I'm Free to be the Greatest

Super sorry for that last post that should have been posted in May, but for whatever reason was not.

Anyway, a quick update.

Kramer is actually doing well.

The animation has been selected to show in 14 festivals, was a semi-finalist once, nominee once, finalist twice, and even won once during a festival in India!!

So, yeah, Kramer is doing well. I'm hoping he gets into one or two more at least, but I'm very proud of him already.

Life update?

I'm currently in Orlando working at Disney World in attractions. Nothing to do with what I studied, but I really felt like I needed a time to take a breath after going straight from undergrad to grad-school.

I'm in the running for a few Disney Professional Internships right now. After attending the CTN Animation Expo in CA again last week am also applying to many other companies to actually start this annoying adult life.

Right now I'm sure that the main thing holding me back is myself. I've never been all that confident, especially in my work. But I'm working on it.


Well....that's about it. If Kramer gets into a few more I might give another post. Other than that, thanks for reading!



I'm Free to be the Greatest
-"The Greatest" by Sai

It’s Been Fun But Now I’ve Got to Go

((This post was written back in May, but is only just now getting published...sorry.))

So today was the last meeting of thesis class. 

My Thesis Packet is turned in.

The committee has met and APPROVED my animation!

I just have to wait for my department head to sign my paper and I’ll be DONE!

(Okay, I have 2 more finals to turn in but they are finished already.)

Now I just have to move out of my apartment and prep for graduation which is in 9 DAYS!

Future plans?

Well, even though I applied to a bunch of places I didn’t get any call backs so I’m going off to Orlando to do the Disney College Program and work in the parks as an attractions operator. Sure it isn’t exactly what I wanted out of college for my MFA, but I get to work at Disney and I’ll still be applying to other jobs and doing some personal projects.

…..maybe I’ll make a blog about it? ((Didn't happen))

I might update if the animation gets into some festivals. Who knows.

Now, if you where playing along, you might have gotten that the blog post titles where lines from different songs. Below is the answer key—

What’s the Tale Nightingale?

-“What’s the Story Morning Glory” in Bye Bye Birdie

Livin’ On a Prayer

-“Livin' On a Prayer" by Bon Jovi

It’s Been a Hard Day’s Night

-“A Hard Day's Night" by The Beatles

Climbing the Mountain, Never Coming Down

-“Wind" by Akeboshi

Let’s Start at the Very Beginning

-“Do Re Mi” in Sound of Music

Wait For It

-“Wait for it” in Hamilton

If There’s a Prize for Rotten Judgment

-“Won’t Say I’m in Love” in Hercules 

Nobody Learns Without Getting it Wrong

-“Try Everything” in Zootopia by Shikera

And All Belongings

((Honestly can't remember where this is from right now...))

Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad

-"Two Out of Three ain't Bad" by Meat Loaf

Let’s Get Down to Business

-“I’ll Make a Man Out of You” in Mulan

I Had the Week That Came From Hell

-"Something I Need" by One Republic

And Breathe……Just Breathe

-“Breathe [2am]” by Anna Nalick

Getcha’ Head in the Game

-“Getcha’ Head in the Game” in High School Musical

Tired Feeling Never Enough

-“History Maker” in Yuri on Ice!!! by Dean Fujioka

Running Out of Breath

-“The Greatest” by Sai

After Today I’ll be Cruz-’in

-“After Today” in Goofy Movie

It’s Been Fun But Now I’ve Got to Go

-“When Can I See You Again?” by Owl City in Wreck it Ralph

After Today I'm Gonna be Cruz-in

Oh my gosh people.

I.

Am.

Done.

FIANLLY!!!

….

Okay, lets break it down.

So last week was the submission date for the final project. I was very much working up until the last moment since I was redoing several backgrounds and still had the hardest bit of animation to do.

Thankfully I was rendering the scenes as I worked on other stuff and the renders weren’t taking as long as I thought.

Funny bit: Most of the things that had to get fixed where with the legs or pants layers. So I’m looking to the pants layer, talking out loud to keep the stress down, just chanting “pants. Pants. Pants. Pants.” Not trying to sound like I was stopping myself from cursing, but defiantly sounding like that was what I was doing.

Hint: Be careful with your music selections. By Monday morning I had exhausted all my music ten-fold and turned to the Kingdom Hearts II soundtrack that I love. Of course this is mostly battle music and combined with the stress of trying to finish and no sleep my adrenaline was pumping like crazy.

Of course there had to be a hiccup.

We had to submit a compressed file, un-compressed file, 5 high-res stills, info page, and resume all on a flash drive.

The drive I bought for it was 32GB. The files all together where 34GB.

Well Pants.

I ending up allowed to submit it on my hard-drive to later copy over onto a 64GB drive.

Good.

Of course once I was done I dropped.

Because I want to submit this to festivals I won't be posting the video, but you can look at some stills.

So done.

Kind of.

Thesis committee still needs to meet and review my animation. And guess what? That means that there is still a chance that I won’t be passed and therefore not graduate.

Fun.

…

Now this last week wasn’t exactly a walk in the park.

The paper is still needed so I’ve been woking on that.

There is also the screenings coming up. Two to be exact. One is off campus and only for a select few that the teachers vote on. Second is the one on campus which is all animations turned in for BFA and MFA.

I found out on Friday that I wasn’t in the selected screening, and kind of broke down.

Literally went to find my thesis advisor, convinced that not being selected meant I was going to fail committee and not graduate. 

Okay….I did more than “kind of” — I completely lost it.

Completely.

And totally.

Lost it.

I was crying, hardly able to talk, and still unconvinced no matter what I was told.

Eventually I calmed down enough to go back to working on my paper. I felt numb all over though and decided to go home to Jersey for the weekend just to reset myself.

I really needed it. To be home, with my own bed, my dog, my parents - just to chill. It also helped that Saturday was very sunny so I’m sure some natural vitamin D also helped.

Now, back at school, I’ve gotten back to work getting the animation ready for festivals.

I’ll be doing one more update next week to let you all know what committee says.

Here’s hoping for a pass.

Running Out of Breath

One more week.

7 more days.

[insert swear work of your choice here]

Yeah, this post is significantly shorter than the past few weeks. With Easter over the weekend I wasn’t in the labs as much as I would normally.

Things are still coming along though. This week the main focus was finishing the animation of the stuff I’ve only blocked in so far. For the most part it was successful:

Jumping into the car? Check.

Create a pole for the trainer to hit her head on? Yup..

Get the reflections into the floor during the growing shot? Got cha’.

Have the boy move when in the pool? Done.

Add people to the leaf scene? There you go.

I even fixed the meeting scene that everyone was having issues understanding.

Of course I got most of that scenes animation done and decided the interior space doesn’t work. So now I have to re-design all those interiors…. yet another thing to do on the list of things to finish.

With that, here is the animatic. For anyone new to my posts, the video posted next week will only be viewable by my advisor until a year has past so it can be submitted to festivals.

When we turn in the animation next week we also have to submit 5 still frames from the short at a high resolution. These are the 5 I think I’m going to go with (though 1 isn’t finished…)

Maybe?

Maybe?

Absolutly

If it looks like it does in my head when done

Absolutely

It really is crunch time now. Everything need to be finished Friday night to get things rendered out.

Its all or nothing now.

Tired Feeling Never Enough

The finish line is approaching and the view is a bit terrifying.

I didn’t exactly get done everything that I wanted…….

My goal, wish, deadline, was that everything would be animated by today so there would only have to be clean-up and color correction/lighting.

……yeah, no.

Instead I was completely un-inspired to work on the scenes needed for the longest time, but I still got a lot of sh--stuff done for this week. Mostly I went to some of the ‘done’ scenes and did some lighting or background corrections.

That is NOT to say things didn’t get done that had to be.

The leaf scene (which my advisor said to keep) got backgrounds and most of the proper dog motion. (People still need to be added.)

I got more of the pool scene put together.

And I did my best to have no board drawings showing for this week.

Okay, that didn’t quite happen. 

There is still drawings for Shop Rite and the end of the Obstacles scene…….

The Puppy Raiser exterior isn’t yet made…….

Then animation wise:

-The obstacles scene still needs the pole that she hits her head on. And a small scene at the end of her glaring at Kramer is needed.

-The Raiser Training Meeting needs work. Period.

-The scene where he leaves his boy is comically blocked in but obviously needs love.

-Background character animation is needed in several places.

…Alright, I’ll admit that when it’s listed like that it isn’t the most encouraging…..

But a lot of stuff also got made for this week, see!

Now there was a little hiccup in the past week with music:

It’s late Sunday night and I still hadn’t received the 2nd draft of the music which I should have gotten on Saturday so I shoot the composer an email.

She responds that the 2nd draft isn’t due till the 15th but she can send me what she has on the revision and will send something more clean in the morning.

I get the new rough soon after but felt compelled to tell her that 2nd was due the 8th and the final draft is the 15th.

There was a bit more words, but what it boiled down to was that she basically got the dates between my deadlines with her and the ones she has with a class mate. I guess that’s what happens when a few of you use the same person……

It worked out fine since I got the music. Like I said, a hiccup.

Oh, as a treat I’ll leave you this.

Sometimes, when I remember, I screen record as I work so I have material for a making-of video. For now I spend this up and threw on a temp song. (Music is absolutely NOT mine - from the anime show Haikyuu!!)

So there you have it people. Only 2 weeks left and we’re hitting the gas full throttle here on out!

Getcha' Head in the Game

Things have happened.

First off, I got a draft version of the audio. Unfortunately you won’t be able to hear it in the latest animatic because I was given it as a .mov over top the previous animatic with the voice over, and I don’t want to confuse you - I’m confused enough.

Scenes are actually getting done and for the first time in a long while I’m starting to get excited about the animation.

The graduation scene is basically fully animated. The only bits of animation that are still needed is the life animation of those on stage (still need to make all those people) and the transition from the Wish Flowers to the beginning of the graduation scene in general.

So one of the things I started doing is lighting.

Yeah, I didn’t plan on doing it until the second-to-last week, but I needed to get some done for the hallway scene to know if the dimensional After Effects lights would work or if I would have to get fancy with some blending layers.

Thankfully the lights work well……kind of. The bright light from outside wouldn’t work as a dimensional light (it kept showing up inside the hall even when the door was shut.) So I ended up having to do some 2D ‘lights’ anyway.

The dilemma came when things where starting to look done and I realized I was getting banding again.

This is an issue I’ve had multiple times in the past, occasionally with just using gradients, but most always when 3D lights have been added in. Teachers have noticed it but never offered suggestions on how to get rid of it.

So I asked google.

For this fairly common issue only 3 options exist to help - and several commented that it still didn’t fix the issue completely. Me I went with number 3 since #1 would change the style of my animation and #2 only applies to gradients and not lights.

Basically its all about the bit-depth.

Turns out the default is 8-bit files, and to get rid of banding you need to be at least 16 if not 32. I’ve tried out all and here is my comparison.

8-bit

16-bit

32-bit

Okay, not sure how well you can see it - but I promise there is a difference. If your picture is clear then you’ll see that the first one has noticeable banding on the wall both left and right of the characters. (This is 8-bit) The second one, 16-bit, no longer has the banding behind the figures, and the other side is much better but still there a bit. However, when looking at the 32-bit image there isn’t too much of a change to really warrant the extra depth and render time.

So for now I’ll go with 16-bit unless some scenes still show lots of banding still. Trick will be remembering to change the setting on all the other scene files before rendering…… And I’m only going to change it before the final renders because I did it for this little scene and it took 20 minutes for just over 6 seconds.

Yeah, I should test the look all together, but I’ll work with only looking at test stills because I’m not going to sit there for 40 minutes to render something that I’m going to change.

The last thing that had to get animated, that hadn’t really been touched at all, was the obstacle course. Simple right? Just one scene.

Only I sat down to work on it and nothing.

Zip.

…..okay, not quite.

I got done the basics for the 3/4 person walk and the profile person walk — 2 things that are actually needed in other scenes as well.

I finished those, went to start laying out the different shots, and just started getting so frustrated by the different elements. Where the things I tried in the Hallway scene ended up working, nothing was really lining up here.

And I can NOT cut this scene. Its very important in his story and why he fails.

So I decided to just take a step back from it. I’ll finish it next week but I really just need to figure out the logistics of the elements for the scene. Instead I went back to the first shot and tried fixing the background compositions. just by adding some trees it looks sooooo much better. I ran out of time to get more in there but its coming along.

……I don’t have a still of this so you’ll have to just look at the animatic…….

Right. About the animatic….

I got the first draft of the music over the weekend so you can here that in there too. There are some transition issues and gaps, but for a first pass of music that is workable. Thoughts?

So lots got done, and there is still lots to do.

Three weeks. I can do this.