CAT essay

The Brief: 1.) Compare and contrast the aesthetic qualities of early animated films from 1920 to 1940s with animated films from 1980 to 2012. Support your claims with relevant examples and citations or references from relevant literature. 2000 words.

I seem to have ambition, but horrible at figuring out how to carry them out. For this essay I thought I'd write about Japanese animation instead of western ones, but can't come up with a decent hypothesis to support with all the material I've gathered so far.

[edit]

So the research and determining which book to grab out of the library before it closes for Christmas was about 4 days. Then I got lazy for the next week or so, just watching anime-I-mean-research, spamming 5 different series. One of them actually was of use to this essay so I won't say all that time was lost. And, hey, it was Christmas break so I can take a break yeah? Alright, after that I spent another 2, 3 days looking through online ebook and ejournal and various online articles. After that it was 4 days of painful writing to finally get a 2000 words essay that kind of supports me thesis.

Conclusion: 2k word essay, almost 2 weeks work doing nothing else but the essay.

Billy Bob log 7

This assignment was a nightmare. Bouncing Balls was a picnic in the park in comparison. There was simply no time. I was so stressed I didn't even have enough spare thoughts to document screenshot and whatnot along the progress. Just jot down mistakes and stuff for later reference.

So these are the pieces of crud I ended up with 6 hours before deadline, with a near-dead, sleep-deprived, almost-30 brain.

Billy Bob log 6

All these are due tomorrow at noon. I still have to render both animations, write up the production diary and self reflection report, burn both animation and scripting, and test them. This is worse than Bouncing Balls. If I pass it'll be great, if not I'll just have to make up the lacking grade next term.

MA3D Life log 3

I just missed my Taekwondo yellow belt qualification exam because I'm dying to try and get my Billy Bob animation to a presentable state as a whole. If I really want to do more than just animating in this program, I will need to learn ruthlessly efficient time management. I need to be a remorseless dictator to my minutes.

Billy Bob log 5

Over break must learn cinematography, storyboard, and maybe lighting. Learn or die.

Merzhad is good with timing and camera angle, and had I asked his help sooner, I'd not be restarting the obstacle animation 2 days... 3 days? No 2 days in total hours minus lectures and shower, before deadline. Tears. This assignment really flopped for me, and I need to figure out why. Other than not having any idea on camera angle and storyboard. Over complication of setting (slope, lining up fences manually, not asking for enough peer input, ...what else...)

Also been working with death face due to stress, need to drink more whiskey and loosen up. Bought Jack Daniel Honey, smells smoother than classic.

Billy Bob log 4.2

RMB on Kinovea = Track path of, eg, hand or ankle, for duration of footage. Very useful. Y no know b4?!?!!?

Fix loop feet position.

Fix Billy Bob texture. Make texture for all scene elements. Lights.

Billy Bob log 4

Test out every handle on block animation first before settling into the full animation.

Must hammer out solid storyboard. Also do fast but intense research in as short time as possible

Moving pivot point around temporarily or permanently: LINK. To set pivot point to center of geometry go to MCP on right, Transform, Move Center to Vertices or Bounding Box.

MA3D log 1

I'm stressing out a lot over Billy Bob project not going anywhere and running out of time. Last night I had a nightmare about being back on the assembly floor, but all the tools and parts have changed, and they're even more expensive now each part. And I screwed up an entire batch because everything has changed during the time I was gone trying to make this master degree work, but failed, hence back on the assembly floor.

Billy Bob log 3

When rotation function can be done either in the rig or with XSI's rotation (C) tool, use 1 or the other, never mix. Rig rot func.

Feet pose -> feet/knee position inward -> adjust body height -> torso twist -> shoulder twist ->

Never, ever, delete the last frame of a loop, and paste a copy of the first frame, after you have touched any of the handle on the last frame. If you can't remember if you did or not, just NEVER delete your last frame after splining from stepped. FUCKING NEVER.

I actually drank to relieve stress. Jack Daniels.

Billy Bob log 2

My gods... it's just a simple running cycle, but why can't I get it to look right?!

Made a lot of mistakes, one of them being reluctant to get a tutor/lecturer to critique what I have so far because I think it's not enough to look at. That would've save me hours of messing around alone. Gotta keep asking myself, "What's more important? Your learning, or your pride?" On a small plus side, after hearing my report of problems, he said I did a pretty good job cleaning the mess up, but not good enough to avoid starting over.

• Mistake 1: Did not start by moving/rotating hips. Started with legs then feet.
• Mistake 2: Adjusted frame number in Dope Sheet but only scaled the second half, for unfathomable reason. End up with lots of x.5 frames.
• Mistake 3: Did not get tutor to critique.
• Mistake 4: ... damn, I forgot just now.

Tutor/lecturer (y'know, we just call 'em professors in the U.S., but nooooo, not the English. They have many names.) recommended approach:

• Set translation key frames across floor (z-axis in my case) using that anchor thing.
• Set all in Stepped mode in F-Curve.
• Pose hip movement and rotation.
• Pose legs only.
• Pose "shoulder" rotation.
• Remove animation from that anchor thing, thus resetting everything back to origin point, but keeping animation on everything.
• Render to Flipbook and cross reference time and pace against reference videos, and calculate frame range for the run speed I want.
• Scale in Ripple mode in Dope Sheet, still in Stepped mode, to frame range of my choice.
• Spline, start refining from the hip out, doing feet, and eyes and eyebrows last.

Unrelated-ly, doing this project made me found out what C Walk is, and now I really want to learn them. I like the music. It looks cool and really fun. Unlike break dancing, I don't have to use my wrist and hands in C Walk, thus protecting them from harm, which is important because I need my hands not only for work, trade, leisure, but also lots of other, important stuff. What stuff? Stuff inappropriate for scholastic progress log blog.

You dirty, dirty minded people.....

...

Haven't been able to wake up as early as I should, can, want to. 8:20 isn't early when I slept at 1am. I need to keep sleep down to 6 hours only.

Python scripting

It's taking rather depressingly long to do these python assignments that are basically fill-in-the-blanks scripting. The fact that I zoned out during 1 of the class when he was going over random, math, and elif only added to this confusion and time consumed. But I got creative with the display messages. Fueled by a whispering thoughts of murdering something out of frustration.

It took me almost 11 hours to finish this little scripting assignment. Granted there were lots of small breaks, eating, and some talking to people, but still. That's a lot of time. I don't hate it, python scripting is very fascinating and even beautiful when I finally understood how it's doing what it does. Like magic almost.