Where do we go from here?

"Alright," you ask heavily, sighing, "so I've gone through all this trouble to keep up with your blog... what the heck is happening to it now that the class is over?"

the simple answer? LOTS. this project is in fact NOT over. it has just begun.

This entire process was so inspiring and fulfilling (despite my personal teeth-gnashings with the quality of my animation) that I have taken the next step; my 4 minute Flash piece is going to become my Junior Film.

You heard right. It is my intention to lengthen this piece to a 5 minute short (not including credits) and entirely self-produce it as a 3D piece in addition to my full-time classes. My goal is to complete the project by January '10, however I am flexible and would prefer a later polished finished product to an on-time shoddy one. I am communicating with various professors to try and make this work. I fully intend to graduate from SCAD with 3 short films to show for my time. So this summer I begin work on Different Perspectives.

I will continue to update the blog as I progress with the piece. I'll try and put up just as much as I did for this project; backgrounds, process pieces, camera movements, character models and rigs, motion tests... anything relevant. I like to keep you all in the know because i think its incredibly important and educational to see how a person works. it often helps you improve your own process and if nothing else is also really, really cool to look at!

throughout this process i would really appreciate any/all input you could offer. because i am producing this outside of class it is one of the only ways I will be able to improve my work with external input.

I'm also going to be putting up a website this summer. i've never done any web design past the CMPA flash site project, so... if anybody has tips or tricks with that either I'd be SUPER interested in hearing from you! im actually kind of intimidated by it, to be honest. i've never been a webmaster before, lol!

so there's the skinny. this blog will be updated periodically (probably not as much as during the class because progress will be much slower what with working 'against' 3 classes). You're all awesome, thanks for sticking with me! :)

Thanks, guys! (et al)

Just wanted to say to everybody in my ANIM342 class:

Thanks!

I've had lots of fun reading your blogs (those of you that updated, at least) and having a glimpse at your process. I wish we had more opportunities to interact in the class so I could have gotten to know you all better.
Special thanks to any/everybody that commented on my posts at some point. Your input was always helpful and/or supportive. I hope I was able to offer you some helpful or supportive tips along the way as well.

:)

EDIT: oops, I did my 'final post' too early, lol. here's the rest for you:

Yes, if I had the option to re-do this project I would have approached it very differently. I would slide my entire schedule up about a week (so start right at the start of the quarter), rely more on puppetry, and probably have had a different story altogether. I did not realize during conception the type of animation best suited for Flash. Now I know better and would never attempt frame-by-frame again on this software. that isn't to say it can't be done and done well, it just isn't an easy fit. I was thinking Flash could be used like ToonBoom or Flipbook... I was very much incorrect about that.
I also wish I'd had the opportunity to interact more with my peers, digitally or otherwise. I felt pretty much alone throughout the creative process, which is such a shame since we're all creative people and could probably have helped each other out during the planning stages.

Youtube Uploaded!

Completed Film

Its done. The sound design was SO CLOSE! like, completely by coincidence it was almost perfect. the last clip was ever so slightly short, but i actually kind of like it. i apparently dont know how to edit audio files in after effects and premiere has such a grainy export it wasn't worth dropping in there. so i may fine-tune the sound design later and re-import it as a single audio file, but for now this'll do just fine by me. :)

Once youtube has it processed expect to see it here! YAY!

Just needs some sound...

ITS DONE. MY LORD. I did proxies at home for what I had and switched computers, the teacher's Cintiq machine doesn't have gunky ram and is able to process/proxy the full composition.

EDIT: HAHA, wow! that was great timing! right as I typed "is able to process/proxy" i got a ram overflow error.

methinks murphy has a good sense of humor. i'll get right back to you.

EDIT AGAIN: OK, I'm tackling it the hard way. one way or another, this WILL be done tonight (lol). hopefully its smooth sailing!

Progress A La Mode

Woo! we has progress! I've finished all the scenes but one. after effects is buggy (as usual) and is easily the worst part of the process at this point, but whatever.

I used caffeine tonight, which has turned into quite an adventure. i dont drink soda or coffee or anything with caffeine in it, so just a third of a mountain dew has me totally bonked out of my brain. its pretty crazy. couple that with having House playing in the background on Hulu and its been a nicely paranoid evening, lol.

one more scene... one more scene... ONE MORE SCENE! there is a light at the end of the tunnel! once I'm done with this last scene I'll attempt to render it out and keep this copy, but so long as i am still in full possession of all my faculties I'm going to try and re-do the two closeup scenes that bug me so dang much. we'll have to see, though. i do think they absolutely ruin the film in terms of 'hey look, this is the quality of my work that I'd like to show potential future employers' but i'm not willing to jeopardize my personal health just for them. i slept for 5 hours during the day after I got home from class, at least until my roommate came home and was fussing about. oy. so I'm running pretty much entirely on slim jims, mountain dew, and adrenaline.

on the upside, though, i haven't worn my retainer this much since I first got it! pretty kickin!

After 14 hours I guess something had to go

Yeah, so this whole "14-15 hours at monty" thing was going really well until after effects decided to be a complete buttsink and give me all sorts of RAM errors. My files are fine, the computers at monty just suck serious nut. I mean c'mon. They know that students will be using programs like Zbrush or Mudbox on the cintiq machines... at least give us more than the requisite 2 gigs of ram. What are we paying for? mopped floors? seriously now. beef this crap up. I want to be able to render out a freakin' 2D file without errors, people.

I'm cranky but got so much done, I'm glad I stuck it out. After class I shall take a well-deserved nap. If I could, y'know, NOT have a failure for a computer I would post the closing credits but... obviously thats too much to ask from a SCAD computer.

oh, and I added a scene. lol. i love making myself miserable.

EDIT: really? am I really going to have to take this whole shebang to my friends house? Because apparently these pieces of crap they call computers can't even handle a single composition. My images are not huge. They're .swfs, for goodness sake. wow. talk about crap.
ironically, my dell laptop (which I would never recommend to anybody, FYI) can process and proxy a composition.

wow, HP. just wow. way to fail.