Temporary Solace

Submitted. Now comes the waiting...

I just finished season 3 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It amazes me how much of this show I didn’t appreciate when I was sixteen. It’s sooooo good.

I think Joss Whedon’s problem is marketable premises. Ten years ago, you never would have convinced anyone who wasn’t a regular viewer or a fifteen-year-old girl to watch this show. Today, Buffy and Angel are regarded critically as some of the best stuff ever on TV and even a decade later, it’s not hard to see why. These shows were doing season arcs, character development, long-spanning mysteries, and grand plans before The Sopranos or Lost or any of the big favorite serial shows were a glimmer in anyone’s eye. I know Buffy’s hardly the first but it came along years after this kind of television storytelling fell out of favor and I don’t think we’d have the shows we do now without it.

But go back to me, fifteen years old. I was watching the show. Mostly digging it, though the subtext blew right past me. I was in love with cheesy horror, still am, and Buffy filled the hole The X Files left. But… would I admit to it? Saying you liked Buffy, you might as well have said you liked My Little Pony for all the difference it made to anyone not watching. This was back in the early high school years, before I figured out how little such a thing actually mattered but, what can I tell you, I was dumb.

Joss, man, you’ve really got the writing thing down. No doubt. I can’t wait for Dollhouse. But for the sake of keeping a show on the air, you might want to look into crime scene investigation or boring teenagers falling in love somewhere in California. And hell, it doesn’t have to be all bad. Lost hits you with the most insipid idea for a show ever, people stuck on an island, but it’s best thing going right now. Basically, what I’m getting at is what I’m always getting at: People are afraid of new and interesting things. You have to trick them into liking something good.

The squid is now a pale purple that looks close to the original shade of pink when light hits it directly. I think this is actually a little bit closer to my original conception of it, as it is now semi-translucent. I’m also much happier with the “suckers” on the undersides of the tentacles, which are now darker and contrast better.

No screens yet but I am re-rendering my turnarounds, as well as working on a walk cycle as we speak.

How’s that for a happy medium?

Animation... soon.

Slow Motion Baby Laugh


I couldn't finish this. I was terrified that my torso would rip in half from the exertion.

CFZ just put the logo I worked on for them a few months back up on YouTube. Now that it's public, I think it's okay to show it.



No sound effects, unfortunately. This project was more my "proving grounds" than anything and we'll probably be going back to make alterations later. If I did this now, I would do it extremely differently.

Despite being way behind on my Scud film, an unfortunate situation I couldn't really avoid because I need to make a living, I am really excited about the way Jeff is shaping up. So excited, in fact, that I have to work very hard not to jump in here and show you every bit of progress. I would like for this character to not be seen until completely finished. I'll just say that I've gotten very close to the book and beyond. I realized I was in a unique position to add my own details, that the character would actually suffer without them, because what works on the page in 2D doesn't necessarily work in 3D. So she's got a wool sweater and reflective plugs and dirty teeth and this really nasty green/brown frog skin and it's just looking... fucking cool and insane.

So, to hold myself over, here's a snapshot of the rig, just the rig, as of now:



It's the most complicated system I've ever done. Trying something new with a stretchy spine. And this is really just a fun geek thing for me but I found out how to blend full kinematics and inverse kinematics, meaning I have a lot more freedom in how I can animate the arms. Used to be I had to control almost all of the movements through the wrists, which is great most of the time but bad for long arcs and walk cycles. I can now switch to controlling the arm from the elbow or shoulder at will. It's a dumb little thing but I'm excited about it and might integrate it into the Scud model.

Arms aren't quite finished yet. Need stretch bones for the belt holding the squid to her chest, bones for the mouths and tongues, and I still need to set up the squid to squash and stretch with the main spine and come up with a tentacle system. I have no idea how I'm going to do either of those.

Christ only knows when this character will actually be finished. The modeling and texturing is all set but this rig is just... compared to everything else I've done, it's kind of a milestone. And now I don't want to rush through it because I've got something really good going here that all of my future animation can benefit from.

Expect the short to be scaled back considerably. But that's okay because I would rather produce one minute of great animation than three minutes of crap. I think I'll probably continue work on the film even after the competition ends.

They might as well just cancel YouTube now. It's hit its peak.

I really hate it when I'm working on something and I have this rare moment of clarity where I realize that everything I've done in the last hour or so is a complete fucking abortion. That I've taken something that was once good and completely fucked it up and have to start over.

Gonna be a long night.

Lost was pretty awesome. My hatred for Grey's Anatomy, however, is now firmly cemented. Two weeks until the finale... man, fuck that show.

I looked and felt like shit but I knew if I didn't tape the thing last night, I'd never do it. Some new bits of animations wedged between my ramblings and if you watch to the end, you get to see me embarrass myself.

http://www.livevideo.com/liveshow/riskdamage

Go to the link up there, click on the archives and open up the "2008-05-13 20:38:32" link. There's about fifteen minutes of stuff that you may or may not be able to scroll through before I finally get through to ask my question. The lag between the show and Skype and everything made it really tough to have a conversation so there's a lot of "umms" and pauses but I asked if Jeff had boobs. I'm working on her now and you never really get a good view of her body because she's got an octopus strapped to her chest but I was pretty sure she had some titties under that sweater. Apparently, there are four. So it comes off like a goofy question and I really would have rather asked my original question about whether we'd ever see Scud in other media but the answer was actually really helpful. He and the other guys on the show complimented me on my work and that was that. Pretty cool.

Got a new job today after about a month of silence. Told them I'd have the character finished in two weeks. I'm pretty confident that I can do that. Them, not so much, I don't think. The first character took forever because I was sending samples of every little thing I got finished every day and then I'd get the revisions and go back and fix the problems when I should have been moving on to the next thing and it really threw off the process. It made sense at the time but it turned out to be completely inefficient. This time, I'm only sending samples every time I hit a milestone. Finished model, finished textures, finished poses, etc. Should be easier to manage revisions from there. I'd like to have the base character with textures finished by the end of the week and deal with revisions and posing next week. Between that and Jeff, I'm gonna be pretty busy.

I don't know if I'm gonna tape my vlog tonight. Kinda burnt out. Whatever the case, I want to get it up by tomorrow.

Been playing around with Wordpress. I liked it enough that I was seriously considering dropping the old website altogether.

Didn't take long for me to hit a snag. I can't do a lot of the advanced HTML I had on my old site and if I want to make the page width bigger to accommodate art and videos, I have to edit the CSS, and if I want to edit the CSS, I have to pay for it.

Certainly explains why all the free templates are more narrow than, uh, every other website on the Internet.

It's not an expensive upgrade but still, it's a bitch. If I get it, I want to be damn sure I'm hanging onto this blog. I don't really know right now. I love its layout and features but there are countless other alternatives that will let me edit my CSS for free. Make me pay for storage and a domain. Don't make me pay for shit even Livejournal lets me do.

Page here: http://neuropolis.wordpress.com/ It's pretty barren. I like the navigation a lot though.

Maybe downloading the software itself will give me a little more control. I dunno.

Original Scud Logo


My Scud Logo

Roundhead's finished rigging. Spent the day on a 3D animated Scud logo that's shaping up really nicely. Want to start Jeff tomorrow. I'm supposed to have work coming in on Monday so the next few weeks are going to be very challenging. Should have a vlog up by Monday or Tuesday.

I'm planning to be on "Almost Every Tuesday," this live Internet series where they're interviewing Rob Schrab. Gonna try to get in there and ask a question.

I still haven't started building sets. Most of them will be relatively easy but the factory set where most of the main action takes place is very intimidating. I accounted for character building, animation, and rendering in my scheduling but I have no idea where I'm going to fit in set building.

Had a conversation with Alex Weitzman, voice of Scud, about a week ago that he gave me permission to post but I got busy and blah blah blah... I've got a render running right now so here it is:

How's the Scud work going?

I've been experimenting with Adobe Audition and music loops to come up with some really crazy music for it. Nothing good enough to save so far and probably not any time soon. I'd like to edit everything together and then treat it like a score. So, run the movie straight from Audition and create the music on the fly. I think that would be really cool. I'm also looking for good metal strikes, like in the Aliens theme, Terminator 2 theme, Invader Zim soundtrack... Can't find any. Where the hell do you think those come from?

Unfortunately, I don't particularly know the best places to look for sound effects, but I don't doubt that there's probably some big sites out there with plenty of stuff to download for free. You might also look into videogame sites; lots of online game-making sites provide lots of sound effects.

Cool. I'll look into that. It doesn't seem like it should be a particularly difficult sound effect to find. It sounds like shit you'd hear in a scene with a blacksmith forging a sword or something.

The trick, of course, is getting enough sound effects so that you don't have the same sound every time metal hits metal.

It would be mainly for beats in music. So having just one is all I need. But it's gotta be just the right one.

Go here and listen to "In the Beginning." It's all over that one.

The more I think about the three-minute time limit, the more I can't imagine it's really possible to do all the scenes I want. I don't want to rush through it, potentially ruining dramatic moments, so I'm considering a three-minute version for the contest and a director's cut for me and for any potential venues.

Not a bad idea. Of course, the trick is whether you want to send both versions to Rob. I'd suggest sending him the three-minute version while just surrepitiously mentioning that you made a longer version, which will probably make him request the longer version of his own accord.

I would release the director's cut later on, most likely. I'll render out everything I need for the competition, edit that together, then worry about the rest later.

Oh, fine then, Mr. Lazy.

It isn't so much laziness as it is I think it might be mathematically impossible to render anything more than three minutes in a month. I still haven't figured out the size I'll be rendering with. 1080p is the dream but probably impossible. 720p is what I did my reel at and that's, like, sub-HD.

Most independent animators will go straight for 720x480 DV, whether 4:3 or 16:9, as it's easily converted to DVD. But these shaders have so much detail and I know this is something I'll want to keep forever and be able to display appropriately on an HDTV.

Sooo that's my condundrum. I was thinking maybe if I did 720p at 24 frames a second, that's a big size, but also six frames a second shaved off of what I usually do. All that, three minutes in a month or so, still very scary.

Rigging Roundhead now. Procrastinating, which is really dumb, because I want Jeff finished by the end of the month. It's just my least favorite part of the whole process.

The whole process is so technical to me that the patience you must have astounds me. I'm used to studying and analyzing words; the mathematical and technological work that is required for this work just blows my mind.

There isn't a hell of a lot of math involved, honestly, outside of physics simulators, of which I probably won't be doing too many for the final product. The rigs I do only involve pretty basic math, like rotating the hands at 90 degree angles and stuff.

I never really understood how people had the patience to memorize textbooks in high school so... I think I've just always been more naturally inclined towards stuff like this.

That's called "talent". When it's the thing you're meant for, it makes the most sense in the world, whereas so many other things wouldn't.

I've spoken to many people who can't fathom acting, where I find it one of the easiest and funnest things I've ever done. It helps to have a healthy sense of play (i.e., to be slightly afflicted with Peter Pan syndrome). I idolize children for their intensity and focus in play; as a kid, it takes practically no effort to play at being Spiderman or the Turtles and literally feel every bit of the stakes that such stories/characters come with.

I think it all comes down to the fact that I've always wanted to make movies. And I have a natural inclination towards action and camera angles and editing and visual storytelling. Animation just ended up being a tool towards reaching that end, because unlike in reality, shooting shit in my friend's garage, I have no limits, and if I hit a limit, there's always a way around it, but then I have to learn something first. I get better because inevitably, I'm forced to at some point. I have no problem sitting through 30-odd hours of DVD tutorials if I know it's leading to some goal.

Basically, I learned to animate so I could make movies.

I dreamed I was in a Takashi Miike movie.

So, you can imagine.

Did you know they cancelled 'Cheers'?

Yeah. Julie told me the other day.

I know all the people were played by actors and stuff and they all got new jobs.

Even so, it's like they all died for no reason.

Just turned away for a second and they were gone.

Everybody dies.

        - The Maxx