Week 7 overall

Okay so I have been so busy trying to finish my animation I lost track of my blog... And sketchbook. However I have managed to get it done and dusted pretty much. My animation is all sorted now although I am very frustrated that I couldn't make the ripple effect to basically fade in my text at the end. I couldn't spend anymore time on it trying to get it to work as I have to put it on the iPad. More frustration with that too as it isn't letting me add anything onto it from my laptop. I am hoping I can get someone to help me out tomorrow before the 12pm deadline.

The sounds I used in my animation were from a CD that Andy let me borrow to get the relevant ones off of. The music sound track was from Lindsey Stirling's deluxe album "shatter me" that a bought a few weeks ago on itunes. I chose the orchestral version of "take flight". I find the song in combination with the animation is rather "cheesy" so to speak, but I feel it is effective and as luck would have it the song changes about the same time my creatures change too. If there was more time I would have trailed through online sites or made my own sound track using garage band to get a music track that has no copyright laws ect (I cant remember what it was all called, I am rather tired) but the track I chose I think is better than anything I could have attempted, although again, if mroe time had allowed, i would have tried to make it loop.

I just need to do my end point evaluation now and finalise my sketchbook. ooh i hope it all works okay tonight at the exhibition, even though my animation has been saved and rendered I still feel like it could stop working and end up having size issues and lag like I encountered using Sony Vegas.

See you at the exhibition!

Week 6 - Day Four

Last day I'm allowed to work on my FMP in college. I don't like this because I have work tomorrow night after college so I essentially miss out on a whole days worth of work, which I feel I rather desperately need after yesterdays fiasco.

Turns out sony vegas wasn't working yesterday because my cloud files were gigantic! Turns out I need to look at the % on top of  photoshop window and look at the image size too, I've never had to do this before but I felt so fed up after realising this mistake. Live and Learn though right. Anyway, my clouds are sorted, I figured out placing my mountain into the bird flying scene. Last  night I managed to get a few sounds relevant but at college I got a disk off my friend Andy that he had with sounds on. I found pretty much all the sounds I need, just have to start adding them in over the weekend as I can't tomorrow and right now, I want sleep.

Week 6 - Day Three

OH MY GAUD! I have spent the entire day trying desperately to get the clouds into my bird scenes.. I was going to get the clouds into the background for my cat and wolf morphing's too but at the moment I can't do anything, one click on sony vegas and it all freezes and says it isn't responding -.-
So frustrating and annoying. Putting in the clouds was only meant to be a quick thing, nice and simple. Oh how it was not simple. Still isn't sorted, so tomorrow I will have another go, although I can't waste to much time sorting this issue out as I still need to finish the other areas, find and add sounds as well as finish my log book (this will probably get done over the weekend though) Anyway, I think I ought to get some sleep so my laptop and I can have a fresh start tomorrow.

Week 6 - Day Two

Okay so when I got home after college yesterday I was not the most productive.. I ended up falling asleep for a nice nap... totally needed it though but it doesn't help when I have deadlines to work to. Only have two more days after today, in college to work on this. That doesn't bother me too much but it is annoying about this week friday and how we aren't allowed to work as we have to put boards up, paint them, move shelves ect ect ect. Actually dreading it slightly as I struggled last term moving boards about.. I'm not exactly average/tall height... as well as the fact I have to go to work in evening too so I can't even work that friday on my animation.

Moving on...

I've sorted out my textures for the water scenes, as well as the mole/rat/mole-rat-thing walking out the water onto land and grass. I used my textured experiment pieces, took a quick photo on my phone, put the images on my laptop and then changed the size and colours on photoshop. It went pretty well I think as by this point I was understanding that the image size often effected the way that the pan/crop mode would work. I think I've got enough done to the mountains too but I need to change the foreground as in one section it dips down low too much so you end up seeing the animals feet, and this, I think, ruins it slightly.

Tomorrows plan is to get my bird background sorted with the sky and try and figure out how to make my cat paw at the water if I can. I have a feeling I cant start looking at sounds at college due to the ridiculous internet filters but none the less i can still get it done home.

Week 6 - Day One

I had a tutorial and a group crit today too. I found both helpful as in my tutorial it was pointed out that my animation needed speeding up. Before this was mentioned I had previously thought just a few sections of film needed shifting about. I used my breaks and group crit to get friends to give their opinions on how fast/slow they should be. It was suggested that I add in sounds like a bird flapping, water running ect as well as including in my idea I've had in my head for a while of the cat at the end putting its paws in the water as if trying to see/catch the fish. This idea got strong positive results and it was said that it would indeed make my video a full cycle which I have considered (not majorly, just ideas that I never wrote down). It was also mentioned adding in textures to the water scenes and details to the bird flying. I think I will probably do that tomorrow though, although in an idealistic world I ought to try get it done today.

My plan for the rest of today is to sort the video timings, continue working on the mountains and foreground as I've had issues with the image resizing on its own when I use the crop/pan tools. I am finding sony vegas to be pretty good to understand, way less confusing than flash was. Admittedly I am finding vegas to lag sometimes, such as when my laptop wakes from sleep mode. When I started making the animation on vegas I didn't know about keeping all the files together in a folder so now my desktop is bugging me as it is massively cluttered with several folders within folders for different parts of the animation an photoshop process.

Week 5 - Day Four

I booked next weeks tutorials, I've had to put down three as I missed my usual Thursday one with Gary yesterday as I was home busy filming. I've managed to get the iPad for over TT week, which is a huge relief because now I don't have to stress out too much trying to animate. I had my second booked tutorial of this week and after showing my animations and getting opinions from the tutorial, as well as just asking a few friends, I have concluded it would be better if I stuck with my paper cut outs and made them work instead. I do prefer my paper cut outs and if i didn't use them it would have been a good full week (probably longer if I'm perfectly honest) wasted trying to get them all sorted and printed and ready to film. I need to photograph my foreground too because it is going to get squashed soon I think. (edit: it did get squashed on the busy bus home, so I have stuck on the wall in an attempt to straighten it out.)  In my tutorial I also went through some of the objectives I have to get. So far it seems everything is going okay,I just need to update my log book and do everything so it all gets finished. I think I will start putting my animation together over TT week when I am not at college. If I leave it to do in week6 it is highly likely more late/last minute announcements and paperwork will get in the way and waste time, not to mention the highly probable technical issues I will encounter too. Also need to try and figure out how to get this blog onto a usb stick (I actually have no clue how, doesn't it defeat the purpose too?)

Week 5 - Day Three

I spent the whole day filming. I didn't finish until 1.30am because I have to return the equipment tomorrow/later today. I think I will have to try and book out the iPad over the TT race week just in case I need to do some more filming. I ended up taking longer than I thought I would because when I animated my paper dog cutouts I didn't think the walk cycle was working properly so I decided to make a paper silhouette of the dog and lioness instead. I will see what people think of them tomorrow/later today when I am at college. Personally I think my paper cut outs look better. Lets hope I can get it all sorted out tomorrow, right now.. bed!