Gotta Get it Done, but also what if I do something else

YEAR 1, WEEK 3 - Lost Words - 02.01.2020

APPROACH:

SO! I've actually been having a bit of trouble getting timing down so the animation I'm making doesn't come out looking weird or freaky, and for the longest time i saw it going to fast until I realized my animation software starts off rendering at 30 frames per second, that's not where I thought it was so that was a fun trouble shooting issue. NOW I have 10 more seconds of animation to work on as well as some basic editing and then compiling everything down onto its final video.

CHOICES:

I actually had a pretty rough week health wise and it messed with my ability to work on anything, and because I'm not a fan of using that as an excuse I'm not going to. I can and will get my work done, but it being so close to the deadline does make me a bit itchy but I will manage. I'm now cycling between working on my project proposal and animating

at the same time, when my eyes got tired looking at the same bird I went to right and when I got annoyed writing I went back to drawing ore heron poses.

REFERENCES:

I've just been gathering references for my proposal this week. my animation has as many references as it was going to have and now I'm on my ideas for making horror for people who like looking for horror. and then I stumbled on this horror researcher, and I was supersized his Ted talk sounded like exactly like he understood what I sought out in horror. along with that I began to look up references on horror Vs terror and found out that there's no clear definition it moves from author to author and it all depends on who's writing you like. In all honesty I didn't much agree with a lot of the authors. Stephen king said if he couldn't terrify you he'd horrify you and if he couldn't do that he'd gross you out, stating he had no shame, and I took issue with this. There are huge swashes of his works that are gross and now I understood he didn't care about his reader, just that he got them to feel bad. it doesn't bode well for what I want to use horror for, but I'll trudge on. perhaps looking into Jordan Peele.

CURRENT QUESTIONS AND THE WEEK AHEAD:

I really only have one question and I know it's not very well articulated, but this is it. Am I in over my head, have I decided to do too much or even is what I'm doing worth any energy. I might take a while to reassess the validity of what I'm doing and why, but I do plan on working on it. in the end I need to make, and if this is a failure then I can make something else.

"Lost Words" Heron Update 2

YEAR 1, WEEK 2 - Lost Words - 01.26.2020

APPROACH:

I actually spent the break trying to fix my background animation to make it feel more cohesive and calm. I didn't take into account that the tone I was aiming for required more subtle motion in part of the work around the subject, that being said I'm still not done and now I find that I want to replace the final script with new words. My major decision moving ahead is that I have to decide at some point to leave the background alone so I can get to work on my last bit of work animating.

CHOICES:

I actually attempted to use Photoshop and tv paint in attempts to expedite my ability to make content for this animation but with the timeframe we have, I quickly found that its interface will take some time to feel competent in, at least enough that the work there will make up for the lost time rendering. however, I found out that while on campus I can do all the editing needed for it, and luckily the amount of studio time I have on campus is JUST enough to get the editing I need done.

REFERENCES:

This animation shown in class was actually a really good reference for the motion of a bird's wings. I've been calling back to it over and over to look at what I can take for the motion of my heron. Aside from that, I haven't really been calling back to anything else. I feel I should be but I'm more focusing on getting stuff done.

CURRENT QUESTIONS AND THE WEEK AHEAD:

being that I'm finally seeing the vector of my process I am looking into the future projects, the animation feels like more a mechanical process than I'm used too, but it might be because I've less inclined to animate. that being said is that my future project might have aspects of animation applied to it this process really helps et my feet wet, so here's hoping I get used to it more and more.

"Lost Words" Heron Update

YEAR 1, WEEK 2 - Lost Words - 01.18.2020

APPROACH:

My main goal for the week was to have the rough animatic finished as well as the finalized background animated and ready for processing. the original assets were a bit too rough for the feeling I wanted and the final one is much more in line with what I needed it for. now all I need to do is segment in the audio in between now and Tuesday. I'm actually not sure if my voice is meant for the visuals I created but that gives I might play around with it a bit more after the whole thing is processed.

CHOICES:

I can see things more in terms of time as to what is needed to get the motion across, in a comic I could do the exact same amount of storytelling with a least 3 panels, but this animation may require at base 16 keyframes.

It's not that hard to think about animating on separate layers like you're supposed to do in animation as this is how I already think, but in terms of knowing what parts of the animation needs to be in motion and what takes away from the piece, I'm still lost on and might need to analyze this a bit more.

I've decided that the background is as good as it gets if I want to have a finished product, yes there's more things I wanted to add but I want to spend my next week just animating the Heron.

RELEVANT SOURCES:

I've been now just looking at videos of herons fishing, their movements are very quick and fluid and in studying that I feel that having an after image of their feathers left behind would add the feeling of fluidity in animation.

Because of that, I realized I could call on aspects of "The Dance" animation, its line follow arcs and trail behind the motion of the characters.

CURRENT QUESTIONS AND THE WEEK AHEAD: I'm kind of antsy about getting to work on campus. Currently, I make assets at home and edit at the campus. On one hand, it's working RIGHT NOW, but there's always a chance that my current method of doing work will catch up to me. If worse comes to worse, either I should learn to just use the programs available at the school or maybe purchase more hardware for myself.