10 Weeks of This Already?

This week I "learned": (a.k.a. I already had a gist of, but now I have been formally taught and am now a "master" of.) how 3D points work.

I hope to get my 2D Animation done. I probably will.

I am frustrated at Flash for crashing all of the time.

I am glad that Christmas vacation is so soon. I need a break from all of this work.

｡ﾟ(TヮT)ﾟ｡ This is short but still rad. This guy is hecka funny.

Article Response: Frankenweenie

Article

Learned:

• I've never heard of Autism-Friendly Screenings for movies before.
• I never knew that autistic kids had trouble learning to speak.
• I never knew that autistic kids had a lowered imagination.

Opinions

• Autism-Friendly Screenings are a great idea.
• I never say Frankenweenie, but it looked like a rad movie. 

Question

• Whoever came up with the idea of autism-friendly screenings?

Article Response: Tomorrow's Revolution Won't Be On T.V.

Article

Learned Things:

• Web series can have lower quality but still have a large audience because the audience can understand the lack of resources. Audiences think it's because of being independent.
• Even without large audiences, the instant feedback and comments on things that the internet provides helps make better stuff for the future.
• The internet's availability and lackage of guidelines helps set the series in easy to fit timelines. The show doesn't have to fit the television guideline of 30-ish minute increments. It also goes onto "one channel" in a way. Parodies, vlogs, and other types of videos can all be found on the same place, instead of having to search through T.V. channels for the genre that you want.

Opinions

• I agree with her when she says that it is harder to find web series on the internet. The couple that I like now I heard from people blogging about them. The web series are really good, but don't get the same advertising that T.V. shows get.
• I feel like there should just be an "internet" channel on televisions now. Has no one thought of that? Like, just show stuff that's getting popular on the internet. It would probably keep people paying attention to T.V., if there is a worry of the television audience disappearing.

Question

• Is there a worry of the television ceasing to be helpful or used in the future?

Week 9 Class Thing

This week I didn't learn much. I kinda learned that Macs hate me I guess?

I hope to better my work pace. I tend to work hellllllllllllla slowly, and that is sucky.

I am very frustrated at Flash crashing all the time!! (╬⓪益⓪)

I am glad that we will be done using Flash soon. asidfhaisudf!! I hope Maya doesn't poop as often as flash.

((┌|o^▽^o|┘))♪ This is a rad 3D animated Minecraft thing. Music too ^-^

Article Response: Elements of Award Winning Screenplays

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Learned Stuff

• Secondary conflict is just as important as secondary actions in animations. Both give your character a certain layer of depth that, without them, makes your character bland.
• Have a blend of genres. A plain romantic will be pretty boring to most people. Add some comedy to that romance, and it becomes a movie that pretty much any girl will want to see. Maybe some guys too. I'm not judging.
• Have a large main interest for the movie. If you change things around, people will get confused.

Opinions

• I disagree with the whole "have a moral lesson" thing because I know plenty of good movies that don't really have a moral story. 
• I also disagree with showing your own morals in a movie. I mean, unless you are going for more of an educational or similar type of movie. I feel like morals don't matter when it comes to many genres.

Question

• What genres of movies tend to be the highest rated? Action? Comedy?

Article Response: Editing Cowboys & Aliens

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Learned things

• The tone of movies makes a huge difference. If the movie has an inconsistent tone, it will probably not be all that great.
• Do what the person wants, even if they're wrong. Show them the thing, and then they might realize that they are wrong, it will just end up being fixed anyway. Isn't there a saying of "the customer is always right" or something like that?
• You have to have people skills in the editorial (is that the correct word?) business because you rely on people liking you. If you are great at art and are super skilled but you're a hard person to talk to, no ones going to want to have to get in touch with you and work with you.

Opinions

• I agree with the whole "being a nice person and being a suck up is good for getting work" because being a grump isn't going to make anyone like you at all. You kind of rely on people liking you in a business like that, considering your job is to please people.
• It was a good idea that the editor lessened that bit in Ironman at the start with the Chechnians and how he was before all of that stuff happened because having sympathy for the characters is great and it's hard to be sympathetic for a character that is kind of a dick.

Question

• How long is the editing process?

8th Week of Classes

This week I learned how to use Garageband and I had a refresher of Audacity. I ended up later helping out a friend with amplifying mic-sounds and getting rid of background noise.

I hope to better my music skills so that I can make rad beats in Garageband and Audacity.

I am very frustrated at nothing because this week has been hella rad.

I am glad that I have no school on Monday! I needed a break~

(❁´‿`❁)*✲ﾟ* This is super funny. ^-^

Article Response: Making "Frozen"

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Learned

• Disney based Frozen off of an old movie from the 1940s called Snow Queen about the healing power of love. 
• "The theme didn’t change…it shifted from romantic love to fear versus love.” That is an interesting concept and I didn't know what the movie Frozen about.
• “It took about 30 hours to render just one frame; that’s 4,000 computers rendering one frame at a time." Geeeeez. I never knew rendering such a short area of film would take so long.

Opinions

• The only really important things to read are at the end of the article for learning reasons.
• The rest of the article is cool for facts to know just to know them. 

Question

• How many full hours of rendering was that one castle scene? It doesn't say how many frames each computer rendered, but it does mention that each computer rendered 1 frame at a time.

Article Response: Animating Creatures

Article

Learned Stuffs:

• Female character-rigs were rare at some point? I always hear about males being harder to draw.
• Comparing unique creatures to real creatures helps you figure out the correct physics for your creature.
• Using more characters with more contact time makes for a more impressive portfolio.

Opinions:

• I like the writing. It is simple to understand and gets straight to the point.
• I like how it had a lot of examples for movies with creatures in it.

Question

• How much time did they spend just getting all the info that they have?

Week 7 of Class

This week I re-learned how to do the proportion for percentage stuff and things. Is over of is percent out of 100 or something.

I hope to learn better techniques of animation that will cut the time of work down.

I got frustrated with Flash crashing as much as it did.

°˖ ✧◝(○ ヮ ○)◜✧˖ ° This is just perf.

Article Response: "Get a Horse!"

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Learned Poo

• They used tobacco and tea leaves to create the browned look on paper.
• They would beat tables with chains to make them look more worn out.
• They used old sounds from older Mickey Mouse stuff and added it into the newer one to make is sound older too. The hissing and popping helped make it seem authentically older.

Opinions

• I think it's cool that they are working so hard to make something seem so authentic and old.
• I liked how they author write this out. It is very easy to know what it is they are taking about.

Question

• How long will they be showing this short for? I am strangely interested in watching this.

Article Response: VFX Jobs

Article

Learned Things

• I didn't think that VFX was used that often. Like, little changes in scenery and adding a crowd of people to the background and stuff. I figured they'd just hired extras or something.
• I figured they used like fake blood bags or something like that for like, simple wounds. The Walking Dead uses a lot of VFX.
• Knowing technology and art is good for that kind of thing, but not exactly needing to have mastered one helps. I am not exactly great at the technology side of things, but I figure that's something I can work on.

Opinions

• I like the author's non-boring attitude and typing and stuff.
• This VFX stuff sounds like something I'd like.

Question

• What are good colleges for this kinda thing?

Class Things Week 6

I learned this week that I had nothing to worry about going into the physics lesson because I had already learned that stuff like, a couple years. It was all basic.

I hope to learn how to put expressive actions into a character. I don't think I can explain it very well, but like, each character behaves in each way, and good animators can exaggerate these behaviors using the characters even basic movements.

I didn't get frustrated by anything this week.

(/-(ｴ)-＼) In behalf of Halloween being this week, have a music thing. 2spooky.

Article Response: 10 Tips to Natural Lighting in Shots

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Mastered Things

• "By positioning your actors in a way that places the sun to be behind them to hit the back of their heads, you are essentially doing two things. First off, you’re protecting their face from taking in all of the sunlight which will not only make them look bad, but also cause them to squint. And secondly, with the sun behind them, they will naturally have a backlight that will separate them from the background and create a nice rim around their heads, with nice even lighting on their face."
• "Blue hour is the short window of time after the sun goes down (or before it comes up) where the sky is still colorful, but the sun isn’t visible. And Magic Hour of course, is the hour leading up to sunset or just after sunrise. Both of these times of day are ideal for shooting as the natural quality of light outside at that time of day just can’t be beat"
• "This really does go hand in hand with choosing the right locations as if you choose a perfect location, the art department may not need to work as tirelessly to ensure you still get the light that you need, or conversely if you’re stuck with a location that just isn’t working, they may be able to save the day."

Viewpoints

• So many things learned in this, especially on the first page. I'm not much of a video production guru, so the stuff about everything is just really mind-blowing and I wouldn't have thought of any of it.
• Magic and Blue Hour sound like a pain to film in. Can't you just, like, green screen that in? That's probably just my lazy brain doing lazy things though.

Question

• If it's actually harder to film with nature's lighting, then why wouldn't you just want to do it the easier way? Is the heightened cost of electrical lights all that much more?

Article Response: Proto-GIFS

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Egdumacated

• "Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau is widely credited with inventing the phenakistoscope in 1832 as part of a study on how the eye perceives illusions." Rad.
• "Richard Balzer’s love affair began about 40 years ago, when he saw his first magic lantern — an early image projector invented in the 1600s." The 1600s is a loooong time ago. 
• "The device consists of a circular disc that spins around a vertical axis. Plateau and other artists would draw a series of still images around the disc’s center and cut equally spaced slits around its edges... The slits effectively acted as shutters, keeping the images from blurring together and resulting in what appeared to be a fluid, looped animation." That's a lot of work.

Thoughts

• Those all look really creepy and dark. What were they thinking of back then? People being eaten by creepy creatures seems to be a constant in that article. And the devil loosing his head is also spooky.
• That all seems a lot harder than what we do today. Today we can just click a button and see the last frame (or more than just one frame before) and draw from that. They had to kind of guesstimate based on a the frame to its left, which would've probably been hard to overlap and see.

Question

• How long did it normally take to make one of these phenakistascopes? 

Class Stuff Week 5

This week I learned that rotoscoping takes a lot of patience and I need to drink less coffee probably.

I hope I learn better techniques on how to do things faster. I am such a slow person at art. (✖╭╮✖)

I am very frustrated at how slow I am at art asfdj

I am glad that this week had been pretty calm. 

☆*･゜ﾟ･*\(^O^)/*･゜ﾟ･*☆  Such a cute little animation~

Article Response: 2 Cloudy Effects

Article

Learned Things

• "The simulation engine gets confused by accelerations that in the real world are impossible,” Travers says. “And that adds to the complexity of what we’re doing. Most of the time with fluid simulations, you plug in the numbers and 90 percent of the time right out of the gate, it explodes. You have to run a bunch of simulations to make it work.”  Never knew making liquid would be so much of a pain.
• "We don’t break the physics,” Travers says, “but, if you know gravity in the real world is 9.8 meters per second squared, you don’t say, ‘I’m never going to change that co-efficient.’ Everything is fair game toward making the shot look good. So, you know you need gravity, but you have to let go of constraints and assumptions from the real world. You might set gravity at 2 or 1000 to make the simulation work. If it looks good, it is good.” Gravity science fun. Sounds like too much math to me though.
• "The simulations in this animated sci-fi comedy, presented unique challenges. First, they liquids in whatever form had to be in scale with the size of the edible characters. Milk became an ocean; syrup, a river. “When Barry the strawberry drops into the coconut milk, we needed to have that look like a strawberry in milk,” Travers says, “but Barry is 20 times bigger than a strawberry. So, we had to scale the fluid simulation up 20 times.”" So much sciency things.

Opinions

• Such math. Very think.
• Playing with gravity sounds pretty hard, but I am probably over thinking it. Maybe they just have a scale thing that they click and drag in the program or whatever.

Question

• How much time does it take to produce a full-length 3D animated film? They talk about that one 45 second shot taking 2.15 million hours of rendering time.

Article Response: Not Just CGI

Article

Learned Stuffs

• They use 3D printing to make props and other things.
• "The team placed the silicon, waited for it to gel, and then, as it was still slightly soft, flipped their silicone-coated model at a 45-degree angle. The resulting cast captured the upside-down effect perfectly, Clement said." I never knew being upside down changed your looks enough for them to worry about special techniques of stuffs.
• ""We ended up covering his whole arm with a woman's stocking and we stuck the stocking together between his fingers and painted silicone on," Coulier told LiveScience." I thought that scene was entirely CGI. Fancy.

Opinions

• I think it's rad that they still do makeups instead of CGI for like, zombies and aliens and other humanoid creatures.
• Good script + Great makeups = movie.

Question

• They talk of how silicone is better than alginate, but is it cheaper?

Week 4 of Classes

This week I learned that rotoscoping is pretty relaxing and nice and stuff.

I hope to learn how to work faster. I am a hella slow drawing person I think.

Not all too frustrated, like always. asdufuhsdg

I'm glad there has been a lot of work days because rotoscoping is time consuming as f-hella.

┌（★ｏ☆）┘  Learnin' some art and this happened. 

Article Response: Difficult Female Characters

Article

Things I learned

• Some people actually think females have to be pretty all the time, even when angry?
• Girls are more emotional?
• I learned that all of the facts from this article are actually questions. 

Opinions

• Lino Disalvo is kinda stupid. Do I even have to explain this? Probably. Well he said sounds kinda sexist with the whole "women have all the same emotions and have to always be pretty bleh" stuff. That is hella annoying.
• All of Lino's female characters look wwaaay too much alike.

Question

• I didn't learn this from this article, but they are using the same model for Anna and Elsa from Rapunzel. Pretty easy to tell and, with that, I can see how he can say that animating them to be different would be hard, but if that's really a problem, why not make a new model?

Article Response: Zombies!

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Learned Stuff

• We are afraid of zombies because of how they will eat us just because they can't control themselves. Even dear old granny will want to eat you.
• Zombies in packs are much like the brain-dead people on shopping sales.
• Some more fear of zombies comes from them not having any sense of individuality which we strive for as human beings.

Opinions

• I think that it is kinda silly that people fear technology. Isn't technology just a tool and not an individual uh, thing?
• I think zombies are pretty cool even though they might be mainstream. Just because it's mainstream doesn't mean it is bad.

Question

• Why does everyone have to find meaning within everything? Why not just leave zombies at "Oh, a scary, brain-less humanoid thing that wants to eat me. Ahh!"?

This week I learned how to animate in Flash. It's kind of a pain, but I feel like I will get over it and like the program in the end.

I hope I learn how to use Flash better. I am still unsure of many of the commands and where to find things in the menu.

It must be impossible to bother me because wow, I am like, always at a loss as to what to say at this part. Pbppbptpbfptpfbptpbpftt. If anything, it's that I am not used to Flash still, but I will get comfortable with the program (hopefully).

I'm glad that we are finally animating that is what I am here for. Animation is rad and stuff.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXlgOX95Q0U&list=TLOIqvV609MvJxVgLz3qiPsyakzJU8VCsd
This has nice animation and is easy to relate to. Also funny. Yay all around.

Article Response: Breaking Bad

Article

Thing's I learned

• We feel emotions that other people feel. That's pretty rad. I guess it kinda makes sense a little but I'm bad at words and can't find a way to explain it. Pfbptpbt.
• People liked Walter even during his times of hardships because of their first impression of his sad and pitiful life that they had shown in the pilot episode.
• Point of view things help us get in touch with what the character is thinking and feeling better than any other way.

Opinions

• I think that the actor of Walter White must be hella rad if he can go from being awesome in Malcolm in the Middle to Breaking Bad and make it work.
• I feel like this article will be very helpful in my career of video things. It is really educational and I will probably bookmark it for future stuff.

Question Time

• Why are psychologists studying movies and TV shows? Don't they have anything else better to study? Like, people that aren't acting for things and stuff?

Article Response: Animated Films in a Country Without a Government

Article

I learned a thing or three

• Miyazaki was called a fiend? But he so perfect at animation and I am so sad he retired this year. But he is 83, so I guess even he needs to chill after how ever many years of work.
• They actually make animated films for adults?? Even if it's still a small number, I never knew that.
• I never noticed that every movie has that useless goofy character that is just expendable and not anything. That chameleon thing from Tangled is a good example.

Opinions

• I hella agree that there should be some animated films that are not just G or PG because as much as I love watching funny kids movie, their needs to be some variation. The variation might bring in a larger audience.
• Isn't Avatar (The blue alien version Pocahontas) pretty much all 3D animation though? I don't know much about that, which I hope to change through courses, but there was so much CGI that is was practically an animated film.

Question

• Why isn't there variation in animation? I mean, Japan's got the variation in animation thing covered. They've got, like everything ever over there.

Week 3 of Stuff

This week I learned how to use the basics of Flash. It's kind of a pain, but that's how it always is when you start using a new drawing program.

I hope I learn how to actually get the images to move and all of that rad stuff. I mean, I've messed around before in Flash, making simple things in my attempts to impress senpai, but nothing super cool.

I didn't really have anything that bothered me this week. I guess my inability to think of anything to write for these blog posts is kind of annoying, but it isn't something that is new for this week.

I am glad that the shortcuts in Flash are the same as those in Paint Toll SAI. Like, command-y is redo instead of command-shift-z. It's just easier for me for to get to command-y.

┗(＾0＾)┓ I remember when this came out in my subscription box and I had half a heart attack because Final Fantasy is rad and so is dancing. The two together is just one awesome ball of rad.

Article Response: Compare and Contrast: Jim Henson and Walt Disney

Article

Things Learnt

• I never knew the name of the guy (Jim Henson) that made The Muppets. 
• The house in "The Dollhouse" was made for Jim Henson's kids. 
• Jim Henson also did things with Snoopy, which is rad.

Opinions

• I think it's kind of strange that I never knew the name of the person that made The Muppets and Snoopy, two things that I loved as a child. I guess back then, I didn't really care.
• I liked how the author didn't doge around with opinions. The article is pretty much just info.

Question

• Why did I never know the name "Jim Henson" even though he was just as influential as Walt Disney?

Article Response: Dreamwork's Storyboarding Tips

Article

Stuff that was learned

• Storyboarding can help make you piece more masterful. I figured story boarding was just there to get the basic things down before you forget.
• Having three vanishing points helps to add depth to a composition. I might try that next time I draw something. I'd probably need help figuring it out though.
• Drawing a grid can help put things in the correct areas. I've never thought of doing that before, but I will have to try it out the next time I do anything.

Opinions

• Though storyboarding might not be necessary, I feel like there needs to be some basic outlines just incase you forget something. Even if it's like one frame out of every 10,000. I feel like it would be silly to forget what you are trying to do just because you didn't draw one simple picture.
• I liked all the images showing what the author was talking about. It is really helpful to have them. Without them, I would never have made anything out of what I was reading. 

Question

• How does three point perspective work? It'll probably be hella helpful in stuff.

Article Responce: Controversial Scarecrows

Article

Things I learned

• Chipotle knows how to get a point across with a cute animation
• Chipotle also knows what people are seeing as wrong in current agricultural practices and is using it to their advantage. Chipotle knows that some people that care what they are eating and frowning upon all of the hormones and additives thrown into our "beef" They did a good job of showing how that isn't what is happening with Chipotle food.
• Chevy needs to learn that people aren't going to buy your cars just because you got people dancing for money. 

Opinions

• I think that people get a little wound up over nothing? Maybe it's just that I'm not in the agriculture business but I think that flipping your marbles everywhere a commercial like that is kinda childish. Also, you can't say that they don't fill animals up to the brim with hormones, because that would just be one big large fib.
• I really like how the color in the city is dark and dreary and depressing, but the colors at the scarecrow's house are bright. That's a really good way to show a contrast between two places. Color does rad things.

Question

• Why are farmers mad about this? Is it because it might over-accentuate what goes on behind closed doors?

Article Responce: Scary Music Makes us Feel Scared?

Article

Things I learned

• Music directors are really good at making music to fit the emotion of what is going on. It really help immerse an audience when music reflects what's going on.
• Music = a lot of cool emotions. I didn't think that music had such a strong effect on people.
• They use sounds that we can't even hear to scare us. That is a crazy thought. How is something that we can't even hear scaring us. 

Opinions

• I like how it has actual quotes from famous producers and actors about this kind of business. It give it a strange amount of legitimacy with quotes around it. 
• I liked how it had examples old and new relating to this article. 

Question

• How do sounds we can't hear unnerve us? How do we know that sound is even there if we can't hear it?

Week 2 of Things

I learned some pretty useful things in Illustrator just by messing around and working around in it. Like, for example, when breaking the handles break the handle into the direction you plan on drawing. I don't know if I explained that well or not, but whatever. I tried, right?

I hope to learn the shortcuts better. I hate having to look around the menu for stuff all the time. It is probably taking me some time.

What frustrated me is this cell shading/straight line stuff. I like to blend and stuff, but you can't really do that in this program. Or maybe you can, I just don't know how.

Finally drawing a lot definitely made me happy. Drawing is #1 on my list while test taking is probably at the lowest of the low.

ヽ(=^･ω･^=)丿 This is so cute I can't even continue with this sen-

No but seriously, the animation is cute and just everything perfect. 

Article Response: Low Budget Perspective Stuff

Article

Things I learned

• I learned that directors have a lot of neat tricks up their sleeves so that they can do cool things that they wouldn't otherwise be able to do.
• I learned that every place in the world is also in California. Pretty neat.
• Some of the same places might be able to be seen in multiple movies.

Opinions

• I liked how it was very informative and even told some of the techniques that are used to make models seem larger. 
• I liked how the effects were convincing and realistic and just mind-blowing in general.

Question

• What other movies beside Close Encounters of the Third Kind use this kind of perspective magic?

Article Responce: Hollywood's Oversaturation of Animated Movies

Article

Stuff I learned

• I learned that 3D animation is a very popular media in the movie industry. More popular than I thought it was. 
• I learned that there is a lot of competition between animation companies and that some companies get screwed over when animated movies come out in clusters.
• I also learned that animated movies normally rank second to action movies at the box office, which is pretty interesting. I always thought that romantic comedies and other things would rank higher.

Opinions

• I feel like with more 3D animated movies coming out, the more competition. I think that the more competition there is between companies, the higher the quality of the movies. The companies will work harder to make prettier movies with better stories so that they can beat out their rivaling companies.
• I wasn't all that interested in 3D animation before but I think that it may be something interesting to try.

Question

• After reading the article, it still leaves me wondering how the over-saturation of 3D animated movies with affect the job market. Will it make it harder or easier to get into animation?

Week 1 of Stuff and Things.

I learned a ton this week. So much that I probably forgot all of it. I learned how to use some of the basics of Flash. I think I still prefer to use Paint Tool SAI and Photoshop, but that's only because I am used to that style of doing things. 

I hope to learn how to get used to using basic tools like the pen that often take a lot of time for me to get to even work.

Something that frustrated me this week was that pseudo-stroke thing. That can go far away. I don't even think I was doing it right. There is probably an easier way to do that kind of thing.

This week was pretty hectic, what with all the quizzes and such. Even with the quizzes, I am hella pleased with being in a class that actually pertains to my career. Pretty sure trigonometry will never help me draw pictures. 

This is absolutely relevant to what I want to do when I get older. It is so amusing and silly and just everything that is needed right at the start of a school year. It is also very relevant with the upcoming Pokemon X and Y release that I may or may not be excited for.

Stuff and Things.

Test post for animation class.