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.

Oxymoron of Sorts

It's odd, really. Anyone who's read much of my blog, or friends who understand in even more detail just what my life presently entails, knows I am faced with tremendous, often overwhelming daily challenges. Whoopdee-doo. But what has been bending my mind lately--in a good way--is that despite the difficulties, I've been experiencing brief, profound moments of peace, and seriously positive emotional highs. It seems out of place. The situation I'm in, the responsibility I have taking care of my mom and dad do not leave much time or energy for enjoying life, or laughing hysterically about something, or on some days even sitting down and having any peace of mind at all. Yet, in between tasks, stresses, etc., for the past 3 or 4 months I've been increasingly having inexplicable bursts of euphoria. The closest thing I can relate it to is like being a kid again, and knowing I'm getting a shiny new bike for my birthday, the anticipation is driving me nuts, expecting something so fun and good is on the way. But I am not currently expecting anything out of the ordinary. It's strange because I've never had feelings like this come up while I'm in the midst of the kind of turmoil I've been through lately. I don't want to question it, but it makes me extremely curious; where is it coming from? and could there be a way to make those moments last longer?

I know part of it is that I have made a ginormous effort in the past year+, as things with my parents have gotten harder, to really look for the good, funny, happy in every possible place. I've sort of had to because otherwise I'd be really, really depressed! Studies at Animation Mentor have furthered my pursiut of the good in things because we are taught to actively engage and observe life, and that in every moment we might find some kind of artistic inspiration. A side effect of this kind of attention to the detail of life seems to be increased appreciation of the stuff as well. Ask any of my AM classmates, or any animator for that matter, and they will tell you they find amazing, cool, funny, mind-blowing ideas and inspiration just about anywhere at any time. You begin paying attention to things in the way we are taught as animators and you end up taking great pleasure in stuff that before seemed unimportant or uninteresting. I find myself geeking out about some stuff now that would have never even caught my attention before. All this is good, but it doesn't by itself explain what's going on.

The past week has been very stressful for my family and me. I had to take my mom to ER Sunday and she stayed in the hospital until Wednesday. Luckily she seems to be improving as of today. Stressful, scary, depressing stuff has been going on. Yet, there I was a coupla nights ago, digitizing sound bytes for our next animation assignment and laughing my ass off at some of the dialog I found! On one hand I've got some depressing things going on and on the other I'm laughing myself silly! It's like I'm a real life oxymoron! Kind of an odd place to be, but I'm enjoying it and it sure beats just being depressed about stuff.

Last week my Animation Mentor mentor, Bill Diaz, asked me to get Bishop's feet moving more broadly during the small shuffly "walk" that have in my animation shot. In my mind, and in my reference I shot of myself acting it out, it's supposed to be just a kind of foot and body repositioning...not very big at all. I think Bill is seeing something different, which mostly just means I haven't properly conveyed my idea through the animation as it exists. The mentor is our "director" for these assignments, and just like if this were a real job I gotta just make it happen the way he says or else! Well, unless I can pitch an even better idea. I was having trouble understanding what he wanted at first, and an unfortunately timed sound glitch on my computer kept me from fully discussing it with Bill in last Tuesday's Q&A. But I think the tweaks I've made are on the right track and should be fine by the time I turn it in.

Since this is the final week of this assignment, I've also been experimenting with lighting and rendering my shot. I do know a thing or two about lighting, and though I'm certainly no genius it sure does look a lot nicer rendered than straight out of playblast!

Let's Put In Twirly Arms

I've got a lot to do for this week's animation assignment before the Sunday deadline. I should be doing my first refining pass now, but I'm reblocking some areas based on my last mentor eCritique. Bill made some more suggestions last time, plus I totally spaced on Bishop's weight and balance; he takes two small steps and was way off balance! Ridiculous.

So earlier this week I switched all the keys back to stepped mode and started tweaking. At first it was not going too smooth but Thursday I was able to put in close to 7 hours and made good progress. Of course, while I was working some new ideas came to me. I decided to try to do some "twirly arms" stuff going into the pose for "suposubly". That meant I had to shoot some more reference. Above you can see 4 frames from the best take, with red arrows indicating motion direction. I also made a new set of planning sketches. Later I decided to have the screen-right arm spin the opposite way from my reference. I think that will look more fun. My concern is that I have a total of four ideas for two spots in the shot, and I can't get my mentor's feedback on either before the assignment is due. I guess I just have to use my own judgment and it will just be a surprise to Bill when he does the critique. I'll email him a headsup and maybe he'll have time to advise me before Sunday.

Life outside of AM has been pretty crazy this week. I'm not sure what to do about my mom...none of the current options are pleasant. Just gotta do whatever I can to make things better for her and my dad. And try to stay positive and keep myself healthy and sane. And finish AM homework. Ha!

Lemons, Lemonade and Acting

Sunday many AnimationMentees from Northern California met up for yet another AM BBQ. It was our fifth AM gathering and 2nd hosted by classmate Brian Nicolucci and his family. Thanks again Brian, Sue and Dakota! The bummer of some old friends not being able to make it was made up for by a number of new faces being there, including some brand new Level A students, and at least a couple who are considering enrollment. AnimationMentor Doug Dooley made it out as well. I remembered Doug from an enjoyable Saturday makeup Q&A I'd been in (it was Doug's first Q&A and he was great!), and it was sooper cool to meet another of our mentors in person! It was another time of great fun for all.

I almost wasn't able to go at the last minute. My mom's health has not been good, and Sunday morning seemed off to a bad start, but luckily she was okay and well enough to take care of herself while I was gone.

Today I wasn't so lucky; it was a rather stressful day. Aside from my mom needing continuous help, I had an extra 40-minute wait at the pharmacy for some meds that were supposed to be ready Sunday (Thanks again, MediCal! You complicate my life!). Later, the tube in my 22-inch Viewsonic monitor went out, accompanied by a serious burning wires scent. Yikes! But the good news is the 3-year warranty is still good--for 2 more weeks! Talk about close-calls. So it's going back to Viewsonic for repair or replacement. You know what they say when life gives you lemons: Call and get an RMA#! :)

I got last week's rough blocking assignment done slightly early, partly due to a serious multi-hour Maya session that ended at 6am Friday. It was fun, I just couldn't stop animating! That made it possible for me to meet Brian and his clan to see SERENITY Friday night totally guilt free! It was my second time seeing it but their first, and knowing every one of the Nicolucci fam is a mad Browncoat, it was awesome seeing it with them! Shiny! For anyone considering seeing Serenity who isn't already a Browncoat or fan of the TV series firefly, I recommend renting the DVDs before seeing the movie because it will make it even better, trust me.

Earlier tonight I got my eCritique from my mentor, who gave me some great suggestions and ideas to improve the blocking for this week. I've really been having a good time with this assignment, trying to get comfortable with the idea of acting out a line in front of a camera for reference. It's a lot easier if you're not being filmed and there's no audience.

And The Audio Clip Will Be...

Our current multi-week assignment is to animate Bishop doing a line of dialog of our choice from any tv show or movie. Sunday we turned in our 3 or 4 selects so our mentors could help us decide which of them would be best suited for this assignment. The goal was to find a line that has interesting variety of inflection, pauses in the delivery or a change of mood; something that would inspire us when we get into animating the shot. I don't have that many DVDs, but I was able to find some decent clips:

1. Mayor Vaughn, speaking to Chief Brody from Jaws
2. Hooper frustrated with Vaughn, also from Jaws
3. Chandler, worried he's being too picky about dates from Friends
4. Laura speaking to Rob from The Dick Van Dyke Show

Here is an mp3 of all 3 (319k).

I like the subtlety of clip 1, the intensity of 2 and the delivery of 4 makes it my 2nd favorite. But my mentor and many of my AnimationMentor classmates seemed to prefer the clip from Friends, and I agree it is the best of the group, and it will be fun to animate.

My next few tasks will be to break down the dialog into main beats or phrases, figure out operative words which are like accents of the line, and do some sketches to develop ideas for important poses. I'm hoping to borrow a video camera from someone to shoot some reference of myself acting out the shot, too. I might have to just plock down some moo* and buy a MiniDV camera soon. Gotta work fast because after all that I'll have to figure out the frames that each part of the dialog falls on and do a quick blocking pass to turn in Sunday. This is a fun assignment and I think all of us are sooper excited about it!
*moo - kenism, short for moola.

It's Bishop!

The model for the new character we'll be animating in Class 3 was made downloadable end of last week! His name is Bishop and he's our first fully "skinned" character. Some of his rig is identical to Stewie's, but Bishop is a bit more sophisticated. He has controls for opening and closing his mouth and moving his jaw side to side, upper and lower eyelids, pupil and iris dilation, a simple unibrow, neck stretch and 3 actual fingers instead of just 2. In the quick pose I did testing him out, Bish is looking up, perhaps pondering what dialog I will make him act out in the upcoming assignment.

Not Exactly a Break

This past week has been a break between classes at AnimationMentor, a chance to catch up on personal odds and ends, de-stress and get ready for Class 3, Introduction to Acting, which starts Monday. At least that was the idea.

The week started off okay enough. My mom seemed fine on Sunday, well enough she wanted me to take her to the store. Her health problems have gotten a little worse over the past two weeks but Sunday I thought maybe she might be improving again. She had a lot of trouble the rest of the week, though. I never know what to expect. Thursday my parents got into a big argument that I had to break up. Jeez, this is kinda like having kids. I thought everything was settled when I stepped out with a friend later in the afternoon. While I was out, I missed a call from my mom on my cell. When I checked the message she left the first few seconds were all I needed to hear; my mom was frantic and it sounded like she and my dad were arguing again. I told my friend we had to go and ran to the car!

Luckily, when I got home I got my parents calmed down and no one had been physically hurt. But it is clear I might not be able to leave them alone with each other when I go out on errands or such. There's no immediate solution, and it's very likely one of them might have live elsewhere, which sucks. I'll have to start making phone calls Monday, right when classes recommence.

Early this week I also had to stop interacting with a longtime friend whose recent behavior, though primarily supportive, was inadvertently causing me a lot of extra stress that I am not able to deal with right now. The final straw came this week when s/he deliberately caused a rift between me and another person. This is not something I am happy to do--every friend I have is highly valued--but this person's actions were inexcusable and at this time I'm at a loss for any other solution. I don't know if this is a permanent change or not, I just know it was interfering too much with my staying positive with everything that's going on around me.

BBQ @AMHQ

The bbq Saturday at AnimationMentor headquarters was deluxe! It was great to see everybody again (this is the fourth SF area hangout) and meet so many others for the first time...in person! Bobby's wife and mom were there, and it was nice talking to them, I finally met Carlos, Nancy Kato...so many people and mentors made the fest, but with my semi-retarded social skillz I didn't get to everyone. I don't get out much. Plus it was a pretty big crowd! I did get to meet über Disney animator Mark Henn though, and that was sooper cool. I tried chatting in the live Q&A, but I think I was logged in as Luis and no one on the other end knew it was me. The mentor camera was at the other desk. Wish everybody could have been there though! It rocked! Can't wait 'til the next one!

Apparently I've Learned Something!

Like many of my AnimationMentor classmates I often find it a challenge to get homework done by deadline. Doing that freelance job last week did not help, and that was a little too challenging with everything else going on. There's a reason I try to spread out freelance jobs. So sometimes it seems like I'm not progressing as much as I would hope.

Class 2 on body dynamics is winding down and having completed in last week's assignment on time I looked forward to not having any assignment due for this final week. This gave me a chance to revisit my 4 Emotions assignment which I had delivered partly polished. I could have just left well enough alone, since it doesn't affect my grade at this point, but it's a matter of principle. Plus, I hadn't put anything in my Revision slot (in my workspace on AM) in weeks because the main assignment was taking all the time I had, and I wanted something in there for Charles, my mentor, this week.

So I spent several hours last night into early this morning, working on the arms, which I hadn't even animated in one section, counter animating problematic stuff (I had a knee control that was going nuts for some unexplained reason. It was NOT the dreaded "gimbal", this was something esle.), and fine tuning stuff. While it's still what I'd call "In Progress", it's looking much better. I'd post it here except that I ran out of ftp space.

The big thing I discovered from this morning's session is that, apparently, I've learned something during the past 6 months!

I noticed a bit of "overshoot" on Stewie's foot that caused it to go through the floor as it moved from one key to the next. I had Maya's Graph Editor open and amidst the tangle of splines running every which direction I immediately spotted the problem. I could see that the spline for the foot's xRotation "bubbled" up instead of staying flat like it should. Not only that, my first instinct on how to fix it was correct; change the first key tangent to "Flat" instead of "Smooth". Problem solved. 3 or 4 months ago I know I wouldn't have spotted such a problem quite as quickly. Kinda exciting and fun to realize I'm learning, despite the fact that much of it seems to just whiz by. Cool!

Sugar Rush

Is it wrong of me to do this? I've been known to do some"fun" things with foodies, like I never grew out of childhood habits of putting potato chips or Doritos® on sandwiches. Even though I've been an adult for oh, 2 weeks now, it still seems to improve the taste of the sandwich.

My latest food experiment (foodsperiment) involves Rice Kripsies Treats®. Rice Krispies Treats of course, are those delicious snack squares made with Kellog's Rice Krispies®, marshmallows and margarine. You can make your own but I recently found a giant box of 40 pre-packaged bars at Costco. 40! My parents love them after all. (Sometimes my dad eats ice cream or some kind of pastry instead of a regular meal. He's 97.)

I like to eat cereal for breakfast and sometimes I have a nice bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats® with Almonds. Just last week I got a bright idea: Since Rice Krispies Treats are made out of cereal, why not break up one of those squares and toss it in the bowl with the Honey Bunches of Oats? So I tried it and it was delicious! It's my new cereal treat. I know they already have Rice Krispies Treats cereal. I havent tried it but I bet that boxed stuff doesn't have nearly as much sugar! So now I have a new cereal version to add to my morning menu. Oo! I bet this same idea would work great with Reeses® Puffs®!

This week at AM I refined last week's blocking. The assignment was to do 100 frames of Stewie going through a single change of mood/emotion. I had some cool ideas for a "devastated" Stewie, mainly some cool camera stuff, since we're starting to get into lessons about camera use, but I decided I would need more time--to do the assignment as well as more frames. I settled on having Stewie react in jubilation after reading a letter. Not that creative, but all I felt I had time for.

The past two weeks have been extra busy because I've been working on a freelance motion graphics job. I worked on it Wednesday thru Tuesday, which is extremely short to develop a show open, but it turned out okay and the client seemed to love it. Without any changes! When does that ever happen? I got lucky. Oh, crap I just remembered I have to send an invoice!

It's good to have work once in awhile but man, that sure adds to the stress of an already tight schedule. It's enough that I've contemplated dropping AM because I just don't feel I'm putting enough time into it to get the maximum out of it. But geez, when in the future would life be any less complicated than now? I wish I had more time for school, but I'm learning too much to quit.

I'm About to Become World Famous! (US Only)

Well, not really. And only in the US. And only if you read the credits.

After more than a year of sales meetings and several months of post post-production "enhancement" tweaks by the distrubutor, my friend John's movie "Fugitive Hunter" (which has nothing to do with the game of the same name) is about to be released on DVD by Lion's Gate Films! Woo! And thus my first ever feature film screen credit is realized! Yay! Plus, woo!

Originally titled, "End of the Law" and renamed by LGF's marketing, the micro-budget film marks John's feature directorial debut, and co-stars my other friend, Roger!

The movie is available now for pre-order on Amazon.com, BestBuy.com and dozens of other online retailers, and will be released September 13! We found the best pre-order pricing on DeepDiscountDVD.com.

My screen credit for the movie is titles designer; I designed and produced the main titles and end credit crawl. I also did a simple but essential visual effect for the film, creating a series of muzzle flashes that were composited with the live action to enhance scenes with gunfire! BANG!

As if that wasn't cool enough, barring any last-minute snafoos (I have not seen the final DVD master), my short segment of the audio commentary made the DVD! Yay! I'm right on there with the composer, director of photography, producer and director! For some reason, LGF marketing material doesn't mention the audio commentary, or the 5.1 DOLBY DIGITAL mix (only the 2.0 mix is listed). But they're there!

The only bummer is all the marketing graphics I made were completely redone by LGF. Looks like they just wanted a bunch of color, and a helicopter, which my versions of the posters didn't have. Seems like they stole some elements of my concept, using the same main photo I used for the teaser poster, and putting the badge in the background (mine) (theirs). Oh well.

Be sure to check out Fugitive Hunter when it arrives 09/13/05!

Credit Just Got Scarier

This morning I was doing bills at about 2-freakin'-AM, inbetween (get it?) watching eCritiques on AM. I don't appreciate APRs higher than 4%. Like many people with decent credit scores, I get a bazillion credit card offers in the mail every month (yes, bazillion; I counted as I put them in my "To Be Shredded" bag), usually with some kind of teaser rate that's still too high and for too short a time period (less than 1 year). I always keep a look out for offers that are actually good and one recently caught my eye: 0% for a full year, NO annual fee and NO FEE for balance transfers.

So early this morning I applied for the card online. Hopefully it really is secure as they say. I entered balance transfers from 2 other credit cards with rates that I don't like. The scary and downright dangerous thing is how fast the process was...I was approved in about 8 seconds (the site said "within 60")! It's scary that they're handing out credit so readily these days...maybe I wouldn't have been approved if I were less responsible, but it's not like I need another credit account, I'm just doing it for the balance transfer. But a person could conceivably apply for waaay too much credit in a very short time this way and then actually use all that credit--like some credit rookies often do--as if it were actual cash. Yikes.

Well the 0% APR will save me at least $340 over the next year, maybe even more if purchases are also at the same rate. Tuition is coming up again soon. (If not I'll just use my lowest rate card to pay for school). In another year I'll have hopefully had numerous other offers and when the 0% expires I'll transfer again to another low-interest card. Hey, as long as they keep making me offers I'm gonna save whatever way I can. Of course, if I somehow come up with real money to pay for school I'll just use cash. Until then, eveyrthing over a few hundred has to be credit. Still, it's just scary how easily they approve people now.

c207 Pencil Test

I made my planning sketches into a pencil test (avi, 5MB) to look at the timing, see if I might want to change something.

Four Emos

At 9:15 this morning I returned to the reception counter at my mom's doctor's office because of the sign that said, Please inform the receptionist if you have been waiting for you doctor longer than 10 minutes. The receptionist informed me my mom's appointment was actually supposed to be at 3pm, not 9am...and she appologized for not telling me when I checked in. Grr. The doctor was in meetings this morning so they couldn't just fit us in, and the next available appointment would be 1 or 2 months out. WTF? 2 months out?? So after waiting there for a useless 30-minutes, I helped my poor mom back to the car and we will have to try again later today. Grr.

It woldn't be so bad except I had about 40 minutes of sleep since the morning before. I was up until early this morning doing AnimationMentor homework. Then my mom was having one of those bizarre, as-yet-undiagnosed attacks, so I gave her some meds and had to watch her status for about an hour. By then it was 6am. I was stressed and couldn't sleep so I played DRIV3R on PS2 for about thirty minutes. That made me hungry so I made myself some Eggos(R) and then tried to get a few minutes of sleep before leaving for my mom's appointment at the incorrect time. Grr.

This week's assignment at AM, which we started last week, is to block out the timing of our short scene showing Stewie (the model we're given) going through four emotions; relaxed, alert, engaged and our choice of either disgusted or dejected. Since I'm always making up words and abbreviating them, I call 'em four emos (EEmohz). I had been inspired by two great new videos on AM, a shot walkthru by Jason Ryan, and last week's video lecture on force by Wayne Gilbert, so I had plenty of motivation for this assignment. I shot some reference, then sat on the idea for a day or two. Last night I went thru my reference footage and drew planning thumbnails, studying how Stewie will move to get from each pose the the next, each feeling. I'm spending time thinking about the thought process he would go thru as well, and how to animate that. It should look like he's experiencing those thoughts that correspond to the four feelings in the scene, not just indicating them. Wednesday I will start adding in the many key poses that happen between each emo and hopefully get something decent to turn in come Sunday.