Looking To The Future

So, this is it. We deliver the final cut of the film on Thursday. It's all over.

Not quite...

As it stands right now, all of my shots are in place and so are Jim's. I think I would like to tweak one of mine (the second shot of the film - the flashing red light doesn't really flash enough for my taste). Also, some of the hallway scenes seem to be a bit dark. That's easy to fix, but I'm not sure it really needs fixing. We'll review that in class today to make a final determination. Lastly, I need to tweak the audio. That will be the absolutely last thing I will do, not because I hate audio, but because I want everything else in place to make sure it works first. Which brings me to one last thing that's worrying me.

Adam's seven missing scenes.

Adam has not been very communicative during this entire process, and I know he called in sick for his class yesterday (that's were we usually exchange files and get updates on what is or is not going on). I sent out an email to Adam and to Jim last night indicating that we are down to the wire, and nearly complete except for these scenes. I also made it clear that Jim and I are more than willing to step in and help finish things up in any way we can. I know what it's like to get sick at the end of a big project - it's very stress inducing and just makes you even sicker. We'll see what goes on today.

Aside from that, we're in good shape.

Now we can start to think about little things, like a poster for the film and to which film festivals we will submit it. Also, I can really start to dig into work on my Senior Capstone project which has it's own worries and concerns (for example: am I making the right film? I may just go back to working on the art film I had originally intended as "The Hero's Journey" may not be funny enough to work). But that's the future. Who knows what it will bring.

That's all for now. Don't tune in at the same bat time and the same bat channel next week, because I won't be here. Cue the national anthem, and bring up the test pattern. This channel is finally going off the air.

Until the next film. Good night and good luck!

Captain's Log Starda...aw, screw it...

I realized, while I was in the shower on Tuesday morning, that I had not written a blog entry this week. Silly me...

Oh, did I ever mention that I hate blogs?

Seriously. I have never kept a journal, never kept a diary, and definitely never kept a personal blog - except when I was forced to. Why? Simple, I don't like writing about my personal exploits. There are two reasons for this - one, you cannot write about exactly what you're feeling because these are public record and you never know who is going to be reading them (so you cannot express your real views), and two, I'd rather spend the time doing something creative rather than writing about something creative.

Anyway. I suppose you would like to know how the film is coming along?

Well, maybe I'm not going to tell you - so there! Nyah!

Actually, at this point we are looking good really good for the drop dead date. The first deadline, however, we may be a bit short. As it stands now, I have seven more scenes to render (by the way, somehow I ended up with twenty-four scenes to fix and render when I only should have had twenty-one, how did that happen?). I will have two to three more completed tonight, and I'll render one more on Wednesday morning. Jim and Adam will deliver what they have done in Cone's class on Wednesday afternoon, and I'll put it all together in the working reel on Wednesday night.

So, although we will be missing some scenes, we are looking good for the first delivery date. Hopefully, the reviewers will be kind to us.

Last note before I go - the Youtube video above is the first nine of my scenes fully rendered. Take a look and let me know what you think.

Until next time - when I'm finally finished with this thing - same bat time, same bat channel!

Soon...

Good day, Mr. Phelps. Your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to write, storyboard, and animate a three minute long animated film. As always, should you or any of your IMF team be captured the Secretary will disavow all knowledge of you and your organization.

Good luck, Mr. Phelps.

This blog will self-destruct in thirty seconds.

No, it won't. But there have been times when I wish it would. The past few months – and more specifically, the past few weeks – have felt exactly like Mission Impossible. I really thought we were going to live up to our team title and fail epically. But this weekend was when I turned the corner.

I finished all my 3D animation and started animating in 2D.

It is going so very much faster now, and I'm burning through scenes right and left. At this point there are twenty more 2D animations to do, and five static images to make. I've already been through all of my scenes, and if count right, there are thirty-five scenes that are done and waiting for final inspection before rendering. More importantly, I'm starting to count things. I only do this when I can see the end of a project coming.

The end – that's an amazing concept.

I'm starting to see the whole of the film come together in the working reel, and that is something absolutely amazing to behold. It actually looks good, and works as a narrative. That's bloody astounding!

So, there's only a few more weeks to go, and the drop dead deadline is looming large. But I feel confident. I know that we can make it. Sure, there will be lots more late nights, but it's going to happen. More importantly, in the end, I think the three of us will have something to be proud of.

I really like that idea.

Until next time – same bat time, same bat channel. Stay tuned.

Please Move To Minimum Safe Distance

Saturday night, I had a meltdown.

Let me try to explain that statement. I know myself fairly well and act to deal with stress and pressure on a regular basis, but there are times when things build up uncontrolled and I don't really notice. I have been under enormous stress this semester from my work, my marriage, my family, my wife's family, school, finances and especially the production of this short animation. After having gotten through the death of my father-in-law I - very foolishly - assumed that things were back to normal and I could get on.

I was wrong.

I had not had a chance to release all the emotional energy in me that had built up in me. You see lately I don't have time to work out, I don't have time to visit my friends, I don't have time to get out and play, and I don't have time to sit and talk with my wife. I just don't have time for anything except this project. So, Saturday night when I sat down to do what should have been a fairly simple walk cycle and everything went wrong, all that pent up energy came flooding out.

It was ugly. It was exhausting.

I simply stopped animated, and watched some TV. The next day I spent 10 hours working on a project for another class, then spent some time with my wife. Today, I spent most of the day working on a resume, cover letter, and website project I need to complete to be able to apply for internships - something critical to my degree, and also something that I have put off due to time constrains. Then I went to class, reviewed the project I spent Sunday working on, and then talked to John Cone about what I had done wrong on Saturday.

I found my mistakes. I found some understanding.

After that, I came home, had dinner, and sat down to start over on the animation that had made me explode on Saturday. I did it calmly, slowly, precisely, and you know what?

It worked. Moreover, it looks good.

There is still some tweaking to do, but it shouldn't take that much more to finish the scene. Three more scenes after that and my part of animating the 3D portion of this film will be over. Beyond that I have a lot of facial animations to do. These however, will not be anywhere near as painful as the 3D work has been. I enjoy working in After Effects, I do not enjoy working in Maya.

Now it's back to work. Deadlines are looming close and I have far go before I can sleep. Until next week - same bat time, same bat channel.

You can't win, you can't break even, and you can't quit the game...

Another week down, and another blog to write. At least this week has been different than last week. Last week so much was going on that that I hardly had time to think, let alone write a blog entry (which obviously I missed). Yet through all that I got an incredible amount done. This week has been just the opposite. Every time I sit down to work on this project something comes up. I had planned on coming home from work Friday to work on the film. Unfortunately work was hellish and I simply came home to crawl into bed. I figured I would start again on Saturday. Not a problem.

Saturday comes, and my wife wants to spend time with me before going to her parents. That's fine, I can spare a few hours. But then she gets the “day off” so that we can spend time together. Don't get me wrong, I love spending time with my wife, but I do have work to do. In the name of domestic tranquility – and everything she's been through last week – I spend the day with her and not the project. Not good, but what are you going to do?

Which brings us to Sunday. I have one other course, which occasionally I get homework for, and this was one of those weekends. I spent Sunday perfecting the look and techniques I'll be using for my Senior Capstone film. Which I will have a chance to make, if and only if I can get through Exit Strategy.

That brings us to Monday morning, wherein I find that I have overwritten several key files and spend three hours attempting to recover them – successfully – from my hard drive. Of course, then I have to stop and go to class to deliver the stuff I worked on Sunday, drive back in some nasty traffic, have a rushed dinner, and start working on Exit Strategy again. I start to animate a quick little sequence in After Effects for Hugh's face and it takes less than half and hour to complete. Hurray, I'm actually getting somewhere...

...no, no I'm not.

I spend the next hour and a half fighting with Maya over why it won't accept the image sequence I have rendered (and rendered, and rendered, and re-rendered, and....GAH!!!). Having searched and searched for an answer online, I finally notice something odd about the format of the file names that After Effects is putting out. They've got an underscore where a period should be. I change that, and everything works perfectly.

Awesome. I take a break from that, to render out some playblasts to start creating a working file for the team, and I start to see some oddities in the lengths of the shots we're setting up...

It never ends.

I'm going to post this, bang my head on the desk for a while, then get back to work. Until next time, stay tuned.

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

In some ways this has been a better week than the last few, and we're moving ahead with the film, but we're still running into problems. On the plus side all the models are done, the scenery is all textured and lite, and we got textures on all the characters. The initial beauty shots of the characters in the rooms look very promising! Additionally, in the last class couple of classes the three of us had the opportunity to work together to resolve problems we were having in skinning characters. I think that helped - there was a little bit of bonding going on as we made it work.

At least, I hope so.

So this week we've gotten our assets together, created a master timing sheet, and are started to block out animation for the first 32 shots of the film. Additionally, I've done a test of the 2D animation that will go on the character's faces (see the link to youtube above for the test footage). It all looks good, things are moving ahead, and we might actually get this completed on time.

And now for the bad news.

In doing the test facial animation, and doing the blocking I've discovered a couple of things. One, the way we projected the UVs onto the characters doesn't work. The projections don't "stick" to the model and the image stays in place as the character moves. Secondly, I've found that the fingers on the characters are very tough to work. I'm not sure if this is a result of the mel script that created the bone structure o short cuts that were taken in building the characters. Finally, I pointed out a mistake all of us made in working on the characters - none of us included a name tag on St. Peter, Anubis, or Buddha. Hopefully we can resolve both of these issues quickly and re-reference the fixed characters back into the scenes. If not, our animation schedule will be out the window, and that's something I don't even want to think about.

We'll keep pushing on. Hopefully things will start smoothing out. Until next time, stay tuned...

Has It Been A Week? Feels Like A Year...

I just had an 'oh crap!' moment and realized that I needed to get another blog entry in before midnight. So, here it is...

It's been a long week. Not because of what I mentioned in my previous blog - that goes without saying. But I've put in long hours again this week and I don't know that I've gotten any where. No, I take that back. I have achieved one thing at least: I have come to realize that Maya doesn't make me angry any more. Maybe it's because I've finally had enough practice to know what I'm doing (in most cases), or because I'm better at getting correct responses from my Google searches when I run into problems. Either way, working with Maya now is no where near as rage inducing as it used to be.

What is rage inducing is the amount of work that has to be done on this project.

Which brings me to the first 'confrontation' the group had. After reviewing my time-book with my instructor I was told to make sure that Jim and Adam are doing their part too. I shouldn't be the only one stepping up and making this happen. I was to be responsible for this. So, I went back to them and asked how many hours they had put into the project. When I let them know that I had doubled or tripled their amounts, Adam was stunned and responded as I had expected. He would work harder. Jim, on the other hand, took great offense to this. When he confronted me at the next class, he was so frustrated that I thought he might cry. Well, the manager in me wanted to say 'suck it up.' But I've had that level of frustration and I was definitely not in the mood for a confrontation. I did my best to smooth things over, but I'm not sure it worked. I feel like the outsider on this team, and probably rightly so. I'm just frustrated by the situation, and don't have the tools to be able to communicate what I want to them.

I don't like being a team leader. I have always preferred to work as a second in charge. I do a much better job in support than in leading. But in this case I have no choice. I don't really want to go back and read the 'Minute Manager,' but maybe I have to. Until next week, stay tuned...