Will This Guy Make It?

By now I have to ask myself whether I am gonna make it through the program at Animation Mentor. Approaching the end of Class 5 I am about 2-3 weeks behind! There's only a fixed amount of time to get things turned in, and animating 60 seconds at FINAL level in 12 weeks (for Class 6) is a challenge for all of us, even w/out being behind. My schedule has become so erratic and draining I have to really figure out a way to get the work done for AM so that I can at least make a passing grade. Of course, no one at AM, including me, shoots for anything less than an A.

The good news is I found a car model to use in my short. The fun thing is that it's a scion xA, the very car I drive in actual life! The catch is it's a 3ds max file and I have been spending a lot of time trying to get it into Maya with materials and surfaces intact (I don't have Polytrans or anything that might do the trick). You would think these two products would be more compatible. Still, I'm glad the model I found is in max b/c I need to add quite a few details that are missing from the car's interior and necessary for my short. I'm no rock-star modeller but at least I know how to use max's modelling tools, I don't know Maya's modelling tools yet.

Another moment of happy was dashed when I recently found a CD I have with some great sound effects for my film. No sooner had I discovered a couple useful sounds than the drive stopped reading the disc. When I ejected the CD it was cracked from the center out! Bummer. Not sure how it happened, but the disc is a goner. I called the software manufacturer (now Sony) for a replacement disc but they no loger make the product the disc came with. If anyone has the install disc for Sound Forge 6 that has "1,001" sound fx and can send me the sounds that would be great. (Since I own a license, passing the sounds to me should be totally legal.)

Meanwhile, I've collected some sounds using my miniDV camera, but we all know how noisy it is using sound from the camera's built-in mic. Since I'm behind on assignments I have not had a chance to cap and save out all the sounds as clips yet but hope to soon cuz my animatic is not that great without sound.

Will I make it? No telling for sure but I'm giving it a shot.

Enough is Enough

If you only want to read the part about animation, skip down to the happy ending under Luckily, AM Class 5 is going well.

Yeah, I know. One of the key things of becoming a great animator is having a positive attitude. I've been through a lot and I'm doing my best to stay positive...or at least pleasant when inerracting with people.

This morning I was told I will not get paid for most of the IHSS hours I worked in March! I was expecting my check to be smaller because my mom has been in the hospital and I'm not allowed to report hours if she's not specifically at home. Nevermind that I might have spent 18 hours with my mom in ER on the 19th, or at least 6 hours some days visiting her and consulting various health care professionals. The rules are set up in ways that deny fair compensation in certain circumstances like I'm in now. My mom was authorized for 24-hour care last November. Even though I frantically worked day and night to take care of her in the days leading up to her two recent trips to ER, the max IHSS will let me report in one day is 9 hours. I worked 80 hours over 4 days--I'm not exaggerating--and they'll only pay me for 36. I was on the phone all morning, looking for someone who will cut me some slack. My union rep was no help at all, which is normal, and I'm waiting to hear back from two other people. Since my mom came home for only 4 days last week then went right back to the hospital, I'll have a similar pay scenario this month. Enough is enough! Cross your fingers for me, please! :) I have tuition to pay.

I had to take my mom to ER again last Saturday and over the weekend I made the extremely difficult decision to place my mom in a nursing facility instead of returning home. She had been fine at the place she stayed at last month, and I'm hoping she'll adapt quickly at the new place. I'm still not sure how I feel about it myself. By the time I was at the age and had the income to consider venturing out on my own, my parents began needing support. Their needs slowly increased over the years until eventually I had to take care of them full time. So this is weird. I'm no mama's boy, but other than short stays with girlfriends over the years, I've never lived without either of my parents! Not having to take care of my mom 24 hours a day will allow me a long overdue chance to rest. My dad doesn't require nearly the amount of care she does, not to mention I'm only taking care of 1 person now instead of 2. Makes a big difference. Still weird.

Luckily, AM Class 5 is going well. The group I'm with under mentorage of Jason Schleifer is a lively bunch. We all seem to be having a great time and Jason is indescribably stoked about all our story ideas and the whole dynamic of our class. I was fortunate enough to come up with 2 story ideas, and everyone seemed to enjoy them in the Q&A Tuesday night, especialy the one about the cans. Even though I'll be doing the other idea for the assignment, it seemed unanimous that I do the cans one as a side project. Having nearly zero sleep in the past 3 weeks+ and using my voice so much I'd kinda got laryngitis. It was tough to present my stories in class with my scratchy voice, but I got through it. I'm waiting to descirbe the stories here until I can record my story pitch video, which is the upcoming assignment. Written text just doesn't convey the characters as well. By the time my voice clears up home stuff will have also settled down and I'll post my pitch here as soon as I can.

Sometimes when I'm frustrated with my assignments I take a break by messing around with Plastic Animation Paper. I like it because it's simple and a free download. This twirly finger test is one I did last November. It's nothing great, but before Animation Mentor I never would have thought I could even do something like this. Notice how much help the thumb needs, for example. Ick. QT Sorensen, 160k

Blocked on All Sides

The new quarter at AM has started and so far Class 5 is great. A schedule problem and last-second mentor switch (my new mentor is Jason Schleifer) meant I missed the first "mandatory" Q&A from week 1. I barely made the one last night. It was great hearing everyone's story ideas and bouncing them around. The ideas presented were good ones, with lots of potential to become great shorts. I finally found out in the Q&A that I'm in group two, which will present ideas next week. Good thing, 'cuz until just a few days ago I didn't have any clue what I would do for a story. Even now the two options I have are OK but not great. One of them is too long. The other needs a better ending. Classmates and mentor can help with that, so I'm not too worried about it. What I'm worried about is school itself. I don't know if I should continue under the circumstances. Let me explain.

Every new session, my life outside AnimationMentor.com has become increasingly complicated. Many of my options designed to aleviate complications have created further complications! Most of them are connected to my full time job as a caregiver, they have seriously affected my experience with AM, and are things I have little or no control over. I feel like I'm in one of those multi-sided D&D dice, each side with it's own exit door, but each door totally blocked by something. There are a lot of exciting things happening or in store for Class 5, I'm already missing some of them and it's only the second week! As I look down the road, it doesn't get any clearer, so I could miss even more. I am definitely not getting the full value of the course, and it's come to a point where I have to question if I'm wasting a lot of money. Out of my 15-second scene assignment in class 4 I was only able to "final" a shot or two. I just don't have the time to devote to AM because of other life stuff.

After 16 days in the hospital, my mom returned home Tuesday. She is doing "better", though physical therapy was only able to get her to a certain level while at the hospital. It is expected she will improve further and faster at home. I sure hope so. While it's good to have my mom home where she's much more comfortable, she has to be assisted every time she gets up. On top of that she's a bit disoriented, which is common, and the combination of things has kept me on high alert for the past 36 hours. We have a respite caregiver who is supposed to be able to take over for me so I can get a break (4 hours per week), but I had to just let her leave today because complications in laws and liability prevent her from doing any task related to my mom! Even though my mom is the parent who needs the most care! Because of the way it works, it is my dad who the respite worker is contracted for, because my mom is already on another program funded by the same California State agency. Even though it is a program that is supposed to provide relief for the caregiver (me), since they can only help my dad, I really don't get a break after all!

No Animation, Again

Once again my best plan for getting my animation done has been obliterated by things out of my control. As if stuff wasn't already insane, last weekend I had to take my mom to the hospital. She's doing better now, but having been a hospital bed since Saturday she's going to need physical therapy before she is able to walk without someone (me) helping her. Her doc said she would need more assistance than before. So rather than coming home when discharged she's going straight to a nursing facility for two weeks. After spending nine hours in ER Saturday, the week since has been all about consults with my mom's doctor, discussions with nurses, phone tag with the discharge planner, notifying relatives (most of whom don't visit anyway), and taking my dad to see her. Meanwhile, in other areas there are also phone calls to make and take, paperwork to fill out, appointments to make--I am solely responsible for every healthcare decision for both my parents plus myself. Hell, I'm responsible for everything. And in the background, my tax issue still looms, unresolved. This has not been a simple week.

I think I'm handling it all okay, trying to do a little at a time so it's bite size, but the stress probably has me right at the edge of losing my mind. I'm trying to do (or not do) things to keep my head from imploding (like blogging) and an unfortunate consequence of all this is that I can't concentrate very well creatively. There's little point trying to animate with so many other things running through my mind. It's totally non-productive. I don't know where this leaves my assignment, but it doesn't look good at the moment. I haven't even watched all of last week's lecture video. For weekly AM assignments I've usually found time and inspiration Thursday through Saturday, so I can only hope the ani-muse and extra-time genie pay me a visit in the next few days.

Playing Catch Up

It's been a crazy, stressful few weeks and this morning around 2am I finally got my 409 assignment done, a full 6 days late. Instead of continuing to refine the shots I worked on for week 407, I decided it would be a good idea to refine shots 1 and 2. There are some things I'd like to refine further, especially Green's lip sync. I've been having a hard time making the mouth do exactly what I want, so that is something I'll have to work on mastering. I had Tan animated to a degree, but after changes I didn't get him out of "swimmy" stage this week so I just have him hold in the second shot for now. I thought it would be too distracting. From here on out I will probably be intensely focussing on shots 3 & 4, though time-permitting I would also like to turn in finals of 1 & 2.

So yeah, life has been nuts. At least I'm finally getting some help. Of course, even that has complications because of well-intended yet seriously stupid laws. My quest for tax and IHSS trouble has finally led me to someone who is actually helping me instead of just giving me the phone number of yet another person to call. This person admitted my problem might not be fully fixable without changing some federal or state laws! But at least there might be some kind of workaround. For now that's enough to relieve just a bit of the stress.

Search Continues

I'm not sure when I will make time for animating this week, being it's Friday. I spent most of Thursday and today taking care of family stuff, making phone calls seemingly to nowhere. I was up most of the night searching the Net for some kind of useful information for my tax fiasco and sifting through piles of papers and forms various agencies have sent me. So far nothing I've found pans out. As an example, one tax credit that could have helped ended in 2004. I am kinda stressed about this, not as if the deadline for filing is tomorrow, but just how little help there is out there for people in my situation. I'm sure I'm not the only one in this precockament. Why are the laws so screwy regarding this issue? Doing this seemingly futile search on top of ordinary caregiving duties is exhaustment on top of the usual exhaustion. I'm a bit too tired for it, but maybe I'll go out later tonight, try to forget about it for awhile. Then hopefully I'll find some energy to further refine my assignment before noon Sunday. Sheesh.

Here's another WACoodle, again done in Art Rage 2. This one is a girl. Not that it's so great, but it came out better than usual. I find girls harder to draw for some reason. The way I've drawn her, can you tell which way her body is facing?

Fence

Good grief! The huge storm we had last month tore up our fence, which is more than 20 years old. 60mph- gusts had pushed the rainsoaked fence to a 45-degree lean into our yard, threatening my dad's rose bushes and a yellow flower I planted last year for my mom. I had gone out in the extreme rain and propped up the fence with whatever wood stakes and metal rods I could find that my dad had laying around. The fence hadn't fallen all the way and a few weeks ago when a contractor came to make measurements he had propped the fence upright. After another heavy but shorter storm Wednesday night, the fence collapsed at 2:30 this morning the other way. Luckily the neigbors didn't have any plants along their side of the fence to be squished. Fortunately, my mom's yellow flower plant was not injured.

Back to the Drawing Board

My scene takes place in a jungle and I've been wondering how I'm going to do the jungle set for the final version. I could try doing it with geometry. I could build the set in max and import it into the Maya scene (I don't yet know how to model to that level in Maya). But have you ever tried to model a jungle? That could take a long time and leave little time for animation. Not only that geometry would slow down work and rendering. Instead I decided to grab some frames out of the movie my audio is from and make some clean background plates using Photoshop and some compositing tricks (nothing fancy). This was also the first time I had really looked at the scene from the movie since starting the assignment and it was interesting to see how it was covered in the film.

Since I was only working on a section of the scene this week I went ahead and tested the lighting and rendering, to get an idea if everything would blend. Most people seem to like it a lot, including Ike.

I apparently went off course a bit on the animation. Ike said I've got too many keys and in one shot, too many poses. After getting consistent grades for the past 6 weeks, for this assignment I suddenly dropped a bit. So I've got a tremendous amount of work to do on the scene, taking out some keys and some poses and replacing them according to Ike's advice. Should make it much stronger. Ike wants me to have Tan Bishop do his turn around using his left foot as the pivot rather than the right foot the way I've animated it. When I acted it out, it seemed more natural doing the turn with my right foot planted, but if done well it will probably look smoother the way Ike suggested. This will require some adjustments of the camera or Bishop's starting position and some other things. So it's back to the drawing board, or back to the computer since it's a 3d scene.

Orangutans Are Not Monkeys.

As a kid I used to always draw monkeys. When I lived in the Philippines I even had a pet monkey. His name? Monkey. That's before I knew about the Department Of Redundancy Department. Anyway, I WACoodled an orangutan, which is not a monkey. Orangs are apes.

I finally got a chance to watch Victor Navone's lecture from last week and all I can say is wow! I'm not sure which I was more impressed with, Victor's animation talent, his skill with the graph editor, or the fact that our school rocks for having this kind of stuff in the curriculum. Hopefully I'll get a last chance to watch at least part of it again. I think it's 2andahalf hours long!

Since Maya was giving me grief I took a break from 3D and was messing around in Plastic Animation Paper 4.0 beta. I had clicked over to AM classmate (though currently on a leave of "AMsence"...isn't that hilarious?) Robert Casumbal's blog and was inspired to do my own flour sack test (QT h.264, 50k). Okay, I copied him, but my test is way different. I've done one other sack test before this one--I tried to do a walk--and I am still confused about how a character with no legs should be drawn walking. Better look at some reference. This test isn't a walk, it's just sort of a hero sack going from a one-arm-up, semi-relaxed state, to a "super" pose or something. I didn't do much planning at all and it shows. I should get that Wayne Gilbert book Robert mentioned soon. Looking at the test you will likely see that frame 9 is lame-o. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do there, so if you have any suggestions on that drawing or any of this let me know.

The rest of this blog is unrelated to animation. Feel free to skip it.

I contacted someone at a senior resource Thursday to try to get help with my IHSS share-of-cost/income tax fiasco. (Incidentally, as big a fan I am of the game smush I haven't come up with a smush that combines tax and fiasco in a way that pleases me or I would use it here. Probably has something to do with their meanings.) The lady told me outright that one of the possible avenues I was hoping to explore would be a dead end. Sounded like she was speaking from actual experience, too. But there is a completely different route she told me about that, if she's correct, will resolve the tax problem. The share of cost will not be relieved, but solving the tax thing is huge. It's a somewhat exotic idea, but its oddity isn't gonna stop me from trying it. Friday I left a message with my mom's IHSS caseworker to get this plan rolling. If not for all this complication and nonsense I'd probably already be enjoying my tax refund.

Oog and Slim and the Polishing Lecture

Somehow I didn't manage time to watch last weeks Animation Mentor lecture video, which is part 2 of a shot walk-thru by Victor Navone. Luckily, the previous week's lecture is always viewable so I'll have to fit it in this week. It's long!

But I did check out this week's lecture on polishing by Andrew Gordan, another awesome PIXAR animator and one of the Spline Docs. It too was a long one...an hour and a half. I'm not complaining about the length, btw, they're always packed with tons of great learning. Just as with most of our lectures, I was super motivated by "Dr." Gordon's* lecture, and if it hadn't been 2am by the end of the viewing I would have just jumped right into Maya and started working on my assignment! But really, I've done waaaay too much staying up until past 3am lately and I've gotta try to get back "on track". I've got appointments to go to (or take my parents to) and phone calls to make and the rest of the world operates approximately 8 to 5. But yeah, I was super inspired by watching Gordon tweak his example shot in the graph editor, watching it from side view to check out how he'd need to adjust the spine. So far in our lectures we've got to see numerous animation pros working through examples, and it really, REALLY makes a big difference to specifically see the many different ways each of these masters works. One thing Doc G. said helps him out, and advice often given to us, is breaking the shot down into sections or phrases. Work on one bit at a time, then go on to another spot. You work up to a certain point and then go back through all of 'em and make another pass. It was striking how many problems Andrew kept seeing in his shot while he'd work. Obviously, he has extensive animating experience, 'cuz I know many of us students often wouldn't notice some of those things he did until we get feedback from someone. Then it's always, "Oh, yeah, how did I not see that?", and kind of a "duh" moment. So when I get into the scene I'm doing I'll be focussing on one shot to start off with, which Ike also recommended. I already know which one I'll do first.


Here's another of my "WACoodles". This one is a scribble of my character Oog minus his usual spots, and a new character I just made as of this sketch, Slim. Whatever Oog is saying, doesn't appear Slim's buyin' it. Or something.
*He's not a doctor, but he plays one in 3D.

WACOM Doodles (Or "WACoodles")

Seems it's customary when getting a new tablet to post some doodles. Having finished my Animation Mentor homework, I took some time out to play around with the new WACOM and ArtRage2. The first doodle is this crybaby guy. While not as elaborate and feature rich as Painter, ArtRage is nice for quick scribbles.

Incidentally, how do you pronounce WACOM? Long a as in way and com like in comedy, or like the a sound in cat and then come as in "...All Ye Faithful?" Or are both of these wrong? :D

Sunday I cancelled an appointment because of a live Q&A we had with Animation Mentor prez and co-founder Bobby Beck. (I'd thought it was 1-2pm but it was actually 2-4!!) Among other things Bobby talked to us about concerns many of us seniors have about our upcoming classes 5 & 6, wherein we will each be making our own animated short films. The details are not important here except to say that most of our reactions were of the "yay!" and "cool!" variety. We have a reputation of seeming over-enthusiastic about our school, but for those of us who've been there from the beginning--and just about everyone else who has enrolled since--the enthusiasm is pretty well placed. It is truly the intention of everyone at AM to give us the best animation education possible. Occasionally, new announcements are made, details are revealed about what's in store, and it's usually exciting and sounds like a lot of great fun and great challenges. That and we're kind of an excitable bunch.

In my assignment for week 6 I made the changes Ike asked for and though I was struggling with it while in the thinking stage, after the first hour or so of actually working on it I really felt myself getting into it. I kept wishing I'd not been falling asleep or had another day (don't we always want more time?) because I was so excited (remember what I said above?) that I just wanted to finish the whole thing, polish it and get a final. Of course, that was just wishful thinking, given that I'm only now in reblock status on the scene. Plus Ike specifically said he wanted us to be in refined blocking until next time. He said at places like PIXAR it's very important to wait for your director to buy off on your blocking before you start refining things. So I took his notes from the eCritique and Q&A, and resisted the temptation to refine the scene further (okay I was also in need of sleep by that point, too). Since it's still in stage where it looks no more finished than the one from week 4, I'm not gonna bore anyone by posting this version. Maybe next week.

Ten Years and 1 WACOM Later

After waiting nearly ten years, I finally upgraded my small 4x5 WACOM ArtPad II this week to a 6x8 Intuos3! Yay! I never had any complaints about my 4x5, which is part of the reason I didn't rush to get the ArtZ, or Intuos1 thru 2. But I was having trouble with accuracy in some apps; I could barely draw at all in Plastic Animation Paper, for example. With the Intuos I immediately noticed the difference in it's much higher resolution and pressure sensitivity. These suckers are kinda pricey and I wouldn't normally plock down nearly $300 for a "mere" input device. This was an item on my list for a very long time though, and I did just "get" a small "raise". Since starting AM I've learned many animators use a WACOM in their 3D apps, not just Photoshop, Painter and Flash. I experimented with my 4x5 in Maya and found I like using the tab and pen in 3D, so I'll continue to practice. I don't know if I'll completely stop using the mouse in Maya and max but the tablet might turn out to be more efficient.

So far so good with the new assignment. While I'm hoping I'm not speaking too soon, many previous semesters by the 5th or 6th week I start falling way behind. So far, I'm doing ok this time, despite the recent difficulties managing my mom's health. Of course, in last week's eCritique Ike asked for a change that's gonna be quite a bit of extra work. Luckily, doing a re-block for the coming deadline is not an issue. There's still a good deal of time before this mulit-week assignment has to be turned in polished, too. I'd prefer getting out of blocking this week, just in case I run short of time later, but for now it's okay.

For those not following my IHSS and income tax fiasco, feel free to skip the next section.

I am still--very slowly--sifting through information on the Net that might help my tax problem. Some of what I'm finding is "almost" good news. For example, there was a bill introduced in 2002 (Chan, AB 969) that would have probably eliminated my mom's Medi-Cal (and thus IHSS) share of cost. According to the text of the bill Medi-Cal recipients who's familily income is just $1 over 133% of the Federal Poverty Level face a "massive" share of cost, while those at or below it have no share of cost. Unfortunately, that bill died in Senate appropriations. (http://www.pai-ca.org/Newsltrs/Issue82/PublicAffairs.htm)

I found some senior advocacy groups I might get help from. This problem is rather complex. Though it affects my income and tax situation as an IHSS "provider", the problem stems from my mom's IHSS share of cost, which makes it an IHSS "recipient" issue. Being as I'm not having unusual difficulties with my AM assignments, I think it's this tax problem that's giving me insomnia.

There is some good news, though. My mom seems to be responding well to the latest change in her meds. If this trend continues I cannot begin to say what an enormous relief it would be, as dealing with her illness often eats up at least an hour or three every day when the meds aren't effective. Keeping fingers crossed.

Got a FINAL!

Sheesh. At least classes are going well so far! The tax seminar turned out to be a bust...next to zero help for my situation. When a representative from the IRS who's worked there for 20 years has no idea how to help you you know you're in trouble! I have maybe a few other options but this tax situation, and IHSS complication is looking grim at the moment.

For week 3 I got a "FINAL" on my assignment from Ike. He had very little in the way of notes, seemed to enjoy the last-minute changes I'd made, complimented my ability to be flexible (I assume rather than argue the change he requested), and he actually shouted "FINAL" just like they do in real life at PIXAR in those behind-the-scenes extras on the DVDs. Of course, I'm sure he noticed some things still need work--heck, the whole section from frames 44 through 82 is brand new and could use some more polish. But, just as in a real life situation, the deadline had come for the shot to be "put in the film" so that was that. The version I've included here is the rendered version, not the one I turned in for the assignment. (I felt it a bit presumptuous to turn it in as a final render without actually having the director [mentor] sign off on it.) If you watch it more than once you'll begin to see quite a few places yet to be refined. I will definitely revisit the shot as soon as I can. See how many boo boos you can spot, and if you have any notes let me know.

AM Assignment 403 - Rendered (QT H.264, 2.3MB)

Week 4's assignment was to block out a new dialog clip. The assignment expands on the previous ones by requiring interaction between two characters and at least two separate shots. Some people have indicated they would like to see the handcuffs in one of the close ups. Someone even suggested an acutal shot of the hands in the cuffs. While it's probably important we see that his hands are cuffed, I'm trying not to be too literal or obvious. For my tastes, when the Green Bishop says, "...with my hands cuffed behind my back" and lifts his shoulder, pointing to his hands using his head and eyes, that is enough to "know" that he's wearing cuffs.

Ike seemed to like what I'd done, and he also suggested a way of showing the cuffs. A few classmates seemed to really like my opening wide shot, but Ike prefers a tighter shot. I'm thinking that a tighter establishing shot can satisfy the need to show the hands in cuffs, thus eliminating pointing them out so directly during the rest of the scene. What do you think?

I was a bit confused about whether we were supposed to just do layout or rough blocking, but luckily I put in some blocking anyway. I should have labeled it with the status of "blockout" (isn't that hysterical??). Ok, here's what I turned in:

AM Assignment 404 (QT H.264, 780k)

The Timing of Things and Taxes

kr_402_07.mov (QT, H.264, 2.3MB)

The changes for this week are subtle. I changed an "S" shape here, adjusted some eyelids there, tweaked an eye position. It might seem the changes were simple and quick, but it did take a good amount of time. I spent a lot of time thinking about what needed to be done, to get it from there to here, and that way I knew what should happen, where to spend most of the time. This will be the final week on it. I don't know why the new H.264 codec made my playblast so "faded" looking. Kinda annoying. Probably a Mac thing, different gamma and all. Generally I don't like compressors to do anything to my image unless I tell them to. DivX did something similar a few versions ago and it was also a nuisance (inexcusably made everything darker). Maybe there's a new checkbox I don't know about yet ("Make Video Brighter For No Reason").

So, not speaking of daily life outside of AnimationMentor assignments, my mom is adjusting to new medicines again. She needed a change because, though she was doing very well during the beginning of our last break between classes, right when the new semester started my mom's condition began to worsen. I came very close, closer than before, to deciding to drop AM. I just couldn't believe the timing...she'd been ok all that time then BAM! Right when I needed to start focusing on school.

So with my mom's many needs my dad often has to just wait patiently before I can help him with anything. He needs a new hearing aid. I was finally able to get him to an audiologist a coupla weeks ago, which is the first step. Next I have to go through a (thankfully-) short list of Medi-Cal providers to find out how this all works. He got his current hearing aid before I was taking care of him and my mom and, even though he qualified for Medi-Cal, he paid for it out of his own pocket. Ouch. The one he has now is like ten years old, too and hopefully one with newer technology will help him. But anyone who's ever dealt with Medi-Cal can tell you it's sometimes a long, overly-complicated process to use your benefits.

Alas, my dad has to wait some more. I have an even more pressing, long-running issue of my own. I am an IHSS care-provider with a "consumer" (the person I provide care for, my mom) who is unable to meet her monthly "share of cost", the amount mandated by insanely unrealistic laws that she is required to pay to me before the County/State program pays anything. There's no possible way she could pay the amount they require, not even close, and still have enough to pay her rent and utilities and food. So part of my income through the IHSS program is left unpaid...the largest part, in fact. This results in an alarming situation. The other details are not important but what it means is that, unless I can find some way around it, I am expected to pay taxes based on an income figure (on paper only!!) of more than ten times the pay I actually receive!! How do you like them apples? (And by apples I mean "pooh".)

So now I am on a quest to find the person or group that is going to help me out of this tax nightmare. My union representative was sympathetic but little help, steering me elsewhere. There is an IHSS tax seminar I will attend near the end of the month. Hopefully I can get some answers. I'm sure there are other IHSS caregivers in a similar situation all over the State. Oh, my union rep also confirmed that, though I work more than 9 hrs a day and 64 hrs a week with no days off I don't get overtime because of the way home workers are classified by state law. What a crock! Ok, sorry. Enough rant. My point is, I've got a lot to do just to fix things that I shouldn't need to fix! That said, I better get back to it!

He's So Sad

The big trick for this 3-week assignment was to swap out Bishop's head with the more advanced one with all the facial controls. Luckily, the school gave us a Melscript that automated the process. (Big kudos to Taylor Mahoney who also made us a whole Maya shelf of useful tools). Unfortunately, the keyframes for the eyes weren't carried over. At first I was a little worried because my shot had a lot of eye movement, brows and lids doing all kinds of things. I was concerned I might not get through my first pass for the entire shot. Luckily, throwing the keys in there went smoother than I thought and I had plenty of time to spend on it as well. I also came up with process that seemed to flow well.

I decided the eyes in this shot are higher priority than the mouth, so I started there using a "layered" approach. After a couple of lame-o starts, I scrubbed through the original Quicktime movie and put Bishop's eye moves and blinks back in. On a second runthrough I went back and keyed the brows. As I worked I saw some places I wanted to make tweaks to the original, so I put those in as well. Finally, I made another pass putting in most of the phonemes and other mouth shapes. Doing the mouth and brows was made a bit simpler because our Maya Shelf has tools that give us a bunch of presets as a starting point. This was a big help because I was able to quickly try different brow or mouth positions to see what I thought worked best, then just make adjustments as needed. For example, there was no preset for "ER" and besides, it was coming out of a "W" and going into an "S" mouth shape ("worse") , so I fudged one of the presets.

I was trying to work as fast as I could so I employed a technique I'd discovered while doing the two "Jeff Kim 3-Hour Animation Showdowns" I'd done; instead of blocking with "stepped" keys, I cut to the chase and keyed everything with "flat" tangents. I found this to be a more "straight-ahead" approach, though; it worked great for the this because I already knew where my keyes were going to be and what they'd be doing. It's almost like blocking and refining in one step, but I don't think this will work for everything. I'll use it where I can but probably continue to block in stepped for most everything else until I'm really good. I didn't check my file timestamps but I probably spent about 8-12 hours on the shot this week in 2 long sessions (including breaks). Not super fast but ok for now. I was able deliver the shot early Sunday rather than rushing at the last minute.

Though it's clearly not done, it seemed to have come out decent so far. Ike liked it. He even applauded that I'd unified the brow movements with the eyes on my blinks (though I didn't unify eyes/lids/brow in all the places it's necessary). In tonight's Q&A I want to ask Ike how to handle the "lazy eye" that happens because to get the left eye (screen right) to look good at frame 88-ish, I have to point it separately from the other eye and then realign it by 92. There are quite a few other things to fix, too and I'm relieved I had the right amount of time to get it as far as I did. Here's what I turned in Sunday...

kr_401_31_16.mov (QT Sorensen, 4.8MB)

Doesn't Bishop look sad at the end?

Now the hard (FUN) Work Starts

Last night was the first Q&A with my new mentor, Ike Feldman. Since we haven't turned in any assignments yet this first session was just as chance to get acquainted with Ike and learn a bit about the others in our group. Many of us know each other from having the same mentor for earlier classes or seeing each other online. But there are so many students there are still people I've not met even after 3 prior classes. Ike seemed really cool, which is kinda silly to say since we've come to realize all the mentors are cool. And it was fun to be back in a Q&A for the first time in weeks, seeing the other mentees, meeting new ones and BS-ing in the chat window while we're supposed to be listening.

We've been experimenting and testing the new facial controls on our main character, Bishop, and now it's finally time to really get in and start adding the expressions to our shot. There is a huge amount of flexibility built into the controls which is gonna allow us to be quite expressive...even stubtle wtih Bishop's facial expressions if we do it right. I can already tell this is not going to be easy! It's gonna be fun though. Luckily, we're simply adding the facial animation to an existing shot, or it would be beyond insane to get it all done. Final is due in 3 weeks, so I'm wishing everyone in Class 4 good luck and hope to have a bit of luck myself.

Ready Or Not

Animation classes start up again less than 24 hours from now. Holiday break is officially over. My mentor for Class 4 is Ike Feldman, animator at PIXAR. I'm excited to see what we'll learn in our next lecture and the details of our upcoming assignments. I look forward to returning to learning, but I was very glad to have had the long break.

I decided to mostly abstain from animating during the break for a number of reasons. First and foremost is that focusing so intently on school work for the past 9 months meant I had to neglect some other important areas of my personal life. My room and my desk have been a disaster area. Though bills were paid as agreed, I had to keep the details of personal and family bookkeeping to a minimum, so there are some things that hadn't been attended to in a while. (I am responsible for my parents' finances as well as my own, so it can be kinda complicated.) The break afforded me much needed time to take care of these kinds of things that have been hovering incomplete over my head for too long. There are still many things I have to work on, but I got a lot done during the break.

Second, I needed a chance to relax. Well, sort of relax. My life itself is stressful and exhausting a good deal of the time, so removing anything from my plate relieves some of the pressure on the days when things are especially challenging. Not having to worry about finishing an assignment helped a great deal.

The third thing is that I guess I felt like taking a break from animating would give me a fresh start for the coming months. I know that it will be a while before there's another break and, with so many other responsibilities, I thought I'd better focus on other areas while I had the chance.

That said, it wasn't really my first choice to put aside animation. If I wasn't so far behind on other things I would have preferred to just keep right on animating, revisiting and cleaning up past assignments, experimenting with new ideas, practicing. I mean, I do love animating! If my time was my own I surely would not have stopped animating at all during the break. In fact, for the first week of break I was seriously jonesin' for some animatin'. I kept wanting to drop all that other boring stuff and just animate, but there just wasn't time for it. Luckily, this past week I started getting into it again with the help of Jeff Kim's 3-hour "Animation Showdowns". I actually did one of 'em and had a good time. It would have been great to do more, but now class is starting up again and I'll be plenty busy.

One thing all of us Mentees are excited about is the totally revised Version 2 of the AnimationMentor campus! Many of us beta-tested the new site over the past few weeks and it is a huge-normous leap upgrade from the previous one. Wow! What a lot of work that was and awesome great job the AM teAM did getting it all together. As I've mentioned in our own forums, incoming students have no idea how much better they'll have it.

Crazy AniMINTees

My schedule for the past week did not work out. It's my "fault" I went to SF Friday night to party with classmates, but I had allowed for that in my plan. Stuff got kinda out of hand at home Friday and Saturday and my AM assignment suffered. Those kind of things that I have no control over are what mess me up. Still, I did put some serious time into it at the last minute and managed to get most of my mentors changes in. The past 4 weeks have been murder for getting any homework done, and it's been bumming me out turning in poo week after week. Even though it wasn't as much as I'd planned I think I made more progress this week than the weeks prior. The shot is (finally) starting to come together.

Last Friday night's party at The Mint was extreme-to-the-max-ridiculous-cool fun. I hesitated at first driving all that way, but glad I did. Aside from the crazy ani"Mint"ees that made it out, some of our favorite AM staff, Becky, Luis and Taylor, plus mentor Bret Parker and Carlos. I didn't get faded enough to perform and the one time I was requested as backup the kj stopped me and everyone behind me from going onstage. Very small stage, I guess there was a limit. Often when I go to these things I forget to take my camera out. This time I tried to take as many photos as possible. Though I wouldn't exactly call them Kodak moments, there were plenty of photo opportunities with everyone--onstage or not--hamming it up. All the incriminating pix are here.

You Think You Got Too Much Turkey!

HTD Sounds Worse Than It Is. I have a habbit of abbreviating things. I guess I just like acronyms. This year I shortened my Thanksgiving greeting to HTD. Just swap the H with an S and my not-oft-used acronym for Happy Turkey Day takes on a whole other meaning.

Thanksgiving went well this year, mostly because some of my family came to visit my parents, including a long lost (almost literaly) great-grandchild. My mom and dad were happy, and all the more thankful, and when they're happy that makes my job easier. One relative brought some turkey and waaaaayyy too much stuffing to go with it. Plus other goodies. Later my brother brought us an entire turkey along with all the usual extras. It was one of those you heat for about an hour, and I ended up saving it for the next day instead. So our After Thanksgiving meals (ATMs) have been more of a feast than the actual day. But there's only 3 of us here, two are seniors who don't eat that much anyway, and I'm not much of an overeater. I have half a mind to try donating the vat of extra stuffing (VES or VXS if you prefer) to some charitable org. Do they take prepared food? Maybe I can freeze it.

AM homework for last week (week before Thanksgiving) was bumpy. There was so much going on around home I barely had time to touch animation. I turned in some serious poo. So with my assignment in a state of suckage I'm not posting any pictures or playblast files here. Hopefully I'll have something interesting to show after spending a bit more time on it. I've got to pull this one off at least as well as the last assignment, wherein luck played a large roll! Some classmates who have seen my reference and blocking have been reciting the line from my shot saying, "It's the tv guru guy!" when they see me in Q&As and the Flashmeeting "Digital Dailies" that have become popular with AM students. It's funny that people associate me with the scene, and I don't want to let them or myself down. I've gotta turn in something decent in FINAL.

Last Sunday after the homework was turned in some of us in NorCal met up at Rex's place to give him a nice send off party. He is one of the recently hired AM students and will be moving to Washington for his new job. Most of my classmates at the party seemed to have the same situation with their homework...not quite enough progress to turn in something that looked good. Of course, we are learning that transition between stepped blocking and linear or spline is often bumpy and takes a lot of massaging to get it looking decent. Experience helps but it's still part of the process. Some glitches in the school Web servers this week resulted in the decision by school admin to restart week 10, which buys us a bit more time to refine the assignment we turned in last week. Hat's off to our school president Bobby and his support staff for putting in some serious extra time getting things working again right in the middle of the holiday. They all go the distance for us to make things right and we're all very thankful for that. I wonder if any of them would like extra stuffing.

Monkeys On An Island

Okay, geez, I haven't had a chance to blog anything lately! We've had home visits from IHSS case workers, nurses and other professionals checking on my mom because of her recent hospital stay. I've taken my mom to two medical appointments in the past 8 days. The landlord has finally acted on my request from 4 months ago to have the tile and tub in my parent's bathroom repaired, so there's been workers here 8 or 9 every morning since last Wednesday. I almost didn't have time to finish my AM assignments the past two weeks, but somehow got 'em turned in. It's been crazy 'round here lately and I'm backed up on a lot of stuff. Gotta find the time!

New Animation Shot. A few weeks ago we chose brand new audio clips for another assignment at Animation Mentor. Basically, it's the same assignment again using what we learned from the first one and new lessons from our latest lectures. I had narrowed my choices down to a coupla Jack Black lines from Shallow Hal, Sean William Scott arguing with The Rock from The Rundown, a Christopher Walken line from the same movie, and a few selections of Ross and Rachel's famous fight from season 4 of Friends. Most of my classmates seemed to like the two Shallow Hal lines best, and in the end Bill recommended I go with the first of the two. Happily, he picked the one that was my favorite.

I had edited all my clips back to back into a single sound file, looped it and acted them all out over and over about a million times. It was kinda fun. Once the final selection was made, I looped that one a thousand more times, so by then I had some decent ideas about how I wanted to act out the line. I filmed myself for reference and got good stuff on takes 7 and 15. The rest was crap. I sat on the reference for a coupla days, and with so much going on around home I didn't have time to do anything else but think about it, anyway. I started feeling like I was running out of time to get the first blocking pass done by deadline. Then I finally got a chance and spent nearly two and a half hours drawing thumbnails. By then it was early Saturday or Sunday morning--I can't remember which, result of a fried brain--so I made the decision to turn my sketches into a pencil test. Rather than take all the time to do it in 3D, this is what I turned in for rough blocking:

Week 07 Rough Blocking (1.4MB, QT MPEG4)

Blocking in 2D has become a common practice among classmates, especially using Jason Schleifer's Grease Pencil Tool, because it's much faster than posing a character in 3D. I messed around with GP once before, but need learn how to use it better before I can put it to good use.

Got great feedback on the pencil test from classmates and mentor, and after a bit of a bumpy start the following week I turned in this shot for first 3D "blocking plus" with some breakdowns and a few changes.

Week 08 Blocking (1.9MB, QT MPEG4)

Bill had liked how I'd sketched the shot full-body and was a little hesitant when I told him my intention of shooting the scene in a medium shot. Fortunately, we seem to be on the same page with this shot, and he didn't mind the tighter framing once he saw where I'm going with it. He also gave me some great ideas which I'm sure a thousand monkeys on an island animating this same exact scene would never have come up with. Me either, for that matter, so I'm glad he thought of them. Obviously, some parts need lots of help. The biggest note from both mentor and classmates is that I could really push the poses much more. On this pass the camera is locked down, but knowing the poses would be pretty broad, I planned from the beginning to have the camera follow the action a bit, like a live action shot would. I'll probably start making tweaks right away, pushing the poses and gestures as much as possible, not worrrying much about camera framing until I get the motion just right. I need to be out of "stepped" mode by the next deadline, and that usually requires a lot of finessing switching over to "linear" and then "spline". The sooner I get the next pass done the sooner I can start getting feedback from other students.