Thursday 13 March 2008

Wednesday 12 March 2008

Very Old Man

Web desgin out of the way now, was enjoyable and the presentations today were good. So, met Suzie and had a tutorial, showed her the storyboard I put together and there's a few inconsistencies which I need to iron out, for now it's o.k. assessment-wise. Also she pointed me in the direction of relevant work to research, 'Peter and The Wolf', 'Harpya' adn 'Ubu'. I aim to bulid the wings (at least) for the Angel puppet over the Easter break and if that's possible I can then move onto the rest. There's a fair amount of pre-production left to do before I can start with my final film. Never a moment without anything to do!

Monday 10 March 2008

End in sight

Currently getting together the evaluations for my web-design elective and my sound project. I tidied up the final mix this evening and am very happy with the results. Gathered all the materials needed or all he relevant portfolios and starting to plan for the looming presentations. Have to complete the story board for 'A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings' and before I can do that I need to finalise the character design. Also I have to edit the animation I filmed a couple of weeks ago. Still a fair bit to do but there's an end in sight.
Just stumbled upon a piece of information on the internet -apparently R.E.M.'s video for their biggest hit 'Losing My Religion' has a character in it that's an old man with enormous wings inspired by Marquez's story. Here's R.E.M.'s video

Friday 7 March 2008

Sound Design

Here's the near enough final sound for 'The Wooden Leg' Since getting this home and not listening to it through the mega-wattage of the sound room and little computer speakers instead - I have noticed a few things need to be brought up more in the mix which I'll sort out on Monday. Also there's a couple of timing issues with footsteps and a couple of other things to sort out. Anyway, here it is......


Getting there

Catalogue of success with all projects yesterday -
managed to find out the problem why 3 out of the 5 movies didn't work, due to them being corrupt files with no sound. I had to dig into my archives and import the videos again from my Dv camera. However I experience the same problem with a video that was previously working-it disappeared, but after re-locating it to another layer, it worked again. It doesn't make any sense, but will be content that they all work (2 videos have a little pixelation which pisses me of, but will go with those for the time being) So the site is FINISHED! But not online yet which is the next step.
A couple of evening ago, John gave me a guided tour around all that is Logic and after my initial computer crashing problems, last night I made more headway to the point of near completion. Tom advised me on a couple of things which was really handy to get another point of view. The computer was still crashing all over the place, but my frustration with it was kept at bay with the progress I made. We had part presentations of our work so far and everyone's stuff is great and very varied. Mine went down well, causing a few laughs which made me chuffed as I intended to try and add comedic elements to the clip via the soundtrack. Actually during the group tutorial I sussed out the website problems. Maybe a little rude to tap away on a different project whilst discussing another, but you've got to get it in when you can! Strike while the iron is hot and so on with the sayings and so forth.
Whilst waiting for the MA sound room to become available I was mucking about with my crab animation in After Effects and literally stumbled upon the colour key effect (maybe this is obvious to some, but not to me !) So, I managed to line up the animation with a seaside background. I experimented with obvious scenes where you can totally see it's animation and real film, but also not-so-obvious blends worked well. Here's one of the tests  below
Also been experimenting with making feathers solid (to make some enormous wings for the old man puppet) I tried varnishing a few, but they turn out sickly yellow and look crap (amazingly enough) so will  try other methods over the Easter holidays. Also a little further with the new improved story board, but that need quite alot of attention over the next few days, along with the character design. Last night I spent a few hours collecting the work I have done for this project research-wise for inclusion in the portfolio.

Wednesday 5 March 2008

Pulling my bloody hair out

A successful and very unsuccessful day in many ways. But more frustrating than anything. First up was a tutorial for my Web Design Elective - 3 of the movies on my videos page don't play for some unknown reason as I applied the EXACT same methods putting them on the site as I did the 2 that worked. Shaun didn't know why they won't work either. Great. Also I kind of got answers for my questions concerning putting the mp3s on but had to find Ella again and she successfully showed me how to make them play and how they can be downloaded too. She couldn't work out either why the movies don't play. I tried re-compressing the movies into Flash files and put their source folder right next to the Flash project file thus limiting the path; but this doesn't work either. It's driving me fucking bananas so I predict I will link the movie buttons (of the ones that don't work) to YouTube. not what I want at all and ruins the design of that page. But what else can I do as I've explored every possibility and I need to focus my time on the other projects. I definatly have spent far more time than planned with this project and I have literally touched on the VERY basics of Flash. The next question I have is now it's built, what do I do with the site? I have the domain name - which is the best server to utilise? 

I had a tutorial with Suzie concerning my Self-Negotiated Project and this was the definate highlight of the day for me. We stripped the story I am adapting right down to 3 main characters (I will build these 3 puppets) also crabs and chickens too. She had some brilliant suggestions and together I feel we achieved a working narrative still keeping the essence of the tale with many oppourtunities for many nice visuals. All I have to do is realise this! But for the deadline I'll storyboard the new improved version, edit the animation I have produced and show the character design. i started the storyboarding this afternoon whilst waiting to gain access to the heavily booked sound room.

My day took a turn for the worse when attempting to sort my Sound Design Project. I had previously emailed John to ask for technical help for this and he kindly showed me around the working of Logic. I now know how to eq a sound-quite handy considering the project requirements. Tom had shown us this, very well I may add -but returning to apply this knowledge days after being shown as a group, the information tends to get lost (with me anyway) The best way I find I take in information is if somebody is literally sat next to me guiding me. This is what John did and I really appreciate his input. So, after his induction it was down to me to get editing and processing. The computer started freezing all over the place and the image wasn't synching with the sounds at all. So, I thought, compress the video clip, that will help the computer a bit-which I did and in doing so managed to shut down Logic in the process and 'do not save project' was pressed therefore losing the hour of processing. Nice one, an hour lost. The computer then took an age rendering the compressed movie and when I applied it to the project I realised my time was up and college is shutting. Very frustrated with how shit and slow the computer is in that room, how booked up it is and the lack of time. Will be incredibly lucky if I can achieve what I want to with this project. Fingers crossed. From something that I originally was looking forward to and ready to embrace, this sound design project has really pissed me off, basically due many factors, mainly my lack of knowledge and the rubbish computer we're all working on. I'm not the only one sharing this point of view. Anyway, better go as I have to get to band practice. What a long day. I need a drink. A large one.

Monday 3 March 2008

Update


Sound Design
Had a very good tutorial with Barnaby Templar on Friday, he had a couple of good suggestions for the sound design of he clip I have chosen. He showed me a good method for use at the start of the clip, how I can turn the musical score into diagetic sound for the first scene. The work I showed him was very, very rough yet he saw what I am trying to do with it and was encouraging of my efforts. Quite stressed that I will have trouble realising what i want to do with this project due to my lack of technical knowledge of the software. 

Web Design
Over the weekend I added a news section an an MP3 page. Also spent many hours trying (once again) to add video to the page alloted for this. Still to no avail. I also Completed the links page, which took hours1 I designed it with a leather jacket covered in badges and the badges being the buttons for the links. Doing this I discovered that a photoshop .psd transparency file can be imported to the stage which was a tiny 'eureka' moment for me as I initially was under the impression that only .jpeg files could be imported. With this in mind I am tempted to re-do practically the whole of the site due to the fact that all of the other buttons on the site are .jpeg fils and not transparencies, therefore they are al blocky in shape and in places you can tell they are on top f the background. But, due to the looming deadline and the amount of work I have to do in other areas I will leave that job for now and attend to it at a later date. But it's still annoying for me knowing I can make it just a little bit better. So once again I have a tutorial with Shaun this week where i will be asking the same advice for the same problem I had 3 weeks ago! 

Self Negotiated
Won't say too much about this as I really have to get on with it. So what is left to do? Finish the storyboard (hopefully get the first draft completed today !??) From that the animatic and hopefully the 30 second bit to follow that. Seems like I have done alot of work or this and not much to show for it. I have to edit together the small test animations for this and compile a coherent folder for this project. So still tons to do and I really go and do it now. Still not 100% sure which way to go with the final film of this puppet of drawn or 3d? Probably one of the first two as my knowledge of the third is negligible. That is zero to none really (but wouldn't mind finding out) Also do I still want to produce an animated adaptation of 'A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings' or undertake a completely different project?