Thursday. "phone is ringin i dont wanna answer"

Hello people reading this,

I swear, I nearly cried when Alan said that Character Design was going to be in 3d. Ok, I know, the demand for 3d animators are higher, but like....not when we're doing p3 at the same time!! I cried for the first time in my poly life when we were doing p2 and animation2 (3d)......sigh.....

I had to change my Gantt Chart a second time and I know that THERE IS NOOOOO TIMEEE. Hello eyebags, mygosh. It's really sucky because class is in the morning, I'm not a big fan of the morning sun. I sound like I'm complaining here, which is kinda bad, I feel annoyed at myself.

So far, I've colored my first few scenes, it's going at a really really really slow pace. Ok, that's partly because I've been procrastinating; I find it so hard to concentrate lately. And the shifting from one class to another is such a pain. Maybe I should just move to the 2d lab at 12. It just...ruins mah groove and throws my mojo~.....damn. and I'm STILL PMS-ing!!!! like omg, please just move on witht the cycle already damnit. sigh....and crushes get old and boring when they ignore you..sigh.....

anyway, I think, the atmosphere in the animation room is quite nice...with the exception of some spaces. but er, it's quite funny at any point of time and really friendly. I think this comes from Amanda's "lets all learn and work together" attitude. Every individual is helping the other out. I mean "ahem" compare with the video students...well, those that I hear from, there just seems to be so much animosity amongs the groups and individuals alike..so sad. O well

Thursday. Vegas Skies

Dear blog,
I need a new song to be stuck in my head.

So, presentation just ended; only a few of us presented our animatics though.

I worked hard all night yesterday, actually, tts not true, till about 0330. I would have continued but then I dont have quicktime in my home computer and AVI was doing screwy things on Premiere Pro. Yup.

I got my friend to wake me up at 0830 but I ended up sitting on my bed till 1000. Damn. Haha. Anyway, I went to school and tweaked my timing in Premiere once I exported the Flash file using Quicktime. I didnt have enough time to put in all my sound effects though. I only got in when David was drinking and burping.

There were a few comments about my animatics, k, those that I have to improve on first.
The car should swerve more to the left and right.
David should have saw the police car lights from his review mirror; so the police car is coming from behind.
The cop is (still) too close. (Though I edited this already, heh)
The close up shot of the breathalyzer is too close, should zoom out a bit so people can register what it is.
Too many going back and forth with the cop.
Staging of cop and David weird (The reason why I hadnt change it from my storyboard was because I think it makes sense; should ask around and consult Alan again so I will understand)
Staging where the cop's hand and David's profile is nice.
Cop's hand should pull a bit of the underwear out.
Yay, tts all

So, some things that people have complimented me on my animatic. Amanda saw my road cycle and said it was nice and well done; so did Raj (thanks)
Er...Jarrold and the twins like my drawing style
Oh, I did not model David to look like Alan, haha, though David does start to look like him.

Yeah, k, so need to work a bit more on my animatic and backgrounds and all.

I liked Rachael's animatic and storytelling, well paced and super funny.
Jarrold's narration today was quite funny. Had a good laugh. haha.

Yay, keep going peeps, we can do this. Ugh, some people said the bags under my eyes were a bit puffy today.

Friday. Vangel

So I am now really tired of drawing storyboards. I've done mine thrice and its still not finalized. rarr. At least Animation2 is now almost out of the way.

At least my starting sequence is alright now, just need to change the ending and shots and staging. I tried drawing out the interior of the car and it's so difficult. O well, k, today was quite dry.

Monday . Remembering Sunday

K, I am now super jealous of Raj and Andreas because I just heard that they are going OSIP and the flight they're taking is on the A380. Damn.
I'm also super jealous of people my age who has such a kick ass band and have made it big.

Anyway, today, I showed Alan my developed storyboard. Happy to say that I managed to cut down the front part of it. I really have to start trying to tell my stories in a shorter amount of time. It just gets so draggy, even when I'm telling my friends a story.

When Alan saw my storyboard, he said I'm still lacking a few important shots; the visual storytelling part of it. So, back to the drawing board for me.

We watched Wallace & Gromit today. Haven't seen any of the movies because I was quite prejudiced againts the not-so-nice character design. BUT after I watched it, it becomes really cute and the storytelling is really well done; it was hillarious. I am inspired.

Day 6 & 7. Iris.

I am highly tired because last night I stayed up till 4am to complete my storyboard and character design and everything...though I think I might have left out a few pieces of information. Then, when I went to bed, I couldnt sleep and the next thing I heard was my alarm clock going off. Had to go to school extra early today because Amanda's friend from Blue Skies studio was coming in to share some things with us.

I was late. But I asked Rachael if he had started and he hadnt; then I bumped into Amanda in the lift. haha. Melvin was a very interesting person, and it was great to hear from someone who is already "there" in the industry almost everyone in class wants to be in. And Blue Skies Studios was the company I wrote in for my PcomD class. It was just so great to hear someone who was in a big International studio who can talk about other big companies that he is on par with like DreamWorks and Pixar; so unreal. Melvin was also very friendly, and it was cute to see the working environment over in the studio. One thing I noticed also about how animators or animation students speak; we would repeat the same sentence a few times in different expressions. Or, if we were trying to explain something, this would include standing up and demonstrating.

He also had a collection of clips that he keeps as reference and clips from movies that he has done; a lot from "Horton Hears a Who", so unreal!!! He was part of such a big movie, the animator, coolness. The other clips he showed us were from other movies; it was great to see the two movies/cartoons that I love entirely. One was "The Emperor's New Groove", that movie is hillarious! my sister and I would remember the entire dialog throughout the movie. It was good to understand why I like it so much too after Melvin explained; he said the timing, sequence and movement of the character is so well thought of that it adds to the whole comical character of the movie.

The other clip from one of my all time favorite movies was from "Treasure Planet". Firstly, as a kid, I enjoyed reading Treasure Island, one of the first few unabridged books I read. Second, when the movie came out, they took the story to another dimension and placed it in a virtual world; love it, it was so cool. I was about 13 when I saw the movie and that was the few instances when I was truly inspired. Watching Treasure Planet made me want to do 2d Animation, especially after paying close attention to the handpainted water-colored-traditionally-done background. The first movie that made me want to go into the film world was "Star Wars". Woo! Just saying it makes me excited.

After our break, we did our presentations. It was good to get feedback because I really needed help with shortening my story; I get a bit long winded when I tell stories. So, I just need to tweak my storyboards again. I'm quite happy with my character designs though. Haha, I really wanted David to look like the actual person.

Kez

Day 5. unintended.

Today, half of the class just had to show up. People from Groups 1, 3 and 5. We had to show Alan our Learning Contract, and he came over to our group (group 1) first. Everybody got to see my Learning Contract. A few of us got the "Primary Aim" part of our Learning Contract wrong. I thought that we had to answer that in accordance to the primary aim of why we are making the animation.

I have to remember a few good pointers that Alan mentioned as we discussed today. The discussion also helped me decide what I really wanted to show in my animation, the sequence of the story and from who's prespective it will be shown. All of the questions I answered the other day will change.

My build up would have to be super important as the audience would have to, at the same time, feel the gross-ness of the situation and feel the urgency of the situation to the point that David had to eat his shorts.

From the beginning, once I found my story, I wanted David to be the Main Character, you will see the story from his perspective. Alan suggested I have the story told from the Cop's point of view; after understanding the reason a bit more, I agree. Since I want a grossed out reaction from the audience, the easiest way to achieve this is by getting the audience to empathize with the Main Character. In this case, the cop gets the worst outcome from this whole situation. Though it was not stated in the papers, you can just imagine the cop picking up the underwear and discovering some in David's mouth.

Righto, back to work.

Day 4. Jaded .

K, so today is day 4 of P3. And I still hate blogs.

And I'm starting to try to make my life more interesting and title my blog days with song titles. Yeah. Today, a few other people and I had to wake up earlier to go to this talk thing by some guy from Philips, I know, I really suck with Chinese names. Anyway, eventhough I was trying very hard not to sleep (and I did not) I managed enough to know that what he said was quite interesting. Especially at the beginning where he was telling us about the "made in Malaysia" and "made in Japan" thing, it's exactly the same product but still, why the choice? and we're supposed to be a global nation thingi that most people are claiming.

Anyway, so because I had to miss the most part of class, I got to know from Shu Xian what we had to do by next week. I really hope I can get enough rest on the weekend so that I can finish everything on time. omg.

yeah, so, before Alan told us about making this blog, he told us about doing journal, so I did. and today i posted the first two journals that I did. yep.

Day 1

First lesson of MOI Project 3 and I did not come to school. The reason because I felt really really sick in the morning; I really needed rest. Camp planning and Camp itself took up most, well, the whole of my holidays and I am dead tired. Not putting the blame on anything but I really needed rest.

When I arrived in school, class was still on and I only got to see two groups presenting stuff. I didn’t know what they were presenting for already. Then Alan told the class to look for 3-4 weird stories that are real and share it with tomorrow. Later on, my animation2 groupmates told me what P3 was all about.

I started doing research, and there really are very peculiar stories that are deemed as true. Some very unbelievable. I found 4 that I liked. One was the man who married a dog; a tree growing in a man’s stomach; a turtle eating a pigeon and a man who ate his underwear.
Alan mentioned something about not using stuff from youtube since it is a video already, but I just think it would be funny to show the rest. I think I’ll use the man who ate his underwear. We’ll see how it goes tomorrow.

Day 2

Second day of P3, I still feel unwell but I know I could not skip anymore class. We had to first share our stories with our group then share each others’ stories to the whole class. I had to shift groups thrice, anyway, I ended up with Kevin, Vivien, ShuXian and Tri. It was interseting to hear what they had found on the web.

One that really shocked me was ShuXian’s research on the 92 year old woman who had been carrying her baby for 60 years. I just could not imagine carrying around a dead feutus for 60 years. That’s just crazy.

When sharing each other’s stories to the whole class, I had to share Kevin’s 3 strories. I remembered all except for the one with the python, but that was a 4th story, so it was fine. Kevin will be using the ninja story he found. As a group we helped him decide which story to use, well, we helped each other really. We based our judgement on how animated the story can be, since this would be an animation at the end of the day. The group agreed with me using the man who ate his underwear. We were all very disturbed by the guy’s photograph, 18 years old but he looks 40, very excited to use his photo and animate his face.

Day 3

So, we have to create a blog, to my dislike. The reason why I dont like to keep blogs is because my mind registers it as such a chore. Anyway, we have to answer these questions to carry on with our stories. And my head is still swimming. bleah, i hate flu


1. Who are you telling the story for (primary audience)?
People of all ages who needs entertainment and a good laugh.

2. What reaction do you want?
Because it will be a slapstick comedy, the audience should laugh and feel grossed out as well at the stupidity of the character

3. Is the narrative omniscient (all seeing) or restrictive (viewed from a single perspective)?(If the narrative is restrictive, whose viewpoint are you using?)
It will be both. First part of the story will be mostly omniscient but focusing on the main character. Later, at the climax of the story, you get to see from the viewpoint of the main character to get a sense of the situation he is in.

4. List the important events of the story.
- The main character drinking excessively
- Him going into the car and driving around recklessly
- The cops chasing him
- Him getting caught
- In the police car ripping off his underwear
- Him eating his underwear and spitting it out again


5. Which aspects of the setting of the story are important (time of day… location… period of history…) and how do you intend to establish these important elements?
Time of day will probably be at night. Period of time will be as what happened, modern day. Setting and background and the car that will be in the animation will show these elements.

6. What traits of the characters in your story are important and how do you intend to establish these traits?
First impressions are always important, so when people see the character design of this main guy, i hope they will feel a little urk from him. He looks older than he is supposed to be, with overgrown moustache and beard with big spectacles, his clothing will be sloppy as well.

7. In what order are the important events (step 4 above) covered? Is it a strictly linear sequence of events in time, or does the story contain any flashbacks or other interruptions to the sequence of events?
At this point of time, the story telling will just be linear. This might change to not make it so draggy.

8. How does the story flow, does the pace change? Does it contain a surprise? Consider your answers to 1 and 2 above when making your response.
9. How will you use sound to help all your responses to 5-8 above?
10. Does your story need dialog? (write out the dialog)