I'll finish burning the discs tonight before I sleep.
I need to go over the old discs and make sure I got everything I need.
Finish eyecatch loops and load them on to SD cards.
And finish the damn opening animation. Dammit!
Cry myself to sleep.
Yeah, that covers it.
Got that Kworld media player in. I may just use it at the show. Downloaded the firmware patch and the manual shows how to set it for auto repeat. Time for a field test?
Update: Katie called. Schedule is still wrong. Who knows? I'm going to go by what I was told.
Update to the update: Katie sez she was told it was an error. I wonder how many people will show up any way. I hope Bruce put up a sign.
It was a schedule error. There's no show on Friday night.
I'm sure something else will go wrong at some point. But I'm on auto pilot right now. I'll test my portable DVD players tonight, put fresh batteries in the remotes, grab the heavy duty extension cord and power squid, coil up the audio/video cables and set it by the door.
I still need to make the eyecatch. I think I'll use the clip from Highway the Hell, it's good and creepy and even better without the audio.
Katie? Where are you?
I'll pick up more candy tomorrow.
Bruce gave me his pencils for the Katie eyecatch, but I don't think I have time to finish it for the show. It'll have to go to the back of the line for now. Sorry Bruce. Sorry Katie.
And it looks like I may need to open the show with a GTFO to anybody expecting AMV. Damn kids.
I'm thinking I'll just refit Ceiling Cat Watches for the A-Kon Hell flier. Because I can't think of anything else right now.
Looks good. I'd like to make the background shape a halftone, but I'm not having much luck. Inkscape just doesn't like halftones. Let's try the Psychommu technique and see what happens. But the halftone doesn't seem to have the same visual impact of the trapezoid shape. Interesting. The halftone makes the shape indistinct. Without an edge to define it the area loses it's information. I may be able to use that somewhere.
3 days in May...
UPDATE: Turns out we're scheduled for Friday night, too. Make that 2 days to showtime. Crap. How do I get there?
Sonovabitch. Vimeo doesn't play back for shit. Frames are skipped every freakin' where. Dammit! Ok. It plays fine on the desktop. So, let's tweak the settings and try again. Reloading the file to Vimeo isn't working, so let's give them a different file. Ok, re-encoded the mov at 30fps with a keyframe every 8 frames (I just found out I could do that.) It's a bigger file, but it looks the same on the desktop. Vimeo's choking on the file, re-upping it. Ok, now it's looking better, but it's still skipping frames. Re-encoding and re-upping. Ok, it's not perfect, but it's better. Talk about annoying.
If you've never seen Marv Newland's Bambi Meets Godzilla then this will mean nothing to you. In this age of youTube I'd be surprised. After all, it's only been around since 1969. Here's the Wikipedia entry with a link to it on youTube: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bambi_Meets_Godzilla
I got the idea to do this while I was animating the Godzilla-esque monster attacking the city part of the Anime North video flier. So, I watched Bambi Meets Godzilla over and over and tried to break it down. This is my take on the original gag, and It's almost how I wanted it. Ideally I'd like to add more frames and slow down the title crawl to fit the music, but I'm outta time. It's gotta go up today or it's pointless.
You may notice that the animated dude isn't animated in my usual squigglevision. I'm not sure what they call this technique, but it's actually less frames then the squiggle line way. I'm drawing a frame and then holding it. I'm only actually animating between the held frames, so it looks like little bursts of movement. It looks like there's more animation then there actually is.
And the funny thing is it was easier to animate the dude then to animate the title crawl. The title crawl took three nights to figure out.
Well, that's it. Now to finish up the OtakuHELL/Mondo Inferno opening for next week's show. And then, who knows? I'm getting better and better with this, and I'd like to find something I can do to keep animating and get better and challenge myself. Because once I'm done with the Hell promos/OtakuHELL opening and bumpers I'm outta work. I'm out of a goal. So, what do I do? A music video? An animated video podcast? Something? What? No, not something major. No, I'm talking something I can use to work up to doing a serious shot at a short. Something to strengthen and stretch my animating skills. I need to develop this.
Despite this short not being perfect, I am kinda happy with it. I have a feeling of accomplishing and meeting a goal. And that's pretty good for now.
For the last month I've been going through video tapes and DVDs and downloads compiling a stack of clips and making DVDs. There are no, "Official Selections" yet. But there will be. I'll determine which clips will work best and which won't and start filling up my harddrive with clip after clip right up until the day of the show. Although I expect to have most of the show ready after Memorial Day Weekend. But I'm always adding and tweaking and re-ordering the set. And, in the end I'll know what I'll start with and what I'll end with and it'll be freeform in between. That's what works best for me.
Finish Bambi Meats tonight. Then, I don't know. Sleep?
No, I need to finish the OtakuHell op. Gotta think up some ideas for that. And I gotta find some sounds for it, too. Maybe start putting the sound into the cartoon early. I know. Not how I'm suppose to do it. But it could give me a better idea of where this is going.
Also need to put together the HG loop for Katie's contest. Crap. Seeqpod is still down. But this works. I'll just grab some thrusting and loop them together in vegas. What else do I need to make? Gotta make a list.
Yeah, there will be a cartoon today, sometime late tonight. It'll go live. Then I'll sleep.
I spent too much time last night trying to figure out how to make anaglyph 3d cartoons. I can make the left and the right view, but I don't know how to composite the two videos into one.
And it turns out that animated text is harder to read when it's rushing toward the camera.
I'm not even sure how to pronounce the name of the band. I had been looking for some Ska music I could use, but came up with this on my first pass through the search engine. Somebody let the Turks make another Star Trek movie!
Tonight we finish Bambi Meats! But first we gotta finish up that Anime Boston flier. And when I'm done with it I think I'll have to post a how to, because there are no tutorials for 3D comics out there. Sure, Ray Zone has tons of stuff about 3D comics but there's nothing about the actual method of making 3D comics. A little help here, please. Luckily there's enough bits and pieces of information floating around I can put it together, at least I hope it works. I don't have my 3D glasses handy.
Now that I think I've figured it out I think I could do a comic like this. Evil thoughts. And if I can work out how to composite the videos we're doing 3D at next year's Hell! Last night's test of the Moho anaglyph renders turned out to be a fake. Yeah, it's anaglyphic 3D, but it doesn't work with the camera, just the position on the Z scale. Maybe I was doing it wrong and transforming it, but I don't think that's what I was doing. In the end I think I'll have better luck just adding 2 cameras to Toom Boom and compositing the two videos together. I just need to find the software that'll let me do just that. Google sez Vegas can do just that. I guess I'll have to try that one out when I get some time.
Damn, I really gotta change that magenta to red. Ugh.
Not sure why this took so long to put together. I guess I spent too long finding the music. Of course, if I hadn't decided to change the whole thing when I was almost done It wouldn't have taken all that time to muck about with. In reflection, it only seems like it took too long to make. I suck.
Tonight, we dance!
I'm gonna try rendering uncompressed DV on the workbox, I bet I get a very different result then I do from the Averetec. I think the unanimated images look stronger in this test. So, that'll make it even faster to knock out tonight. But, I'd also like to look at Moho for it's anaglyphic stereo render, too.
When I started this one I wasn't really sure where I was going with it. Until I animated the "Report for Re-education" loop, and that's where the "Processing" segment came from. And yeah, I need to make an animated GIF of that part. I'll get to that. I wasn't really sure how to go about setting up that cycle. At what point do you start, since there really isn't a start. So, I just started and figured I'd know when I could loop the whole thing back to where I started. The part that threw me was the overlapping action, at the point where the Hellbilly steps into the Re-educator and a new Hellbilly steps into frame from off screen.
Hellbilly. Yeah, that works.
I'm thinking about doing an animated remake of the Zardoz trailer with a homemade scratch soundtrack. Heh.
Next up: Finish video fliers for Dave's show and Mike and Mike's 3D show. And possibly before those the Bambi Meats video flier. Fanime is moved to the end of the line for now. Because I've got no ideas for it, right now. Need to figure out what I'm gonna do for it. Maybe the Swine Fu LaFontaine gag? That could just work.
It goes on. I really need to get some rest this weekend. But I really need to work on the playlist and sub-titles for the show, too. *ugh* At least I'll have Memorial Day weekend before the show. I'll just have to lock myself in the Dancave for 3 days straight.
Tonight, we animate. We draw and edit and we make cartoons, dammit. In the damn Dancave. Without any interruptions. Dammit.
But first, I gotta get all this other crap outta the way. Then, I'm free.
UPDATE: I'm thinking I can take the bits I've animated for the Animazement show and doing something like the Zardoz trailer. I could even use the soundtrack from the Zardoz trailer for something like that.
Here I've got the "camera" on a peg and I'm trucking in (not zooming). Neat. And ripe for abuse. It looks like I could do all sorts of annoying camera moves with this if not held in check. But, hey, if you can't abuse it then it's just going to waste, right?
Got a couple ideas that I want to animate, so I hope I can finish them tonight.
Here's the process:
I get an idea
I animate it
I share it on the web
And sometimes after stage 2 I have to find music or sound for the animation, so there's that. But you can see that my production process is pretty simple. Not a lot of complicated stuff in there like design and development or storyboarding or complicated crap. Why? Simple. All that extra stuff gets between me and actually doing the animation. I could waste time scripting and storyboarding all this stuff or I could just do it. Doing wacky "camera" moves falls into that category of things to do instead of animating.
Haven't slept in my own bed in 4 days. It's starting to catch up with me. *groan*
Here's an animation cycle that's pegged. And it was ran through VirtualDub after a Cinepak render. Unfortunately there's no way to choose how to encode with Vegas. You're stuck with it's sucktastic settings. Which look good with live video, but lousy with animation.
It didn't even take a half hour. In fact it took longer to make the animated gif then it took to animate.
On the other hand, BambiMeats is almost done. All that's left is the punchline. And if I can figure out how to make the damn pegs work for the "credits" I can ape the original. I think a major part of what makes Marv Newland's gag work so effectively is the credit roll, which seems to be ignored by the folks who try to do or redux the short. The punchline is obvious, it's how the joke is told that makes the short so memorable.
I can tell that it means I'll be freakin' and tweakin' the timing of this one to make it work. Plus there's the post-production sound editing that'll take awhile, too. Face it, if all it was was drawing stuff to see it move I'd be done already. *moan*
Anime Hell 10-12am - Video Main SJCC Ballroom B Then on Sunday Ryan does Anime Hell Lounge from 10-12pm same location
UPDATE: I think I've figured out ToonSoomba's pegs, at least enough to make scrolling credits for BambiMeats. With any luck and a couple of hours I should have it done, save for the audio mixing. I need to get that chord, either a wav or mp3. Off to search freesound...this should work!
Found some decent ToomBoomba settings for avi. I'll try those Cinepak settings with Vegas.
Augh! Well. I guess that leaves me to do the Bambi Meets Anime Hell cartoon. Damn. I really want to go hog wild on this stuff, but I'm limited by the software.
Spent nearly 5 hours making buttons last night. So, I've got a few aches this morning. Gotta do it again tonight. Miles to go before I sleep...
At least after this I'll be able to get back to animating the Otaku Hell stuff.
It's interesting to see that the Central Hellfest cartoon is still getting a couple of hits each day. I'm guessing that folks visiting the Hellsite are checking it out. I guess I should upload it to YouTube, too. And...done.
Next, I wanna make promo cartoons for all the Labor Day Hellshows. Maybe a bunch of little ones or maybe one big one or maybe a bunch of little ones AND one big one. These types of cartoons are pretty quick to make, so that'll be good. And from now on all cartoons will be rendered in DVD resolution (or higher) and in quicktime. Because it looks good in quicktime, dammit!
I wanted to do a quick Swine Fu cartoon, but we'll see if I have time. I don't even know what I'd use for the soundtrack if I did it. I don't know that It'd need a voice over, but It'd need some sorta LaFontaine style music. Hmm. I wonder if Vegas has something I could use. Do I have the Cinescore plugin?
So, because of the Swine Flu thing they've canceled all the Cinco De Mayo type stuff around here. But you can still spread the love at FREE COMIC BOOK DAY!
