Week 13: 4713 Frames Later...

It is done. Well, at least a done as it can be right now. My final batch of corrections have been completed, the sound has been tweaked, all the scenes have been exported as .tif sequences, and the whole thing put back together in a final Adobe Premiere file for final export. What I'm doing right now is wrapping up loose ends. I'm posting this "final" version up to youtube on a private page and I'm going to invite a number of people to review the piece. Based on what they say I may or may not do some more last minute tweaking. You can take a look at it here:  I Hate Zombies - Final Cut 001

But, for all intent and purposes, it is done. Which is a really weird feeling. The end of a project - especially a large project like this one - always feels anti-climatic to me. When I finished my first film, I said that, "I was overcome with the roar of silence." Like I say, it's a weird feeling. But that's it. Nothing left to do now but turn it over to the critics and see what they say.


I'd say "stay tuned" at this point, but I don't think there is anything else left to say, except possibly, enjoy the film at the premiere! So long, and thanks for all the zombies.

Week 12: DONE!!! ...well, mostly...

I am incredibly happy to report that the primary animation for my short film, "I Hate Zombies" is complete. I'm pausing for a minute to re-read that last line. Holy crap! Seriously, there were points where I never thought I would get here. It's done. It's finished. The final version looks...well...maybe not so final.

I need to start tweaking.

 Even though the film is "done," it's not done. Not by a long shot. There are a lot of niggling little things that I need to go through and correct/fix/modify/what-have-you. This will take time - but - in this case I have time. One more week to be exact. So tonight I will go through the film with a fine toothed comb and take copious notes, then I'll start running through each After Effects scene and fix what I perceive as being wrong. Then, and only then, will it be done. Of course, it won't be done then either because I'll still have to export all the scenes as .tif sequences, import them back in to Premiere, and export them as a .mov file and other types of files necessary to create a DVD. Which means I'll also have to do artwork for a DVD, case, and booklet. Then I'll have to create a DVD menu and burn the whole thing to disc.

Wow...I still have my work cut out for me. Stay tuned.

Week 11: One

One. Just one. There can be only one. One is the lonliest number. Once singular sensation. One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic. One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. One good turn deserves another. We are all one. Just one. One.

If you haven't figured out by the rambling introduction to this blog entry, I am having a fixation with the number one right now. With good reason too: I have one - just one - more scene to animate for my film. "I Hate Zombies" is almost finished. You cannot even begin to image how I feel right now. I was so assured that this would be an abysmal failure at one point that I almost didn't continue. Now, there is merely a week's worth of work to do to complete the final rough cut of the film. Un-freaking-believable!!!

I could dance right now, I'm so happy!

Right. No time to rest on my laurals. I have to get right back to work because even though this will be done in a week, there is still a lot of tweaking I want to do. I want this to be a representation of my very best work. I want this to be something I can be proud of. I want this to be something that might just win at a film festival. I want this...to get me a job...

Stay tuned.

Week 10: What's Done, What's Left

Holy crap! I just completed the animation for scene 5! Not a really big thing you say? Well, let me tell you, this is the fifth of seven scenes that I have to do for this film - not including the opening and ending credits. That means I am five/seventh of the way done with this film. That means the light at the end of the tunnel I am seeing now is not a speeding locomotive coming to turn me into roadkill. Additionally, this is the first "connective" scene. In other words, this scene fits in-between two already completed scene - and guess what? IT FITS PERFECTLY!!! I'm not talking about it's length, but in terms of positioning of the character. I did have to tweak things in terms of exporting to get everything correct, but once all the scenes had the same setting applied to them, the film looked seamless. Which means that the film now runs complete from the beginning of scene 4 to the end of scene 7. On top of all this, I have completed the poster, the opening credits, and completed the music track - WOOT!!! Right, now I have to finish off scenes 1, 3, and the ending credits (which I will probably work on and complete in class tonight). You know what that means? There are only two more scenes left to animate.

Two more scenes. Deaus meus. Bohze moi. My god...it's full of stars...

Don't mind me, I'm having a moment. Stay tuned...

Week 9: If...

All right, if - and I do stress "IF" - this film finally gets completed, I have found some places to send it to for screening (some rather cool ones, BTW). Here is the list for consideration:

1.        Rochester International Film Festival – deadline February 1, 2011 (next year, maybe)

http://www.rochesterfilmfest.org/

2.       Ottawa International Animation Festival – deadline May 20, 2011

https://animationfestival.ca/index.php

3.       Spike and Mike’s Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation – Appears to have open submission

http://spikeandmike.com/sitepages/festival.php

4.       ASIFA-East – deadline February 8, 2011 (next year, maybe)

http://www.asifaeast.com/

5.       Buffalo International Film Festival – deadline June 30,2011

http://www.buffalofilmfest.com/

6.       Annecy  International Animated Film Festival – deadline February 1, 2011 (next year, maybe)

http://www.annecy.org/home

7.       SIGGRAPH Computer Animation Festival – deadline April 15, 2011

http://www.siggraph.org/s2011/for_submitters/computer-animation-festival

8.       Reel 13 – ongoing submissions

http://www.thirteen.org/sites/reel13/submit-short/

9.       Atlanta Shortfest Film Festival – late deadline May 31, 2011

http://www.festivalleague.com/animationattack.cfm

10.   Drunken Zombie Film Festival – deadline August 30^th, 2011

http://drunkenzombiefilmfestival.com/

11.   The Zombie Short Film Festival – deadline October 1, 2011

http://www.zombieshortfilmfestival.com/

I know this list seems all over the place, but I wanted to find some local (Buffalo and Rochester), some not so local (Atlanta), some internationally famous (Siggraph and Annecy), and some genre special (can you actually believe there is a "Drunken Zombie Film Festival?" And it's famous for finding distributors for the movies screened there!).

Making this list has helped to pump me up (especially finding the zombie film festivals). I think I might just actually get this thing finished after all.

Week 8: The End Of The World As I Know It

Once upon a time, there was a very famous writer, who when asked what his process for writing was said that, "it's very simply really, I just stare at a blank piece of paper until drops of blood appear on my forehead." I think that anyone who is familiar with the concept of creative process understands exactly what that author is talking about. I'm familiar with my own process and there comes a time - somewhere between half and two-thirds of the way towards completion - that drops of blood start to appear on my forehead. It's not a fun experience. In fact when I reach that point I will often come very close to scrapping the project and moving onto something new. New is exciting, new is fun, new is filled with promise, while old is dull, drab, painfully slow to progress and fraught with difficulty. My film "I Hate Zombies" has reached this point, in spades.  Not only do I question my ability as an animator and writer, but my abilities as an IT technician as well. Almost everything that can go wrong with this project has gone wrong:  lack of inspiration, frustration and "blanking out" in animating, a hard drive crash, hours of delays due to personal and family obligations, time stolen by work/another class/driving to and from home/work/school, and near fatal static charge on my thumb drive, lack of sleep, and a general panic attack. That having been said, I find that if I just grind on - regardless of the problems and my own emotions - I can complete the project, whatever it is. Usually, months later, I'll review the project and wonder how I actually did it. This film project is grinding right now and I'm feeling very burned out. I cannot honestly say that I will get it gone in time, but I will try. After all, there's always hope. Simply because it's the one thing we haven't figured out how to kill...yet. Hopefully I'll be able to look back on this in a few months and enjoy the fruits of my labors. Stay tuned...

Week 7: Scenes 6 And 7 Are Done...Mostly...

Oh my freaking god. I have finally finished working on scenes 6 and 7 - the final two scenes in my Sophomore film. It has taken me over three weeks to get to this point, and that is unbelievably frustrating. But they are done. Mostly. And by mostly I mean, they are done for a first past. I want to get the whole of the film done, so that I can go back - looking at it frame by frame - and see where the timing the good/bad/indifferent - and improve it. Of course that takes time, and as you can guess by my last blog entry, time is not on my side. Fortunately, next week is Spring Break. Ordinarily that wouldn't be a big thing since I work so much that days off from school are meaningless. But in this case I have worked a DOWOP day (Day Off Without Pay), my single vacation day this year, and my regular day off during the week into a pseudo vacation where I'm only working two full days during my time off from school. With luck this extra time will allow me to play catch up my film and any projects due in Animation III. What is probably won't allow me to do is relax, sleep in, catch up on fun things, and generally relax. I expect to be more stressed out by the time I come back from break, but for now, scenes 6 and and 7 are done. Mostly. That kind of gives me something to celebrate. More to come, stay tuned...

Week 6: Time, Or Lack Thereof...

Right. Just to be straight with you - and by you I mean anyone who happens to be reading this blog - this entry is nothing but a whining session. Turn away now if you don't want to hear it.

So, there are 168 hours in a week. I work 30 hours, which leaves 138. Remove school (8 hours) and you have 130. Travel time takes up another 9 hours, and morning prep along with lunches and dinners takes 14 leaving 109. Sleep - assuming 8 hours a night - removes another 56. Now, I'm supposed to put in 15 hours a week on my Sophomore film and the same amount (or more) on the projects I do for Animation III, so let's take out another 30 hours. Where are we at now?  23 hours. Not quite a day, and not to be had all at the same time. Spread over 7 days, this means I have roughly 3.5 hours of free time every day. Mind you, this doesn't include doing chores at home (especially shovelling the uneding amount of snow we have received this winter), or dealing with family (my sister needs a considerable amount of tech support and doesn't understand why I say no to her, which ends up angering my mother). I rarely see my wife nowadays since she's spending two whole days a week taking care of her father who is dying - and that doesn't include mental, moral, and emotional support that is necessary for that. So, basically I don't have time. That's incredibly frustrating for me, becasue I'm not doing half as good a job as I could doing. That makes me feel like I'm failing and I simply cannot stand that feeling. I'm angry, I'm frustrated, and I'm not sleeping much these days. Of course I'm not even calculating how much time it takes to write these bloody blog entries, but that's another story.

Will it get better? Well, the semester eventually does come to and end adn the projects will be over. Will I be happy about that? Maybe. It depends on how many compromises I have to make and just how good or bad I feel my final work will be.  Stay tuned...

Week 5: And We're Animating...

Yes, I have finally reached a point where I am animating. From my point of view, difficult to believe because of some of the things that happened this weekend (stress/anger level through the roof), but it is true. The first new shots to be animated for the film are scenes six and seven which comprise the end of the file (excluding credits). It's a moderately simple sequence except for one shot - the pull back/surprise reveal near the end of the film. It is a simple thing to create a pull back that turns into a surprise reveal on a storyboard, but animating it is quite a different thing. It was tricky to pull off - matching the motion two objects was tough enough, but part of the second object refused to become transparent and that was nearly an hour of time wasted - but it finally came together. So now the blocking for these scenes is done and I just have to go back and set up the puppet pins and do some proper animating. Hopefully that won't take very long, which in a way is kind of disappointing. All that stress filled set up for just a little bit of animating. Oh well...

In the mean time enjoy the first shot that was completed for the film (scene four) by clicking on the following: I Hate Zombies Scene 4 - come back next week for more!

Week 4: World Building

Once upon a time, I did a senior thesis project on world building. Fictional world building, that is. Literally, creating a believable universe from scratch. In the end, I made up 4 difference Earth’s that each diverged from the others through only a handful of decsions. Now, I’m faced with building a cartoon world filled with zombies and stick figure men and let me tell you, this kind of world building is a whole lot harder. I am now at the stage of production where I am creating assets for my film. Assets include, but are not limited to, props, actors, special effects, sets, and anything else that I need to make up my little world. Now, I only have to create 45 objects – that doesn’t sound like a lot. However, each of these are often made up of several smaller pieces. Each of these pieces needs to be replicated five times and subltly modified. After that, they need to be extracted separately in Photoshop and be saved as .pngs. Finally, they have to be imported into After Effects, compiled into boiling holds, combined further into the objects they were originally, rigged with puppet pin tools and then – and only then – can I start animating.

The animating is going to be cake. Getting there, well that’s another story entirely. Wish me luck. I have to get back to work now.

Week 3: Organization And A Few Other Notes

Hard to believe this is the third entry in this blog – time screams by – but it is February already. I’ve just spent the evening slogging through all the files I have and reorganizing them (and occasionally renaming them). Of course because of that I had to re-link all those lovely little files in their new homes to my main After Effects and Premier files. That took a bit of time…and re-rendering. However, now I can find everything with ease. This ultimately will make life a whole lot easier, especially when I start generating more asset files and animating scenes. Speaking of animating scenes, while I was waiting for that endless re-render I came up with a modification to my schedule. I think it’s going to be easier to create assets on a scene-by-scene basis and then animate the scene. Going with that idea, I’ve been about to rough out a rough order for the scenes to be completed (6, 7, 2, 5, 1, and 4 if I need to rework it). This makes creating this film feel a LOT less daunting than it did. So now I have to re-edit the animatic to tighten it up – it just runs too slowly. From there I have to shoot a reference video and make timing sheets for each of the scenes. Once all that’s done, it’s going to be time to get down to some serious animation.

Week 2: We're Going To Need A Bigger Pot Of Coffee

So here it is, week 2 – more specifically it’s 9:38pm on Thursday January 27, 2011 – and I’m already exhausted. So far this week I’ve created a production schedule, a budget, an assets list, converted my animatic to be a working reel, sent out feelers to the music department in hopes of finding someone to write and original soundtrack, organized the 1.1GBs of data I have currently for the project, and now I’m writing this blog entry. I also think I’ve just written one of the longest run-on sentenced that I’ve ever written, but that’s neither here nor there. I’m tired. No really, I’m bloody tired, and this is just the first full week. However, through the exhaustion I see a glimmer of hope:  the working reel looks and feels good to me. I think this is really going to be worth it.

I’m really beginning to think I made the right career choice here. Well, we’ll see – stay tuned.

Week 1: The Coming Zombie Apocalypse

So this is it – that start of my first animated film. I have fifteen weeks to take this from concept to completion, which sounds daunting. I’m going to be working thrirty hours a week at my regular job (I have bills to pay and a wife and cat to feed) which does really leave me with a lot of time to spare. However, I’m hopeful to average between twelve and fourteen hours a week. At least I hope so, I have other commitments in terms of friends, family, and one other class that I will also need to pay attention to. The primary time that I’ll have to work on this project will be weekends and – strangely – Tuesday afternoons. Weekends, of course, make perfect sense and there will be many lost to animating at home, but Tuesdays are free to due class scheduling and work. So I’ll be spending that day in lab cranking out animation. I’m hoping that will give me an edge in terms of completing it.

By the way, the film has the same title as the blog:  “I Hate Zombies.” It’s being produced in Adobe After Effects in a unique 2D effect that I’ve developed just for this project. I’m extremely comfortable with the software and the work flow for producing scenes. I’ve already produced a demo of one of the scenes in the film to rave responses (and I know that I can improve on the character animation immensely). So, in the end, after all the work I really feel confident that I’m going to have a very strong film that will not only be very received, but quite possibly get me a job.

Okay, so maybe I’m dreaming on that one. But hey, you never know