BMA 115, comic colouring and inking, 31 October

100% colour and ink coverage!!  Yay!!!  Shading and shadows, texturing, words bubbles, WORDS... lots more to do.  Oh, yeah.  And putting everything into the new format, too.

BDM124, stop motion, editing, 30 October

Ken and I finished shooting our final shots Monday so we could all dive into editing from Thursday.  Thursday and Friday, Anna, Ken and I sorted through the shot folders and picked out fingers, mistakes, wires...   really, here's what I did for twelve hours over the course of two days.  I messaged everybody to remind them when and where we were meeting.  And kept messaging Ken and Ryan to find out where they were, two hours after "I'm on my way" and "I had a late night last night" or no message at all came back.  Anna was great and showed up each day around ten to work on stuff.  When Ryan and Ken came in after 3 or 4, I handed out assignments and then checked that they got completed.  I organized our folder and put away all of the files according to pre, production, and post.  I renamed all of the shots by scene and panel as per our animatic.  I found the right animatic and put it into After Effects after I tweaked the sound files.  I imported each scene, sometimes several times, into the timeline and ordered everything.  That took lots of time, I must say.  Vaughn showed me how to time stretch scenes, which was very exciting as it means we, I mean probably I, won't have to re-edit the sound to fit shorter scenes.  We've got a rough cut of all shots except for the glowing eyeballs in after effects and I've handed the project off to Ken and Ryan.  And they're toddling off with it.  Ken is doing the glowing eyeball shots and Ryan is working on the credit sequence.

Great!  I've got a comic to finish.  I'll come back to stop-motion when that's done.

  

Film reviews, 8 October

http://madizzlee.deviantart.com/journal/The-Last-Witch-Hunter-557481957

Last Witch Hunter trailer, Anna black told me about these animations in support of the film.

The Martian
I went to the movies!  And it all looked real, so I'm not sure how to comment on the CGI or the environment creation when it all looks so seamless.

Film Reviews, 25 September

Bo-Jack Horseman

good title sequence.  pretty watercolour effects on Bojack. And everything looks delightfully low-key and easy.

BMA115, comic development, 26 October

I've put in about 10 hours of work on the comic this long weekend.  I've got 3 pages to ink, but I've been dragging my feet and colouring the other 8 pages instead.  That decision is sure to catch up with me.  It was the same story during the penciling process:  lots of time/energy spent on the beginning of the comic, then everything petered out at the end.  As a result, my drawings weren't tight at the end which means I now have to catch up in the inking stage.  It will all come right, I'm sure.  One week until hand in.

And still no covers!!!!

BDM124, stop motion, final shooting day, 26 October

Ken and I THINK we're done shooting... if we just plop the animatic fight sequence in instead of taking pictures of each frame.  We're going to ask Vaughn if he's amenable to this.  It will free up more time to edit the stop motion sequences.  One week to go!  Ryan's mobile made it into the shots, but Ryan did not make it to film today and Anna was at Armageddon.  There's still a week of editing to go... Ken did most of critter movement and I set up the shots, did the timing and directed placement and movement.  At the end of the shooting day (10-4pm), I did some monster/light movement and monkey movement.

BDM127, 2D animating, 23-24 October

28 shots to go.  Which is a lot, but definitely on the finishing end of things.  Thank God for the long weekend.

Breaking it down, I've got 7 sequences and 3 solo scenes to animate before I've got 100% coverage.  Then I can go back and add/fix/refine.

BDM124, stop motion, shooting, 15 October

"Ken, don't move the bear.  Ken... the bear... don't move it.  Ken, the bear is moving!  KEN!"  Ken is sleeping standing up, moving the bear down, down, down.  Then Ken collapses on the floor.  Then Ken is sent to sleep in a corner for two hours.

Frames from the three shots we filmed today.

BDM124, stop-motion, shooting, 19 October

four shots that we got through Monday.  Everyday the shots looks different!  How are we going to get that all smoothed out?

BDM124, stop-motion, shooting, 22 October

We've gotten a lot shot this week.  I got out the camera and laptop etc Monday from 1-5  and we shot 4 scenes during class.  Today, Anna and I came in at 9 and shot 5 scenes between 9 and 11.  Ken joined us at 12 and we got another 3 scenes in the can.  A few shots will probably be cut which leaves us the eyeball sequences to figure out (I think we may solve this by "erasing" a little from each frame to reveal the glowing eyeball frame underneath), Ken's paper fight sequence (we found two photo "holders" in the basement that will help us hold our frames in place while we shoot them), and our most difficult shots.  We'll need all four of us on Monday to do them but Anna is off to Armageddon tomorrow and won't be back until Thursday.  Soooooo.... we'll do what we can with three people and if Ryan doesn't come in, Ken and I will shoot the paper scenes and leave the hard stuff until we're all together on Thursday.  Actually, that won't work because that will only give us the weekend to edit everything together and to add extra effects in After Effects.  Better to just push on and make it happen.  I've arranged to have an all day, ALL DAY, work session with Ken.

Here are frames from the scenes we shot today. 8 scenes!!  Huzzah!  They're all pretty dark... I'm not going to worry, I'm not going to worry.  It's going to be okay.  

BMA243, SIT 'n' spit, "Tiki", 21 October

Even after a few filters, the hand still looks like a borrowed photo.  I need to paint over it some more to bring it in line with the simple painting of the rest of the piece.

BDM127, 2D, stringing it together in After Effects, 20 October

Trying this last week was really intimidating, and sloooooowww, so I didn't touch it again until today.  And then it was actually very easy and fasssst!  Huzzah.   It took two hours instead of one, but it's still moving along, and that's great.  Each scene gets exported as a GL frame and saved in the frames folder of each scene.  I had to be careful that I had chosen the correct iteration of each scene and had to go back a few times because I stuffed up the naming conventions or saved it in the wrong folder or saved it with a scene element highlighted... you just have to constantly check things, over and over.  After layering the scenes over the original animatic in After Effects, I exported it to Adobe media Encoder, in Vimeo HD H264 and now we'll get to watch it in class.  Our due date has been pushed back to Monday at 5, 9 November!  Yay!!!

The bottom picture shows all of the scenes I've animated in light blue.  I might be halfway through!  That's pretty exciting.  These scenes are by no means done, though.  Plenty of them need facial expressions to be added and I encountered problems this weekend adding a corrections layer and painting on it in the big box scenes.

Right click on each light blue bar to bring up options,including time-time stretch, to change things.  Time can be stretched percentage or second-wise.  Scenes can be held or lengthened by importing the last frame of the scene and layering it over the scene that's being extended. T brings up opacity if you highight the scene name at the far left and a cross fade between the lengthened scene and the next can be achieved.

What's due and when, 20 October

BMA243 digital illustration blog                                   21 October
BDM106 essay                                                               27 October
BMA115 drawing portfolio due                                     28 October
BMA243 digital illustration portfolio/cards/jigsaw       28 October
BDM124 stop-motion short and blog                             2 November
BDM103 Event write up                                                5 November
BDM127 2D short and blog                                           6 November
BDM115 comic and cover                                             6 November




To do: compile best drawings for portfolio.  Finish tweaking 243 SIT 'n' spit.  Shore up 124 and 127 blogs.  Publish film review entries.  Finish stop motion and 2D animation shorts.

BDM127, 2D, shot work, 17 October

38 shots to go as of 1pm Saturday
35 done!

I'm playing with the painting that covers up GG.  It looked ok being rolled on, the spray looks lively, but the covering up with looking pretty flat.  And maybe that's just fine.

BMA124, stop-motion filming, 12 and 15 October

Monday in class, we experimented with lighting effects and gels.  We like the effect that we get by wrapping the lamps in blue plastic (bottom picture).  We'd prefer not to have to tint each frame in After Effects if the effect can be achieved in camera.  The top shot is not at the angle we want, and the bottom one is, for the emergence of the monster.  We played around with NKRemote on the SIT laptop which allows us to watch what we're doing in real time. Our monster puppet will be on top of the bar holding our wall together.  When it appears, it will be centered over the bar.  

Our Professional Practices class has been moved from Thursday morning, which means more time to work on Stop Motion during the week.  Anna and I filmed three shots: close up of Bear readying himself psychologically for battle, Monkey nervously offering to help, and the push in on the kid in bed flanked by her stuff animals.  You know, crap.  We're giving it a go.                    

I operated Bear while Anna ran the laptop.  

I operated Monkey while Anna ran the laptop.

This time, we switched roles with Anna "breathing" the kid.

Bears sword broke and these were the easiest shots to do without it.  We'll go back at it Monday.

BMA243, Digital Illustration, Portfolio Tweak, 14 October

Quick adjustments:
sign everything.  Be careful not to sign over arm of dying weasel lady in 1080.  Sign in left hand corner where appropriate for balance.

SIT 'n' Spit adjustments:
tough love: fix values so cake cut out recedes into cake.  currently going forward.
Hammerhands:  crisp up the balls so they're in focus.  currently confusing because they're blurred.
consider cropping pictures to tidy them up.

Assignment adjustments:
Robot lady:  splash some light/glow around the body especially when it may be coming from the shoulder button.

Nursery Rhyme:  adjust "leading" on top two lines:  currently squashed.

Angel:  ground the feet with black so she's firmly planted.

5 Eyes:  white blob under signature: remove for readability

BMA243 Digital Illustration, jigsaw and cards ideas, 14 October

 Jigsaw idea:  playing with a trompe l'oeil (fool the eye) effect,  hands with put together a jigsaw puzzle of hands putting together  a jigsaw puzzle of hands putting together a jigsaw puzzle.  Except, I think I heard that we just have to take an image that we've already made and put it into the correct file size.   Is that right?

Playing cards idea:  Migrant Live and Dead card suit. We play games with migrants lives all the time, why not a card game?  Why pretend that the truth is "more complicated" than that?  Live will hold something a migrant wants, like a loaf of bread, and Dead will hold what they get, a bomb from "supporting nations" missile strikes that are meant to prop up the failing regime that is persecuting them.  Or an umbrella v. a gun firing rounds into the sky.  Or fresh food and rotting/no food.  I would like the Live head to be based on a world leader who is involved in the crisis.  The front side of the card will be maps of Europe, Africa and the Middle East covered in migrant routes.

BMA243, Digital Illustration, SIT 'n' Spit, "Golden Lake Illusion" and "Tooth Fairy Planking", 14 October

Three pieces from previous weeks and today's project.  One hour each.

"Goggles"  I was trying to render fur and a flushed face with ice crystals in the eyelashes and on the face.  The face would clearly have to be darker in order for the ice to show up.  

"Hammerhands"  My focus was on rendering round, fragile objects.  The balls need a stronger highlight in order to look like glass.  Hammerhands could look sweatier, too, to convey his nervousness.

"Golden Lake Illusion"  I loaded brick and pavement art I made for 2D animation and focused on painting the jeans and darkening the wall with liquid.   I'm very pleased with the jeans from the knee up and that the urine soaked hem reads.  The overly large white highlight at the knee and ankle lets things down, unfortunately.  

"Toothfairy Planking"  I lost track of time, otherwise I would have run some filters over the fairy and the mouth, respectively.  She looks sufficiently spearmint toothpasty, but the tooth she's yanked needs to be twice as big.

BDM103, budget info, 13 October

Check out Y drive for Budget info

personnel/staff
venue staff, projectionist/ushers sound
designers
 organisers
poster distributors
volunteers
website?

Venue costs
hire, projection equipment, sound equipment, seating/tables
decorations
food or refreshments?

Advertising/marketing

Legal costs
lawyer fees, registrations, licences (APRA,etc)

Guest speaker
airfares, acco, food, transport costs, fee

Revenue
any profit to be made? sales at event?

BMA115, Comic development, 9-11 October

 We had an all day session in 236 with David to focus on our comics.  We discovered that we're going to be printing at a smaller size and will all have an individual comic.  The smaller template will require stretching the panels or having larger top and bottom margins.  I need to think about a wrap-around cover, and possibly a logo or design that runs along the bottom margin.  I've been working this weekend on getting the inking finished and I have three more pages to go.  I got rid of the watercolour layer I'd put in weeks ago because it was holding me back.  I've focused this weekend on putting big blocks of colour in.  I'll go in again to add highlights and lowlights to the colours after I decide how much shadowing goes in each panel.