02/07/04

Well, I've taken the trash bags down from the windows. Then I closed the blinds and have put new trash bags over the blinds on the OTHER side of them. This way, if the annoying bastards from Housing look at my window from outside (as they said they could and would do) it will just look like my blinds are closed and my lights are off. Of course, I could OPEN the windows the way it was before, which is WHY it was like that before, but now I can't. Which way is MORE of a fire hazard?

Hopefully nobody from housing will end up reading this...otherwise I might get put on probation or something. Not that it really makes a difference since I need to make sure that my exposure is consistent while shooting. But enough of this, it's already been much more annoying than it should be.

Still animating up a storm. Unfortunately some of that isn't for my film but for other classes. It's not really a bad thing, but I do wish I could just devote all my time to my film. I'm on schedule which is good, but just barely. I finished a shot 2 hours before class last week to stay on schedule and I have 7 shots to shoot in 5 days if I want to stay on schedule. This is possible, but I have other animation due this week that I need to work on, so I'll probably get a shot or two behind.

So, I don't have any new clips or anything to post, just an update on where I am. I have 12 weeks until the film "has to be done". Well, the stop motion will be done, and I'll have some sort of sound design and music, the lighting FX hopefully will be done, and the cat will definitely be started, but there is a difference between "done" and "finished". That's why we're told to keep it under 3 minutes, which is why mine is going to be around 6 minutes, give or take. It wouldn't be fun if it was easy would it? All in all, I'm in good shape, and feeling good about the film. I can't wait to see it finished.

01/27/04 I'm sick of school.

Ah. The last month has been a very interesting one. There have been many interesting things happening, not related to my film, but taking time away from "animation time". It's ok though, things are moving along nicely. My animation has improved by leaps and bounds, which is wonderful, but now I have to reshoot a bunch of my earlier shots. I now have to go back to school and work, which frankly sucks. I can't spend all my time animating any more, which is all I really want to do. I want to finish shooting, and do my re-shoots. I don't want to goto class, work, or do homework. I'm ready to graduate now, except for the little matter of my having one required class left to take. Stupid technicalities. ok..end of rant.

As I said, the shooting IS going well. It's almost done, and then I just have a few shots to reshoot. With 2 other animation classes, I now have less time to animate, but hey...what're ya gonna do? Gotta animate...and it's fun anyway, so I can't "really" complain. I've recently had a run-in with the hosuing department. Apparently the trash bags covering my window is a "fire hazard" and I'm supossed to take them down. This is of course, BS and not happening. So I'm going to have to make it so that its more of a "quilt" that can be put up and taken down with ease. What a bunch of BS. I'm so glad I'll be moving out of NYU housing forever in a little over 3 months. You better believe NYU isn't getting any money from me once I'm an alumni. They don't really treat students very well. The Tisch School of the Arts (which is where the film program is) is wonderful, and they DO take care of us. But the rest of the University....bad bad evil corporation, not a school; and housing is the worse department of them all...bastards. My Set being half the room is not a fire hazard, even though it's a hell of a lot more flamable than 20 trash bags...

I'll post my cut when I have all the stop motion finished, but soon the lighting FX will start to show up...which is exciting. No clips for now, but I'll provide a picture at least. In case anyone wonders how much "space" I have while working....have your eyes move to the right now. unless you're reading this in a mirror, in which case you're reading my words backwards which is mighty impressive.

01/01/04 Happy New Year.....I can't believe it's already '04.

I'm not posting everything I shoot, but here's a teaser.

I haven't updated in a while because I have better things to do, like animating my film. After the last update I took a few days to get everything ready and started animating. I didn't really feel like sitting here and typing when I could be playing with puppets. Cause seriously...if you're not playing with puppets life just isn't worth living.

I don't have lots to say really...I'm animating...so things are going well. To date I have 1 minute and 22 seconds shot. Some of the shots I'm not so happy with, and I will reshoot, a few I love, and most are acceptable.When I say acceptable I mean good, as it takes a lot for me to like, and especially love, my own work. I'm my own worst critic.

I've been getting a tan from the lights...which is interesting because I hardly ever see the sun any more as I'm on a night schedule now. The other day I saw daylight for the first time in 6 days...I forgot how bright it was. My sunglasses aren't enough to protect my eyes from hurting when outside in daylight now either....this is a very interesting experience. I am having a great time animating, and I can't wait to see the final product.

12/14/03

I'm the man that's just crazy enough to do it. What did I do you ask? Why, I reworked my story and made an entitrely new animatic when i was suppossed to be getting ready to animate. In fact, I should already be animating today, but I'm not. I'll hopefully get started by December 20th. But, this change is for the best, and I think it makes for a much stronger film. I do not regret it at all.

The new animatic is 5 minutes long, features some awesome lighting (finally), has a new character design (but the last one), and has caused me to question CG and think about animating the cat traditionally, though in Photoshop on my computer rather then on paper.

The drawings in the animatic for the cat just look so cool....so I might have to do it that way. I'm not sure how I feel about it, after all I put a lot of time, effort, and blood into getting that CG cat to work, and to get smoke on it. But, I gotta do what I gotta do, and I'll make a decision soon enough with that.

I don't have too much else going on, I wasn't sleeping for a few days to get it done, and thats why I didn't update last week. I still have one assignment to finish for monday and then I'm on break and can commit just about all my waking hours to my film.

I know you've been wanting to see it, so here it is.... the new animatic.

This is the new look of my film. Isn't it pretty?

12/01/03

**SITE NOTE** Well, I'm back, and not on suspension anymore!! I'm not sure what happened really, but all of a sudden there was a huge surge of interest in my webpage. According to the logs from my server there is no explanation, which makes me think my site was listed in another big newspaper article. The last time I had a surge like that within a few days was when my webpage was in The New York Times.

I went from a little over half of my bandwidth, to almost twice as much bandwidth in a period of five days. If you know why this happened please let me know. Obviously, every time I add new video clips there will be more bandwidth used, but I hope I don't need to upgrade my hosting plan for at least a few months. I think that when my film is done I am going to need a plan with more bandwidth, so when the time comes I'll bite the bullet and break out the wallet. Until then, if this happens again, I just might have to wait till the next billing period (1st of the month) to update.

Now for the news about my project: I have completed blocking the animatic. It can be seen here. This is more or less the way the action will occur and the time in which those actions will happen. Of course, anything is able to change as I see fit when I start animating, but I will try to keep the timing more or less the same.

This smoke cat is now the bane of my existence. All I need to do is get it done and then I can start animating. I have spent the last few days attaching the skin to the skeleton, and should be finished later today. I hope to have some sort of animated test with it by wed 12/3, though I have yet to model the cat's head. I am not modeling or animating the head until after the stop motion is complete because it will take too much time to give it facial expressions and controls and can be done just as easily after the main skeleton has been animated as the bone are already in place.

I've also started working on the particle system for getting the smoke to look good, and hope for some sort of test with that by the third as well.

I start animating really soon now. I'm very excited, and can't wait to get into it already! I will update again when I have more to say and show as long as I don't exceed my bandwidth too quickly.

This is how the final lighting will look (though I'm toying with the idea of adding a dim light off to the side to provide a backlight for the characters). Also, note the new character design. This prevents them from blending in with the background and "popping out" instead.