Wait For It

Well that was a fun week.

Totally not.

So, admittedly I didn't do a whole lot of work for thesis this past week. 

Reason?

I have an opportunity given to be back in November, and submission is in February - so I've been doing work for that all month. Since its 3D modeling I can't exactly translate it into Thesis all too easily.

What is this opportunity you say? What can be so important that it goes over Thesis during my mast semester for MFA?

Well......

I'm not telling you.

It's a huge opportunity, yeah. And I'm entering through a back door of sorts. But I've already told too many people and I am very conscious of the -somewhat large- possibility that I still won't get it since, lets face it, I haven't gotten anything so far.

So until I know for sure I'm not telling the internet. 

Now back to actual Thesis.

Because of all this other work I've been doing I didn't sit down to work on Thesis till Sunday after last Monday. I had a mid-afternoon snack, an 8-minute video ready (to watch while files copied onto the desktop) and plugged in the external hard drive that is only for Thesis.

But...

What's this?......

Perfect......

There's no light on the external. It's not even powering up to try and register.

I used a different cord.

Changed USB ports.

Went to the neighboring computer.

Zip.

Nada.

Nothing.

............

Fudge.

Now I know what some of you are saying: 

"Oh no! What are yo going to do?! This is horrible! You just lost a semester worth of work!! You'll never finish in time now!"

The rest are probably more more like:

"Are you an IDIOT?!! Why didn't you back up onto nothing else as well?! Why not Dropbox, or BackBlaze, or even Google-effing-DRIVE??!!!"

Just calm down all of you.

Seriously. Breath.

I'm not a complete idiot. I stated Dropbox last semester and happen to have about 95% of all my work up till December 9th.

Yeah, that means everything since then (the new edit of the video, the lasted breakdowns, semester schedule, and 2 new assets files) where gone.

Well, after posting my plight onto my classes' group Facebook page, one of my friends found me in the labs to take a stab at it.

And apparently my drive just hates me now (for whatever reason) since it worked perfectly for her.

Therefore,

CRISIS COMPLETELY AVERTED!

So, yeah, here's me admitting that I only worked a day/day-and-a-half on thesis this week - even though my teacher can find this.

But here is some of the work got done regardless.

First off, lets talk color.

One note last semester was that everything lest semester was pastel-ly and too monotone with pallet. Since the story takes place over a year, and colors change over the months, I've found new pallets to use at the appropriate scenes.

Okay, now here are some backgrounds:

Right, now not comments on "Oh that's kind of plain." or "Wow, you still have a lot to do."

First off, I know okay. I have a plan.

Second, I'm just getting the locations angled right and blocked in. The little details, proper colors, and lighting will come after the animation is done. That's why I have a month and a half of just post and clean-up.

If you must know, this is what the final style is going to be like:

Right. That was a long post so be happy people.

Till next week!

Let's Start at the Very Beginning

Lets just forget everything from before.

Forget the previous posts.

Forget the missed posts. The dozens of missed posts.

Forget the thesis project.

Just forget it all.

-----

Over the summer break I thought long and hard about thesis. After my review I was very much convinced that the story that I wanted was not capable of being told within 4 minutes.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the story and want to do it eventually - but with a 4 minute constraint it just can’t happen the way I want it.

So, 2 weeks before the fall semester began, I officially changed my thesis.

This new thesis is about my brother’s dog Kramer whom we had originally raised for the Seeing Eye to be a guide dog. However, he just wants to have fun and explore everything so ended up failing.

The story is being told from his perspective so the viewer has to learn over time what Kramer is going through.

Already a whole semester has past as well as a thesis presentation.

Some things are done line character designs, backgrounds, and about over 20 seconds of animation.

That being said, there is a lot that has to change.

The color pallet is too pastel.

The story’s passing is a bit odd.

There needs to be more tension/foreboding towards the end.

Over the thesis meeting was good - much clearer than with the last story.

Doesn’t mean everything is all hunky-dory though.

There is a lot of animation to get done, though I’m happy to say I am comfortable the the amount of assets I have presently and feel it should be possible to reach my self-imposed March deadline.

Want to see some designs? Huh? Do yeah?

Main dog as he grows up

Main boy character

Other dog designs

Right…now trust me when I say there is other stuff. Lots of other stuff. Its just, well, everything is saved as .tiff and Blogger doesn’t like that too much. Or the exports are in a presentation. Plus anything animated it kind of, well, in pieces. A bit here, a bit there, very few shots are 'fully' animated at the moment.

Yeah, okay, that shouldn’t be an excuse, but I’m seriously going to try really hard to be regular with these posts, so you will see more as goes on.

Promise.

…I hope.