SUCCESS ? ?

I RENDERED ALL THE CLIPS HYAAAAHHH

Although I did cut a couple corners and shorten a few of them, but the important stuff is still there.
And Premiere keeps crashing on my laptop. I can put them together more easily in the lab.

class is in twenty minutes isn't it. oh good. let's do this.

rendering. may take a little longer than anticipated.

I'm on clip 8 out of 19. it's been rendering for nearly three hours. it has 85 frames rendered out of 205. These are frames 1246 - 1450. For the entire project,  the frames go up to 3350.

I might be able to get three to five more clips in today at this rate. But otherwise it's going smoothly! Maybe I can shorten a couple clips for the sake of time.

I can't render in class tomorrow. That'd be useless, especially when I could be doing finals work for other classes in the meantime. If I'm rendering constantly throughout the night (I stayed up til seven in the morning to oversee rendering since it doesn't continue once the laptop goes to sleep, but I fell asleep til eleven so I could manage not sleeping tonight), would coming to class be necessary if that is the only thing left I need to do, and I can't accomplish it in class? I would bring my laptop in, but then I'd just be sitting around twiddling my thumbs whereas I could be drawing or collaging for other classes.

I can already taste tomorrow's cappuccino smoothie with two shots of espresso. And I do happen to have an apple. God can't help me now, but food and caffeine just might.

insert loud groaning do you sEE THE NUMBERS NEXT TO THAT LITTLE BLUE BAR IN THE BOTTOM LEFT CORNER. YELLS I'M NOT EVEN HALFWAY DONE WITH THIS CLIP AND IT'S BEEN LITERALLY THREE HOURS

Planning Doc. i apologize in advance to my hard-working slave of a laptop and i am so grateful it isn't prone to crashing.

i'm still at my parent's house right now i still need to drive back to college oh boy.

Updatatatatate: 4/30/14

I'm actually making progress whoa? ?? ?? ?
As in all the camera-timing frames should be complete!
The only thing left to do is to occasionally animate the fluttering of wings and render. Oh lord the rendering.

This clip starts with her being tiny...

...then zoooms up the mountain to make her seem smaller and it bigger.

the "Looking Up" texture as she looks up the mountain like "wow i this is daunting, but if i don't climb it, i won't achieve my goal. welp."

makin my way downtown

this is really cute and i actually kind of like how it's coming out, despite the rough bumpiness of it all.

i caN DO THISSSS YESSSS

Oh golly gosh Update!!

I stayed up too late finishing the Fae, and I may or may not have based her design off my friend Liz.

really simple design, especially with the little dress. She's not a forest fairy, which is why she doesn't want to be in the forest probably.

she looks like paper omg

the lighting should have some interesting effects

i just need to transfer the textures to the file in the lab.
i really hope i wake up in time i apologize in advance if i do not but rest assured it was because i was working!

Final Progress: 4/28/14

i think i'll stick with this mountain texture. Also I like how the floor texture isn't actually completely flat-colored and the texture of the forest wall makes it look super huge

beautiful fairy lady wow (correct texture needs to be added)

Timing of the clips so far, just over halfway through since I'm aiming for about 3000 frames in total to fit the song. The last frames of her climbing the mountain shouldn't be too long. (Maybe I spent too much time on exposition oh man.) These are the frames I'll render out when everything is finalized. I learned how to do this from the last project!

These clips may take a little longer to render with the physical sky attribute activated, so I'll definitely give it enough time.

Final Progress: 4/23/14

The end of the semester is coming up way too quick oh god. I did some more camerawork today, moving the Fae (as I have dubbed the character) and planning out what the finer movements are. I have a document of the correct frame sets to render out, and I'm about halfway done with that.
Once I have all the camerawork done, I'll go back in and

I found a nice texture for the "forest" to make it seem like this huge thing the Fae crawled out of

Lighting with physical sky active

Working with different textures. textures are hard.

added a few more mountains on the end to create a full mountain range.

Here's a preview of the Fae starting to escape to freedom! In the beginning, she starts out alone inside her forest room. Maybe I could add in some trees leftover from the Oracle project to increase the claustrophobic feeling. Hm...

The last two projects of mine have started out with the main character all by themselves and sad. The first ended with the robot creating a friend for himself, and this one ends with the Fae completing her own adventure. They're both happy with themselves for achieving their own dreams. No one else is there to make them happy, so they decide to do the job themselves. They love themselves when there's no one else there for them.

Maybe that's the only way that works for them.

So anyways, final progression here i gO

HERE TAKE A BUNCH OF SCREENSHOTS

for scale: fae figure vs. mountain

the fae! not the final design, mind you.

the giant wall will have a forest texture on it to simulate a.. well, giant forest.

See that tiny little hole in the wall? The fairy is gonna wander out of that - behind it is a large dome, to which i will also simulate a forest using textures on the inner wall.

I'm gonna take my next vacation here. but actually needs to find a suitable texture for mountaintops.

projected final shot of what the fae has come to see. may add a city skyline orrr something about an ocean hmm mmm mmm

her first model looks like a tetris piece here lol

And I've decided that the song I want to use is An Interlude by The Decemberists. It has the right mood and timing I believe.

I might try to cut it up like I had my factory project, what with multiple camera angles. At the same time, I don't know if I have that much time, so I think I'd keep each clip larger in order to work with fewer.

((The song is 1:40, or 100 seconds long. 30 fps, 3000 frames? I can work large.))

I got thissssssss s s ss s

Welllpp

Rendered as much as I could all night. Some things still look wonky and I want to fix them but time and skill constraints, y'know.

This course is rough, man. It definitely is not for me at all. But I've known that from maybe like the third week of classes.

I want to do well on the Final, if only I can figure out how to construct it.

Final Project: Thinking thoughts and feeling feelings

I think I want to have a little 2D animated character, maybe just the black outline like in the Doodle Disaster video. I want her to be exploring a 3D landscape, something vast and beautiful, something that she wants to explore.

The narrative is that she wants to explore and see everything that there is to see in this world.. She might spot a mountain and resolve to scale it in order to watch the sunset. And she could see much more than she bargained for once she reaches her goal (maybe a city in the distance - a new dream - or a friend no, she resolves to go on this adventure on her own, as no one else is able to experience things for her. And she'll never really stop experiencing things.).

Songs that come to mind are Prelude (not as "calming" but still a lovely song) or An Interlude (the shortest one) both by The Decemberists, one of the songs in the Minecraft soundtrack, or One Summer's Day by Joe Hisaishi (or maybe a piano/music box rendition of it). Or I could use some of my friend Matt's music, because they make some pretty stuff. Even a Vitamin String Quartet song could work (Decemberists or Red Hot Chili Peppers cover?). Something calming and nearly dreamlike. The animation might not take up the entire length of the song, depending on which one I choose, but we'll see how much I put into it. Hopefully enough, whether it fills the space or not.

I'll have to make a texture for the character and use the alpha channel. (Maybe I'll use a shortcut of giving her little fairy wings to avoid trying to figure out a walk cycle heehee. Those would be separate child planes perpendicular to the main character plane. I could animate them fluttering a little instead perhaps.)

I'll storyboard this once I start to render the Factory project clips.

Inspiration is certainly there, as I believe it is with the Factory project, which is coming along just fine. Accidentally puts inner feelings and dreams into school projects oops. Is that a recommended thing to do? It certainly answers the "why" of the project. It's not just to do a thing in order to learn techniques and skills, it's also letting quieted emotions through before they can't take it anymore and start shrieking. Maybe that's what art is to me sometimes, along with all the technical knowledge to help make it look nice. Expressing myself when my words fail me and my inhibitions are stronger than me.

It will all be okay.

Factory Update: 3/26/14

I listened to Factory of Faith by Red Hot Chili Peppers while working on this. That's what I'm running on - faith.

The way I want to cut it up is like the third example shown on Canvas. Is it possible to fully render only a select range of frames? Because that would make it very simple to keep everything in one place. I tried to create multiple cameras and have one turn off while another turns on and have it cut that way, but it didn't seem to be working out.

When the arm rolls, I'll probably have to figure out how to animate the pattern on the wheel to simulate rolling. At least once.

I also gotta work out the bumps in animating the arm in the beginning to simulate emotion. They need to look sad and lonely.. that would probably be easier if I were able to animate the wrist as the neck. But it's also more challenging to work with the constraints of actual physical limitations. Maybe if the wrist were able to twist around. Maybe.

I should redraft the storyboard because the whole sequence might get a little complicated. There's going to be a lot of quick cuts as they pick up the pieces of the teddy bear. Also putting it together is gonna be fun. I might end it with the arm falling over and just kinda cuddling up to the newly assembled teddy bear. They're still alone, but at least they have a little friend now.


In other news I'm gonna render the Wordplay and Flythru assignments like crazy. Yeaaah.

Factory Update: 3/24/14

Here's the view from the stairwell, one of the first frames in the animation

 I accidentally created a kind of narrative with this one-wheeled robot arm in an empty room. The colorful figure is a teddy bear, but it would be completely deconstructed at the beginning. The robot acts lonely and decides to build a new friend. I meant for it to be another robot arm, but fickle technical problems just made me move on to build something else.

Maybe the arm should've had more joints if I knew that I was going to be trying to express emotion, but I think it can still work. I need to add a little to the bear, like create the muzzle and maybe make the parts susceptible to gravity. The pinchy hand would be a good edit to make to the arm, although I'd be okay with the stationary fingers. This thing is giving me enough problems as it is.

Thank goodness for Advising Day tomorrow.

Progress: 3/19/14

Whoa it's already the 19th? Time flies.

Today I worked on the actual stage that the factory will take place in.

 And also I learned how to make a simple spiral staircase! (Using this tutorial)

 Secret staircase underneath the plane. Maybe the camera will ascend from here.

 The box is the default size box, for size reference.

 I don't think it will be viewed from the outside, so it's pretty messy.

I'm considering adding windows and getting some kind of sunset lighting, but the physical sky takes ages to render, so that would probably be the last thing I add in.

Still trying to figure out what's going to be assembled in the factory. I made sure that there was plenty of space. I want to make use of the robot arms somehow. Conveyor belt or no? We shall see.

Thinking about using metallic, sterile kinds of textures. There are many choices.

Planning doc + arms

I'm pretty sure there are a bunch of things I'm missing for here. But this is the basic start-off point I have.

And here's a rough model of the robot arm - I took the wrist part from a free model, but it's been glitching to the side for me so I might just have to reconstruct it from scratch.

Also need to remove the weight distribution on the ball joint, which I may or may not keep.

Factory - brainstorming urgh

I want my factory to be able to show the thing it's making as it grows, see it at different stages of the process. And I like robots. Hm...

This comes to mind.

(Warning: the story is rather emotional. I might've cried one or two or twenty times idk)

Seeing the robotic arms animating to put together the different pieces of the android gives me ideas. I don't think I'd pull off something quite as complex as this full-scale short film, but something... like it. Somehow. Maybe it could turn into a narrative as well. I like narratives.

There was the industrial example of the ball going through a series of clunky tubes and pipes and felt very cartoony. I might want to use a feel like that.

The different camera angles of the second example are pretty neat as well.

I'll have to start working on concepts. If I assemble a robot, it shouldn't be quite as complex as the human figure of the android.

--
In other news, I'm going to have to send in my laptop to get its screen fixed once I get home on break. A crack appeared a little while ago and effectively made a third of the screen unusable, so I figured I'd get it sent once I don't immediately need to use it for school. This means that I probably won't have access to it for at least five to seven days. I'll still be able to plan for this project and might be able to use my dad's laptop a few times, but for the most part, I'll be disconnected from the Internet.

Wordplay Previews

First attempt. I did something rather simple, not anything very flashy, but still translates the point well enough. I didn't like what I did with the camera either, and then learned how to make the transition from Open to Close in the same place.

The camera movement is a bit quick, but that's to help obscure the transition. Animation magic is top secret. I learned something new and made my thing better, hoorah!

There might be more I can add to this.

EDIT: I did add a bit more!

Made the Close action bounce a little and edited the camera movements a little bit. All went better than expected.

+Plus Fabrication+

I can see how this presentation would be informative and usual to many students like me. If anything, it was quite inspiring to me that two young artists could become increasingly successful entrepreneurs.

The content wasn't as inspiring to me as they were. Three-dimensional art is not where I'm looking to further my education, and I have a physicist friend who's already raved to me about 3D printers. While it is fascinating that science and art have come together yet again in such a tangible way, I don't feel that  I could relate to it as much as someone with more of a passion for art in the third dimension.

Still a good presentation with useful information about Kickstarter, though, if I ever feel the need to create my own small business.

Thoughts so far

I know that animation is not for me. But it's still rather interesting to learn, even if it's a struggle.

I think I'm going to be moving onto my wordplay assignment. The last updated flythru is already on the Google Drive, so anybody is free to work with it.

Ideas for the wordplay? Open/Close, Tall/Short, Liquid/Solid, Energetic/Static. Plenty to work with. Plenty to figure out. Plenty of time, I think.

Hanging in there

Working on the Oracle project takes a lot out of me, though the project isn't really something I dislike. It's a lot more responsibility than I imagined I'd take on when I picked this course. The course itself is a lot more than I thought I could handle when I chose to take it. If I've been learning anything, aside from splines, booles, and flythroughs, it's that 3D modeling and animation is very far from my strong suit.

Maybe it's good that I'm taking this course, then. Open up my horizons and learn a bit more about myself and the way I work or how I can improve the way I work.

I need the credits for the course more than I want to withdraw. And I do believe you were right when you said that if I put the effort in, I'll be able to understand it and push through the difficulties I'm facing. I just have to get more comfortable with the interface and techniques bit by bit.

It's times like these when I wish I were less night-orientated than I am.

Oracle - Skyview

So I'm fairly certain I know what I'm doing, or at least supposed to be doing this time.

It's kind of like laying down a floor plan. Pick out where there should be trees, paths, bushes, the flagpole, the Oracle.

Something like that. I should find out how to rotate textures. Or just trim it down a bit.

I guess I'm working on wall/floor textures in an effort to alleviate the burden of modeling useless buildings for the modelers. I think this is more my strong suit than modeling, at least for now it is.

---

Notes about Scrum:

"My Cool Project" - The Oracle
As a (role), I want (feature) so that (benefit)
>>(  )  (light-hearted, inviting, homey)  (  )
>>(Lighting) (lighting runs from night to day) (show that it runs 24/7)
User story: we want them to understand how it looks, the environment, how to use it (2D?)
~Wish list
Product owner = Anna. Someone should be her representative
Scrum master = manager basically
Developers, Testers. Lighting, Animation (3D and 2D), Textures, Modelers (Commons, the Oracle [external and internal], Hardie [plane w/picture?], marquee thing), Reflections, Storyboarding, Recon (Pictures). Editors.
Storyboard a story point thing. Which objects do we need to pay attention to detail to?
SPRINT.
Photoshop: sky view of commons (~Internet~)
planes, four walls.

Dear lord.

I can't figure this out. This isn't really working out. Like. At all. I can't do this. It doesn't help that I can't use a third of my screen on my laptop because of a random screen fracture that appeared when I opened it one morning this week. :(

Weeps bitterly

I like animation, I do. I like the work that comes with it. But boy howdy it's going to take some getting used to in regards to the I-can't-breathe-because-I-have-literally-no-idea-what-I'm-doing-or-how-I'm-doing-it feeling. I have no idea how to use this program at all... but I think I'm learning a little bit?

It's kind of pretty? I could add in more landscape if I choose to keep this kind of camera angle. My thought is that this is some abandoned factory or mining town that some post-apocalyptic scavenger is happening upon.

No animation at this point yet. But I'll work on this at home a bunch once I install the program.

Oh no.

I have no idea how to use C4D. It's definitely not for beginners and oh gosh am I a beginner in 3D modeling.

This isn't good, this isn't a good idea at all. I downloaded the trial version and I'm just. Completely lost. The things I learned in class helped a bit, but I'm just... very overwhelmed.

Is it too late to take a different course? I don't even know what other course I could take. Should I just finish what I started? I seriously don't know what to do and I'm kind of freaking out a lot and this is not a good time to freak out at all. I just went through a bunch of emotional experiences in the past two weeks and good lord I just. I need to try. I need to complete this course or at least do my best in it. I'm out of options. Why did I think this was a good idea at all. I have no idea what I'm doing.

Cinema 4D oh my

Adding textures!

Getting back to the right camera!

The Honorable King Golfball Snowman III

I've never used a program like this before. Am I even ready for this kind of stuff? I think so. Let's do thissss!