WEEK 14- Production Journal Review 3.

It is now the end of week 14 and the end of making my animation.

I did have a few problems trying to complete my film, mostly errors trying to export.

It was very fustrating and annoying not having things working for me, and i felt like giving up. But giving up isnt going to solve anything. I had a lot of help from Jack, Darren and Kirrily telling me not to stress and not worry about it. I also got heaps of moral support from Bounnong and my other class mates.

On the Tuesday the week after, Jack said that if i couldnt get my renders to work i could come into uni and try and get help with it. Jack is very powerful and said he had a dream about how he could fix my problem! I had rendered my film as a tga sequence and i still had them so he deleted my old sequence and replaced it with the tga sequence, after that we tried rendering and there was no errors!! it kept going and worked!!!

It was good to finally get somewhere! after that i needed to add my music, make a new tga sequence and then make the final mpeg2.

I did my music and i never liked what i did, i also completed all the renders i had to do. I was going to put them on disc but for some reason an error came up saying that it couldnt and Jack needed all the files before he left. I spoke to Jack and he said that i could try and put it on disc at home and hand it into the office the next morning or i could go pass his house and give him my hard drive with the files to copy over.

I did try at home to put the files on disc but it took such a long time! in around 3 hours only 140 frames were copied over. i had 4224 frames in total! So i ened up going to Jacks house and it was a lot easier to transfer the files across.

When he watched my film he said my sound/music wasnt every good and that if i had time i should fix it. To be honest i really didnt want to, i was so over doing everything. But then i thought i never liked it anyway and its something i should fix. So after Jacks house i went to uni and fixed up my sound. Im really glad Jack told me to fix it, i like it now.

After i finished it i emailed it to Jack and then the feel of completion came over me. it was the best feeling.

i always thought that i had bad karma, all the problems and stress i got from making my film, but a friend told me that problems are a blessing in disguise, now that i know if i get these problems again i know what to do.

computer says noooooooooooooooooooo.

These are pictures of some of the errors that were coming up. I didnt think at the time to take pictures of the earlier ones that were coming up.

errors & tears.

Friday.

I got to uni at 9am, worked on the last of my effects with the help from Darren and felt good about everything being done and handing in my animation at the end of the day.
I made a final comp and put all my footage in it. Everything was in order.
i also finished off my titles and used the 3D options in after effects to make the camera zoom into the door I also made the rose change to colour with the help of Jack.

It came to the time of rendering.
For some reason I rendered my animation as a tga sequence first, which was a bad idea. even as i was rendering it came up with an error and stopped at frame 1311. so then i tried again and it did the same thing. i dont remeber what the error was i didnt take a picture of it.
Kirrily helpped me out by showing me in the settings there was a custom settings to render certain frames and i did that, but i had to put them in different folders each time it stopped! so i had to make sure that i was working.
the first time it stopped at frame 1311 then frame 1726,1962 and 2117. From 2177 it continued to the end which was frame 3500.
I wanted to put the sequence into Final cut pro and put some fades were i need it to be and add my music and sound. but then i realised that if i add the extra fades, then the tga sequence wont have it...... pretty much it was a waste of time!! I was having so many problems with importing the tga sequence into final cut, it came up as tiny individual frames and it was really hard to edit together. and i had many folders that needed to be imported in.
From there i started to have a bit of a break down, nothing was working for me, Jarrod said that i should save each tga sequence as a mov file and import them into final cut because the mov files read better and its one whole section and its not cut up into tiny frames.

I ended up getting an error for that too. It was the time of when Jack had come in and he tried helping me out. I was pretty much crying my eyes out because it was 5pm and it seemed like nothing had been done. Jack saved me by showing me how to do the editing(fades) in after effects and orgainse mt credits and titles. I started to think that everything would be okay and i could get it done. Jack helped me by organising the renders i needed to do.
The first one was to make a low quality mov export so i could put it into final cut and edit my music and sound effects to it. then in final cut i can export my sound as a wav file and have it separate. then i get that wav file and put it into after effects again were i can render my mpeg2 and my tga sequence. and thats all i need to do!! THATS ALL!! but i can go pass rendering the low quality mov.

Jack had to leave and i was very thankful for his help, he gave me his number to tell him if there was any problems then he could tell me what to do. once he left i clicked the render button for the mov file and off it went. i thought this is going to finally work for me. But it didnt, a lot of errors came up and Darren had also come in to try and help.

I was crying my eyes out. I was getting way to emotional.
Everyone told me not to stress out about it, but of course i did because i didnt know what to do, it was due on friday! Darren stayed till 7pm and he had to go, which i understand and im very thankful for him to stay.

it wasnt only me that was having problems, everyone was! but everyone else got thre film on disc. mne is still in a program that i cant export. Bounnong and Alex were still finishing up and giving me supporting words of not stressing out and being worried.
i left at 8pm to go home, i couldnt handle it anymore.

I sent a text to Jack telling him and he said that i can come in on tuesday so he can see whats going on.
i just want it to work.

Raven&Tree.

On tuesday i was talking to Darren about putting a tree in the window when Alice looks up at the window. Darren has been such a help! he helped me by organising a tree, raven and rain! its amazing! i love it so much! i just wish i was with him to learn how he did it!!
the tree was done in photoshop and i love the texture of it. Blacks, grays and whites all together. Its simple yet effective and looking at the style made me think of something similar to do for next year.

i cant wait for thursday to put it in to see how it looks.
I will also be adding a glow to the chalk and making a dark shadow for the background. Darren will be helping me out, once i learn how to do it i can get it done and thats another load off done!!

I also got my thursday night shift off so i can complete my animation.

Titles&Credits.

Week 14 has been crazy! ive been staying up late to get work done and waking up early to go to uni. Im glad ive gotten heaps of work done however I should have finished ages ago.

Ive been doing what i can at home and trying to get things complete. When i get stuck and have no idea what im doing i make a list and wait till i get to uni and ask for help from the teachers.
I cant believe its wednesday in week 14. my animation is due on Frday. im scared that i wont get it done but i know i will at the same time.
i dont know :S i guess what im trying to say is that i wish i did things differently and if i did then things would look the way i would like it to look.

anyway! i did my credits and tried to do my title but im having a little bit of a problem so im hoping that Darren can help me tomorrow.



cant wait to put my animation all together. i just hope ill have enough time to put it together and export it all out and put it on disc.

working with nodes.

With toonboom they have a compositing section were you can add effects to your drawings!

If i didnt have visual effects class with Darren where we used Shake with node based editing i wouldnt have a clue on what to do!!

I had a shot where the door frame fades in and appears, so i had a play around with the node stuff in toonboom and i got it to work!!! yay for me!

export problem, i almost cried.

I spent the whole of Tuesday animating one of my long shots. once it was complete i went to export and it kept coming up with a problem!

It was making me so angry! i had no idea what it was talking about! So i had a look on the interwebs and did some searching. Found out that it was too much memory or something for it to export so i had to cut it down into frames of 100. blahhh it was annoying!

but its good now that i dont have to do the shot again or something.

its been a while.

i havent blogged in a bit... so sorry for that, ive been trying to work on my animation and its coming along!

i got all my animating complete which is a massive load off! I like a few of my shots, some are a bit ewww like i missed a few frames.... oops.

This is a picture of animating and editing Alice when she walks over to her bed.

The check list came in handy as well, i found it a lot easier to organise myself. Its so good seeing ticks where it use to be empty for a long time.

Spiral Door.

On wednesday i got help from Jack with the spirals coming out from the door after Alice draws it. I didnt want to draw over and over the same line and extend each time it will take forever. So Jack showed me in After Effects with the brush tool how to make it work.

when you use the brush tool and draw over the guide lines of the spiral, it records it and when you add some keyframes the spirals move! Its really cool. So thats one thing out of a million to go.

I did get the last of my backgrounds back and i organised the shadow with it. So now all the backgrounds are complete and a few of my shots are complete. I stil have lots to do. I mostly have my hard longer shots to do, but i want some time to edit it together and add my music and sound. I actually still have to find some more sounds AND i need to do my title and credits.
Its my own fault for leaving this so late, i was just having so many problems with my backgrounds and it felt like nothing was going right.


Today is exactly one week till my animation is due. I hope i can get this done.

Week 14, come at me bro.

I want a C - U - P, C - U - ohh my god!!

Okay so horse racing blah blah extra day to work on animation.
i went through my check list and ticked things off that i have done. it doesnt look like much tho :(
Anyway i decided that i need to go through all my shots, organise the backgrounds and do super rough pencil tests and then start the next shot and do the same thing.
Im having problems with a few of my shots only because i dont know how to animate them. I never got to show Jack on friday so i hope i can get his help on wednesday.

As i was going through my shots i decided to cut out a section. Even tho its my fave bit :(
after Alice draws the door spirals come out from the door frame, the spirals organise into a tree and goes up the wall and stops before hitting the roof. I think its going to take me forever to do this because ToonBoom doesnt have Keyframes like Flash where you can draw something then insert a keyframe and continue from that drawing. In ToonBoom i would have to draw over and over and over and over and over and over the same drawing. BLAHHHHHH If someone can give me an idea on how to fix this it would be great and yes i did try it in Flash but the paint stroke is weird and you can tell were ive started again.

So I feel like i havent done much work, I still don't feel confident.
Its week 13!! ONE MORE WEEK!! I HAVE SO MUCH TO DO!!!!!!!

Music in my Hands.

I had only gotten back to Kenny on Saturday morning and told him about Dropbox.
The reson why he asked if i could come down his way was so i could hear the recording that he tried to send and do the final recording when im there to listen to it.
So i got to his place at 2:30pm and listened to it.
Its soo beautiful. I really like the violin.
I have a slow tune and a more upbeat tune. Its great :D

So now i have my music that i need and my plan B music as well just in case.
One thing that i forgot to take with me was the contract that i wrote up, i will need him to sign it.
And i also asked what he would like in the credits.

So glad that is another thing taken care of.

Sound Recording.

In Kirrily's class Jarrod, Bounnong, Tai and myself went into the sound booth recording room and worked on our sounds that we needed for our animations. It was so fun! Also it took us a while to figure out how to use everything but we got it to work. Just pressed every button we saw hahaha no not really.

We did a few tests to make sure we were doing everything right and did a few takes each time to make sure we got what we wanted. We wrote down everything that we needed and one by one we recoreded our voices.

FRIDAY = FUN, FUN, FUN, FUN. THANKS REBECCA BLACK!

When we were done we went back into our normal room, i contiued to animate........ its slow.
I spoke to Kirrily about getting an e-mail back from Kenny and how he couldn't send me the file of the music and that i would need to pick it up. She told me about this program you download called "Dropbox" were you can send kind of like an e-mail but can send a much larger file then what a normal e-mail can hold. So i will tell Kenny and see what happenes.

Background Fin.

On friday i got the last of the renders from Jack and he also did a soft shadow render as well!! which looks really cool! It shows more detail with the black... if that makes sence.

Anyway with the shadow render it had to be done separate from the background, Jack told me that i needed to organise eacj frame into folders (which I have been doing) and import the background with the same shadow backgrounf into After Effects. Then from there i had to make sure that the shadow layer was on top then change it to multiply and done!

I will do some picture maths for you to look at, i learnt it in accounting.

Original Background

PLUS



Shadow Background

EQUALS

Complete Background.

"It's the finnnnnnnnnnnaaaaaaaaaallllllllllllllll Backkkkggggggoooooooooooouuuunnddddddd, I mean coooouuunnnttt dddooowwwnnnn"

The only problem is that one shot didnt get rendered which was when the mother grabs the door handle and closes the door. So ON MY OWN I fixed up the render command and rendered the frames i needed :D there was also some history on the roof with the window so it looked like it was from the 60's, so i deleted history and rendered the frames i needed with that roof.

yeah so i don't have the shadow background for when the mother slams the door, so Jack said he can quickly do it at his house and give it to me on Wednesday. YAY!!