#midnightshowing

--- Opening Thoughts:

Here we reach the end of the story of this project; the final knot, which took so many threads to tie, yet seemed not long ago to be little more than a tangled mess.  This week, our group achieved more than what seemed achievable, given the time constrains and pressure. And although so much could have gone wrong, this was truly a very ‘right’ conclusion to an epic semester-long project. I’m so very, very thankful, and proud, of each and every member of our our group - without whom this film would never have been possible. And I’m honored to have been a part of what may very well be one of the finest films produced here in ACM Animation since its inception. I also would like to give a huge thanks to all the colorists who made the production pipeline go so much smoother and faster - sacrificing their own time and effort to be a part of something amazing! I also would like congratulate our terrific voice actor Justin Bendo, for his incredible work as the voice of Angel. And to our composer Joshua Namba, who breathed life and vigor into our film through his music.

--- Weekly Deliverables

For my work this past week, a lot has happened, as most of our group can probably agree to. It’s difficult to bring to memory every individual thing, but the core tasks were these: Coloring Sq13s6, a shot I originally roughed for. Although the final version would go on to have some major alterations to Angel, I’m happy to see it least one rough of Phantom I did pretty much stuck all the way to final:

Colored Sq13s16; took a heck of a long time even using pre-programmed inputs for the coloring process. But it turned out good, and due to me needing to use base layers for the characters, Gavin came up with an interesting blending mode for the Old Man which we can see in the final film:

For the next two shots I finished line from last week, plus color and shading for this week. They turned out pretty good I’d say:

We ran into some technical issues when it came to rendering out certain files, and one in particular that comes to mind is Sq9s16, as imaged below.

I don’t know how it was possible to even work on a file this large on Photoshop, with the hardware we have. It was so big that most of our group’s computers couldn’t even open it. Mine struggled big time to load it, let alone render it as an uncompressed .mov. I had to clear almost all my ram, and even then it crashed before finally managing to render it, which only took around 10 minutes (for one shot mind you,) and then uploading it which took a solid three and a half hours. 

This one file almost stopped our whole production. It was amazing, kind of hilarious, and a bit scary, but we managed to pull through. I added a clipping mask to the fire’s lineart to make it orange.

The next thing which ate up a lot of time and energy this week was sound. Basically, I expected have sound done in maybe 5 or 6 hours over the weekend. Turned out it required almost two full days to finalize. Me and Gavin met up to discuss corrections and adjustments, and after some last minute feedback, all the retiming work was done, and we got an incredible audio track. Even though it was a heavy tax on my very tight finals week schedule, I think having those two days to work on it really raised the fluidity and creativity to provide something almost of a remaster to the animatic audio track we’ve been using up to this point. The premiere file itself is kind of a convoluted mess:

Nevertheless, it gets the job done, and taught me a whole lot about sound editing and design over the course of the semester (except organizational skills.)

--- Last Reflections

This semester has been such a momentous one for so many reasons. If 320 taught me “how to work on animation,” then 420 taught me how to work on animation for real. The jump is so tangible, not necessarily in a “workload” sense (although that may be part of it) but more so as an appreciation for the art of animation itself as a collaborative medium, and a visually exploratory one.  I am much more aware now of every element that goes into a piece of work, and I think I can see the great value in attempting to discerning the purpose behind everything we see in Animation, as with any art piece. While it was easy to get away with seemingly arbitrary choices of shape, color, motion and such in the past, it has become especially necessary now to be deliberate in making choice, since the workload falls on someone else’s shoulders.

- Adjustments to the Process in the Future:

Not all of this is necessarily in my control, nor should this be held against anyone or any part of the film making process here, since after all we’re learning and exploring how to work in teams with new techniques. That being said, one thing I would aim to sharpen in the future is the pre-production estimates of workload times/levels, as well as the overall film length. I think I speak for most of us when I say that the film’s scope grew a lot over the course of the semester. And I’m not saying having a large or ambitious idea is bad - that’s my favorite kind of project! But it can become a bit of an issue when it grows to such a scope that we are having to recruit outside helpers and dedicate most or all of the 24 hours we have in a day to be able to manage finishing on time. Basically, just have a more rigid plan from the start, and be very cautious towards anything that adds unnecessary levels of complexity. That’s something that can be addressed at the animatic stage. Beyond that, being more cautious with the estimates of time and energy requirements per shot would help. I noticed that some (or maybe most) of the shots required quite a bit more time than originally intended to be roughed, lined, colored, and shaded. That’s not taking into consideration all the revisions they may go through as they are reviewed, given feedback, and trade hands between group members. Production schedule-wise, it’s much better to undershoot I think, and have a lot of extra time to hammer out details, maybe refine shots, and properly apply feedback versus feeling the dread of being behind schedule and cutting years from your life due to the amount of sleep lost to try and catch up. A general rule of thumb is that specificity helps. Despite how meticulously we planned, we would still occasionally run into issues such as what color a prop might be, or how the shading might change between environments. Or another example might be how a character’s physical attributes such as stretchiness might change or remain consistent throughout the film. Although these were minor things that got addressed in the end, baring those details in mind in the future would be of great help I think.

- Words of Advice to Future 420 Students

You have three options: either become a cyborg, learn to hate sleep, or adapt to being powered by copious amounts of coffee every day. As for me, I took something from all three of those this semester. Joking aside, these are some general pointers I would give to incoming 420 students: -Choose your story and teammates carefully: This semester can be as fun (or unfun) as you make it to be. No matter what though, the people you have at your side are the people you’re stuck with. Hopefully by this point in the major you would be familiar with your teammates and their individual strengths and quirks, so if you’re having trouble picking a team in the beginning, go with the people you feel are the most self-determined, hard working, and whom you can adapt to their mold (not necessarily vice versa.) If you hate your team, you will hate your semester. But if you love your team, it doesn’t matter how tough the work gets, because you can still come to class with a smile (a very dead inside smile.)

-Come in with a strong concept: Even if your idea doesn’t get picked, being able to receive other people’s ideas and represent them faithfully is vital to the overall success of the production. The better you understand the idea you are working on, the better prepared you will be to make it a reality. Also, simple designs and ideas tend to get picked more often. Keep that in mind when developing your idea.

-Diversity is a strength: Having a broad skillset on your crew is incredibly important. Ideally, everyone can functionally perform any given task on the production. But having specialists assigned certain specific tasks is very helpful. It serves to balance the workload more or less equally among members based on their strengths, and the result is a product where you have good work reflected in all aspects of the film.

-Be prepared to change your schedule: Unless your group’s idea is ridiculously simple, chances are you will be losing sleep, possible questioning your choice of major, and being forced to change both when and how you are available to people and things you care about in the world outside the borders of your computer screen. It is not a joke to say that this course can affect your health, your diet, and maybe even the way you view other people - or even yourself! If done properly, this class should challenge you in the way you live and handle work. It should force you to adapt to an animator’s lifestyle. Not that you need to forsake life to be an animator necessarily, but to give you a taste of what the industry may demand of you through certain seasons of life.

-Be able to take a joke: By the end of the project, you’re going to be throwing shots at each other left and right. It is a crazy, whacky time - and you may find yourself forgetting this is all for a school project. Learn to enjoy acknowledging your own weaknesses, and have fun pointing out the flaws in others, when its appropriate. This makes the experience not only more enjoyable, but in a strange, ironic way it makes us become comfortable with our shortcomings, and enables/pushes each other to genuinely improve our skills, and ultimately create a better product.

-Communication is key: You need to keep up with your group. Period. If you are our of the loop for even a day, it can throw things off big time. Setup a chat group via text, setup a Discord server, or find some other means to talk to one another that is reliable. Even if you don’t always feel like chatting, just be ready when somebody needs you (which will happen quite a lot.) Also, having a system of file sharing such as Google Drive is indispensable. You may find yourself keeping certain tabs open and rarely closing them, just to check for updates and be able to send/receive files when you need them. 

-Practice makes perfect: I don’t care how good or bad you think you are at animating up till this point; if you do your best in this class, you will grow. You may find yourself drawing in a different art style than you’re used to, and implementing work methods and software that you’ve never used before. And that’s wonderful! Be open to experimenting and exploring new styles of work. I’ve found that is a big part of what makes animation enjoyable and inexhaustible. Just when you feel like you’re set in your ways, the moment you step into something new, it’s a whole other world, and you just might find something you like about it.That opens the door to not only other ways of being creative, but on a practical level, makes you a much more viable component to a team when being considered for hiring. Don’t let the early hardships bog you down; with time and practice, there’s nothing you can’t do. -- Well that pretty much wraps up this last blog post and the semester for 420. The experience has been life altering, no joke. I have no regrets, and I’m so thankful to have had the chance to work so closely with everyone. In my experience, this class has been the difference between being an animation student and becoming a professional animator. Even though it was as a real challenge emotionally and physically, I would take the class again if I could, and I very much look forward to working with you all - my fellow animators - in our continuing classes, as well as our careers beyond. You all have been my family here while I’ve been without one since moving all the way out here for school.

Despite feeling spread thin between classes, I would say this week has been a fairly productive one. I finally caught up with all my final line work due up to this week! Woot! So I’m basically back on track and ready to hammer out the rest of the assigned shots, maybe even ahead of schedule. Things are looking up now. Even though there’s still a LOT left to do, I think our group is starting to piece together the path to completion for the next two weeks. Here’s the shots I lined this week:

I also did the color for this hallway shot. A cool idea I had that helped speed up the coloring process tremendously is that, using an old Xbox 360 controller and a key mapping software, I was basically able to program a button on my controller to perform all the keyboard functions in Photoshop for coloring in their exact sequence, at the highest speed physically possible. So essentially all I had to do is point my mouse on the part I want to color, hold the button, and keep the mouse on the section I want to color. As long as I did that, the computer would automatically go frame by frame and perform all the operations necessary. (Evidently, laziness can be a powerful motivator for innovation.) That turned what would have normally been five or more hours of highly concentrated color work into a relaxed two hour maintenance job. Check it out:

This week has been another extremely busy one. But in spite of that, I and the rest of our group have done a great job I think at getting stuff done. We’re almost completely now on track with our schedule it seems. I focused pretty much exclusively one lineart for the whole week, and I think the results are pretty good. Check it out:

Our time on this project is fast nearing its end. I find myself to never be lacking words to describe how busy this semester is. Needless to say, this was another tough week. I admit that I’m not as far along on final line work and color as I need to be. Nevertheless, I believe I can catch up.  After this week I will be finished with my music video for ACM318, which is currently the largest drain on my productivity for this project. I foresee more open windows for work time in the weeks ahead, so I’m relying on those to compensate for the bumps in productivity I’ve been facing last few weeks. What I have for this week is nothing too amazing, but it’s something. First, the shot of Angel climbing up the ladder fully in color with shading and lighting:

Next, I have Kong fully cropped. This took a bit longer than I hoped, because there were a lot of artifacts that needed to be cleaned and removed. All the wires used for manipulating his joints needed to be manually painted out, and in some instances I had to reconstruct full parts of his body. But I think the result is pretty good:

Wow, another busy week. Definitely fully of a lot of trial and error. I am still behind by about a week on rough, so I may be moved to final to pick up the pace. Also feeling overwhelmed with the stress from other classes on top of this, but if I move to line and color I think I could get a lot more done since it’s a much faster work flow.  The biggest win by far this week is that Kong filming was completed, and we now have at least a rough timing layout for him. Props go out to Jared and Bobby for putting in the back-breaking labor to bring him to life. Jayme helped tremendously in that regard as well, in addition to operating the camera. And in spite of many hardships this week, Gavin did a fantastic job at directing the shot and keeping composure throughout the process (with all of its drawbacks.) And I tried to give some good pointers as well concerning the green screen/ blue screen VFX process. Here’s the rough timing:

Next in line, I decided to turn back to the power of 3D to help make rough faster. So for the shot with the projector falling, I modeled and animated the shot using stepped tangents in Maya, and I think it actually turned out really well:

All that’s left basically is line and color, plus a few effect overlays for the glowing projector lens.

Last major thing for this week is one additional roughed shot of the Phantom and Angel. To my surprise, I really enjoyed roughing the Phantom. He feels a lot looser, and has a lot more sharp edges and folds, which is far more characteristic of my own art style. Check it out:

I used yellow outline to help the characters stick out from the background in this instance. The green is for Angel’s popcorn bag.

Another uber busy week, surprise surprise. Feels like it’s been three weeks non-stop of midterms, and yet the end of the semester is already just on the horizon. Where does the time go? In any case, I unfortunately can’t say I’ve caught up with all my assignments. Much of my time was spent going back and redoing the second cola wave shot, at the request of the Director. It consumed much of the work time I would have spent on other shots, but I bear that responsibility. I guess it goes to show that our group prioritizes quality over quantity:

As you may note, the timing of the hand coming down was reworked to be shorter, and the wave is an entirely different type of wave. I guess what I would call and “oceanic” or “splashy” wave, as opposed to the kind of crude “sliding wall” of cola I originally had.

Next, I went back and changed/added to the shot of Angel’s fear reaction. Now he looks left, then right. I may need rework it as well, since there are a couple proportion issues:

As I continue roughing, I’m starting to get more used to drawing Angel. I admit, it is still a challenge for me, since he is stylistically and proportionately very different from what I’m used to. But I think as I continue watching our team’s rough animation, and as I practice (especially after trying out final line work,) I’m noticing tiny little quirks that help me understand more in-depth how the character looks, feels, and moves.

I think that’s reflected in the next two shots I did - first is Angel watching the wave as it spills, and the second is his scream and running away from it:

Lastly for this week, as previously mentioned, our group met together on Monday, and Gavin walked us through how to do final line art. He created some helpful tutorials on the Google Drive for us to keep on track as we work on our own. Here’s Gavin’s shot that I did final line art for during the session:

Like most of our group it seems, this week was a busy and distracted one for me. But I tried to muster as much time as I could to finishing. I completed the slow motion shot of the cola wave which you can check out here: 

I’ve also began roughing a shot with Angel’s reaction, and even though I haven’t had a lot of time to refine it, it’s been a blast! I’ve been so excited to start roughing Angel, and I think its turning out pretty well so far: