The END is near...:D:D

tomorrow is presentation day!! can't believe its ending already! i can almost smell the freedom and the holiday mood coming my way...:D *takes a big appreciative sniff of the air*

Anyway, i'm rather happy as i managed to finish my animation! woot woot! i finished animating on around wednesday and the past few days, i had been editing my work in after effects, finding extra sound effects and what not. I'm still in a dilema as to whether to put music in the travelling sequence...i'm not sure if it'll be boring if i don't add music in that part...but yet when i try to add it in, it sounds rather corny. oh well.

i did my credits and opening yesterday in photoshop...now i know gina's pain in drawing frame by frame D: i'm lucky that i used flash cause i can still cheat a little. :b

So far, i am quite happy with my animation. but i know that i can still improve on it...maybe next time when theres more time and all. i think P3 is quite an eye opener for me...i think most of us would be at a lost if we were really thrown into FYP without doing P3 first. For one, i learned that time management and planning is super important! without those, i think we'll all be pulling our hair out right now, trying to complete the work. I think we're lucky it's not FYP now...if it was, we'll all be super...erm...screwed.

So i guess one important thing i learn is to not procastinate and be complacent...yes, FYP is about twice longer then P3 but i think we all should not let our guard down when the time comes.

Anyway since this should be my last blog post...(i think), i shall end it by reflecting on the whole process! The past few weeks had been quite crazy...like rushing our works and staying in school till the guard has to chase us out...and having no life for about a month. D: but i think it had been quite fun too though...cause everone is suffering with me (MUAHAHAA). :b And it had been fun youtubing AWESOME music to listen to while doing the animation and also "lepak-ing at one corner" with my friends when i'm tired of doing work...it's been nice. :]

yeaaaaaa. so i guess thats it. hopefully presentation tomorrow goes well for all of us. toooodles! yay life, guitar and freedom here i come!! :D

Interim 3

heyhey! i know i haven't up dated in a freaking long time...been busy with character design and production for P3! So far, everything is going according to schedule...i had this crazy schedule planned out where i have to finish one difficult scene or 2 to 3 easy scenes everyday. I have a total of about 25 scenes. D: I didn't make a gannt chart like some of my friends but i wrote out the scenes i need to complete for each day in my exercise book...i'll take a picture and upload it when i have the time. :]

anyway, for interim 2, it was over a span of 2 days...mine was suppose to be on the 2nd day but i requested for the 1st day since i've kinda edited my animatics already. The feedback have been quite positive so it's quite a comfort to me. :] I'll need to look into making more contrast between the background and the objects in the foreground...

it was nice watching my other classmates work! i'm really looking forward to seeing the end product!

anyway till then...i shall slog my guts out and say goodbye to my life for the next weeks to come. :[

Interim 2

hey! it's been a while since i blogged...all of us have been busy with animation 2 production...but it's nearing the end of the block already so we had to update our classmates and lecturer on our progress for P3. The last time we had an interim was about 1, 2 weeks ago and we had to come up with storyboards, character design etc, which is shown below:

I edited my original storyboard quite a bit after recieveing some feedback (eg. The car should travel left to right so it feels like it's going somewhere instead of right to left, which feels like it's coming back from some place) and also cut off a number of scenes which were redundant. i changed the front of the story a little so that it would not be too long as well.

I wanted to put my storyboard up here but blogger is being horrible at the moment so i guess i shall not upload them. :b

This time round for interim 2, we had to show what we had done so far and so i showed my animatics, which is quite finalised (except for a few SFX which were left out). Some comments i got were:

- the newscaster's voice is too un-natural
- the main character's voice sound like an old man (LOL)
- the car in scene 18 should move faster

- there should be a slight pause before the lightning enters the frame in scene 18

- the lightning should hesitate a bit before striking the character at the end

But overall, i think the paceing and all was fine so yay! :] I'll probably have to make some changes and re-record the voice overs. Then later i'll come up with a production chart...hopefully i'll be able to complete P3! For some reason, i feel a little unmotivated and uninspired about school work. :[ Anyone feels the same way?

Anyway, i'll end off with the animatics i presented today. That's if i can upload it. :/

and apparently i can't. :[ man i hate blogging!

workload x100000 :[

today, we're told that by wednesday, we'll need storyboards, learning contract, research plan, references and character designs! I don't know how i am going to finish it all. D: on top of that theres animation1 work and i think my wkends are going to be mostly taken up by other things. oh well. I guess it'll come down to good time management and planning of my time. I think the next 2 months is probably going to be really tough.

So far, i have not decided on the style yet. I personally like scribbly/messy line art but i don't think that it would appeal to children aged 6 to 12 yes? it seems more experimental. I want to try doing that but i'm not sure how to go about colouring if i were to choose the messy scribbly style. I'll probably have to find out how to do it or maybe find some other style which would suit my target audience.

sooo i'll go do some research now. Hopefully i can get inspired by something.

Questions!

For the 3rd day, we had to answers the same questions given to us yesterday for our own story ideas. I thought we had to come up with a powerpoint but we did not need to. there goes my slides. :[


Anyway, here are the answers.

1. Who are you telling the story for (primary audience)?

Children age 6 to 12

2. What reaction do you want?

- Laughter

- Sympathy for the character

3. Is the narrative omniscient (all seeing) or restrictive (viewed from a single perspective)?(If the narrative is restrictive, whose viewpoint are you using?)

Narrative omniscient (all seeing)

4. List the important events of the story.

- Character always get struck by lightning
- Character tries several ways to avoid getting struck but still ends up getting struck.
- Character gets fed up and hatched up a plan to leave his town for a sunny place.
- Finally saves enough money
- Travels to new sunny town (lightning following behind him without him knowing)
- Is finally happy/relieved but still got struck at the end.

5. Which aspects of the setting of the story are important (time of day… location… period of history…) and how do you intend to establish these important elements?

Weather/location
Florida: highest number of thunderstorms
-Use of thunder sfx, lightning in the background, rain, wind howling, gloomy colours etc.
Rhode Island: lowest annual rainfall
-Use of nature sounds (birds chirping etc.) and bright colours

Period of time
- Modern
- Incorporate modern technology like hand phones etc.

6. What traits of the characters in your story are important and how do you intend to establish these traits?

Careful
-Always looking out for lightning
Unlucky
-Always getting struck by lightning no matter how many precautions he takes.
Weak/pitiful
-appearance: nerdy, scrawny, innocent

7. In what order are the important events (step 4 above) covered? Is it a strictly linear sequence of events in time, or does the story contain any flashbacks or other interruptions to the sequence of events?

Strictly linear sequence of event in time

8. How does the story flow, does the pace change? Does it contain a surprise? Consider your answers to 1 and 2 above when making your response.

Flow is inconsistent as there are elements of surprise when struck by lightning throughout the story.

9. How will you use sound to help all your responses to 5-8 above?

- Weather sounds to establish the environment/ weather
- Quirky music to keep animation light hearted for children
- Loud trumpet/orchestra music when lightning strikes (old cartoon style)

10. Does your story need dialog? (write out the dialog)

No dialogue, except for the occasional “ahh!” and “not again!”

yea...that's it.

Project 3

This blog is for my course module "project 3". It's for me to update my lecturers and friends on my journey and process in this 2 months. It's sort of like a production diary.

For the first day, we were put into random groups, although it is an individual project. Each group was given a random scenerio and a set of questions to answer and make a powerpoint to present to the class. I got put into a group with raj, wendy, honey and dion. Our group had a scenerio of a rabbit jumping on a gun and accidentally shooting a rabbit hunter. My group adapted the scenerio and turned it into a story where the protegonist (the rabbit) plots to take it's revenge on the hunter who killed all his friends and family in the forest.

We presented our powerpoint and got some critism. The general feedback was that we did not add in details and we were not really answering the questions as we only put some words to describe our idea. For example, we only describe the character as "pompous" but we did not elaborate how we were going to show that character trait. Some other groups got some feedback as well. I think it was quite a good session as we all got to learn from the different feedbacks.

For the second day, we had to prepare 3 weird stories we found from the internet. We had to share these stories with our groupmates and after that, we had to try and remember all their stories as we have to tell the whole class each other's stories. Some of the stories were really interesting and funny while some were a bit sad and morbid. It was rather entertaining while searching all these weird stories. It's amazing how people can do such weird things!

The three stories i got was one about people having a keyboard throwing competition: http://www.en.rian.ru/russia/20090415/121134594.html

Another was about a dude getting struck by lightning out of nowhere on a sunny day:
http://www.forteantimes.com/strangedays/strangedeaths/960/bolt_from_the_blue.html

and the third was about some old man who grew horns on his head after thinking excessively of wanting one:
http://www.forteantimes.com/strangedays/medicalbag/535/horny_old_man.html

I ended up picking the 2nd story, the one about the guy getting struck by lightning. I thought it was quite funny (yes i am pretty sadistic) so i chose it.

But however, the scenerio was quite short so i had to think up of a story to extend it. After thinking for a while, I came up with this rough story:

An unlucky guy gets stuck up lightning upteen times in his hometown, Tampa, Florida, which happens to be an area which has the most thunderstorms in a year. He tried all ways to avoid the lightnings and took necessary precautions but he still got struck by lightning anyway. Fed up, he hatched up a plan to get away from his hometown and escape to a sunny state.
Finally, after years of saving, he had enough money to move to Rhode islamd. He thought he was finally saved and was relieved. But his happiness was short lived...
The lightning, miles away followed him all the way to his new home and struck him. He could not escape the LIGHTNING! *dramatic music*

yeaaa...hmmm. That is roughly what i might be doing for P3. There's still quite alot to consider though. I'm not sure what style i should go for yet and if the style/story can be understood by children etc. so i guess i'll sleep on it. :]