on my film. I have 5 1/2 weeks, way too much to do, and caffiene to get me through it.

03/06/04 Holy crap, I'm running out of time.

I have 9 weeks until my film is supossed to be finished. That's why I'm only updating my webpage once a month now. Here's the trick to getting more work done then you should be able to: Don't sleep at least one night a week. If possible, only sleep in 4 hours shifts when you get tired. It's hard to do this when you have to go to work or school, but it really does allow you to get more done.

I've been sleeping too much lately, but that's gotta change. I'm almost done animating the stop motion which is great. I have about 10 shots that I want to re-shoot when I'm done though. And then I still have to add the cat, light effects, and the score and sound design. Needless to say the film wont be 100% complete and polished in 9 weeks. But I'm going to try and get as close as possible, hopefully only lacking the finished sound design and music.

If it weren't for my other classes, and work, and my search for employment after graduation (which is forcing me to keep making a new reel as I keep having better work) I'd be able to finish without a problem. But I can't complain, I chose to do this for the rest of my life and in all fairness, I'm having more fun now then I've had in a very long time. I guess I won't go to business school after all.

I'll probably post my rough cut once the stop motion is finished, but for now I'll post one more shot, just because I havent posted any new work in a few months. I'll post a whole lotta new work at the end of the school year though, when I actually (maybe) have some free time.

My film is currently a little over 6 minutes, and I'm not done shooting. I just hope it doesn't go above 8 minutes, because that will mean the cat, light, and sound will take longer to do. So much for the 3 minute limit on our films placed upon us by our professor.

I started keying out the cat in Flash the other day. I'm going to use flash for the keyframes, because it's very easy to animate in flash. Then I'll export those keys as images, and bring them into Photoshop where I'll clean them up, make sure they're on model, and give them that cool airbrush I have setup.

I need to figure out a title soon. If you have an idea, I'm open for suggestions as all the ideas I've had so far have sucked. You'll find a nifty "contact" button to the top right of the webpage. All you have to do is click that magic button, type some stuff, and hit send. Then as if by some magical force, I will recieve that message and either like the idea, or make fun of you.

here's the shot. Enjoy it. Savor it. Spread a little on your gums. Cause that's all you get for now.