Today I went to see twilight with the missus and her siblings, was a good film even though it was a bit chick flicky in areas, but it was good in the way it had a different take on Vampires. But I’m spending the night in with Leanna kicking alien scum on Resistance 2, so it’s all good, though obviously a party would have been something to talk about 
Archive for 2008
New Years Eve
Wednesday, December 31st, 2008
A quick philosophy lesson
Tuesday, December 30th, 2008One of the patrons of the Wetherspoons I used to work at was a philosophy lecturer who has taught all over the world (including being kicked out of france because of taking parts in student riots in the 60’s) so I went round his house today to learn about anarchism as part of my are animators anarchists essay. He taught me some pretty interesting things about how some of the philosophies from around 100 years ago are only just being felt, as well as the chain of who feels a philosophical movement. Was quite fun and I think I have a pretty good idea on how to start off my essay.
Gallery Monday: The Dali Experience
Monday, December 29th, 2008It’s Monday again which means me and Leanna buggered off to London to go see some art, this time it was Leanna’s turn to choose where to go. Leanna chose to go to the Dali Experience along the South Bank, claiming that we’ve past it loads of times but never gone in even though she loves Dali. Well today we went in.
On the way there we got a bit confused as the que for the London Aquarium went all the way back to the London Eye so we didn’t know if there was a que for the Dali exhibition, luckily there wasn’t. In fact it was kind of dead, kind of a shame really. Inside the exhibition (which I paid full price for due to losing my wallet with all my cards in it) it was pretty cool, at the start there’s florescent lighting and loads of information about Dali’s life and events that happened in his life time. The works which I couldn’t take pictures of yet again (what is with these places!) were pretty good, there was this statue of a thumb which had a crack at the bottom revealing brick work that I liked and I took a fancy to Dali’s Through the Looking Glass illustrations. There was only really 2 rooms of works in it. There was a Picasso section downstairs but we didn’t venture down there.
Today really made me want to do some drawing and make something with my hands, so I decided that a way around the whole no photography thing was to take a sketchbook with me instead, so I stopped off at an art shop and bought a cheap A3 sketchbook to take with me. At least that way I can have something to show people and remember all the visits me and Leanna make 
Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects by Trish & Chris Meyer
Sunday, December 28th, 2008This book is the heftiest of the tomes in my bedroom, I bought it over the summer so I could get to grips with after effects but I then found VideoCopilot and well if you’ve been there the tutorials are much more fun than reading a book. Anyways this is the book I’ll be reading and learning from. The first part is about 100 pages long but luckily it’s mostly easy stuff so I should have it done in an hour.
The first chapter of the book covers animation techniques the interface and simple animation techniques, I skimmed these pages as I already knew most of the stuff on them, one thing I was interested by was Adobe bridge but when I went to use it, I found that it wasn’t good for every file type and more for audio and video (but I suppose it was designed for that after all). I think I might try and get my computer in order, so I can use this new tool.
Bugger and New Feature-ness
Sunday, December 28th, 2008First things first, I should have heeded Mark’s warning about not saving, I just lost a good three hours of animation work today, I almost had my fly completely animated but I double clicked the wrong thing and Cinema 4D threw a hissy fit and after loads of interupts being sent from Activity Monitor I had to kill it. I’m taking the news suprisingly easy though, which is odd…..
Secondly, in a bid for me to clear my book shelf I have decided that I will be covering a ‘learn-a-piece-of-software” book chapter every sunday, that way I can look back on what I have learned but also at the same time get through the vast array of books I have on all manner of subjects. the only question is where to start, do I start with AJAX, After Effects, Lighting in Cinema 4D, Open Source Augmented Reality Software, Cocoa Programming or PHP 5??
I think I’ll start with the biggest of the lot. See the next post to find out what the book is…
CGA Renderness
Saturday, December 27th, 2008So I realized today that my scene is too complex to render as one big movie file, so I’m going to have to render out stills of the background and then animate the main object separately and use After Effects to put it all together, this saves me a hell of a lot of time and if all goes well animating it tomorrow I should have it finished in no time at all. This is a short post so I’ll just put up the pics of my scenes to compensate for it
panel 7
panel 6
panel 5
panel 2
panel 1
Boxing Day / my familys xmas
Friday, December 26th, 2008Well dad’s gone down the pub and yet again my sisters not telling me when I’ll be going to see my grandad (who has cancer so it’s not like it can wait). Anyways today isn’t as good as yesterday but at least I’m making a start on the baking side of things, I have managed to get the plane baked, and hopefully soon the Temple will be joining it. I still have to do the plants and all the other stuff, but at the moment I’m happy that somethings going right for once I was thinking a bit more about the Double Project thing, and I realised that the Single Marker Detector I’ve been using doesn’t just have to have video input, so I could try to make some kind of image processing app where people can upload images to a site, which the app downloads, sends through the Single Marker Detector and then exports another image or a string or something to the web. It’s early days yet but we’ll see.
A fly on Leaf, this wasn't done with baked objects though
Merry Christmas
Thursday, December 25th, 2008So I’ve been at Leanna’s all day having a very good christmas, I actually enjoyed myself at xmas for once, and I’ve just got home (well I’ve been home for a while now but I have to post this as it was 11 to make sure it gets posted on the appropriate day) ANYWAYS I have started baking everything at moment so I can get some nice fast render times, my only problem is that it’s taking ages to bake them Doing the baking is making my mac grunt, which isn’t good…. I’ve also been thinking about my Double Project’s end of semester artifact and I think that maybe I was being a bit too ambitious when I suggested it. I think instead I shall develop an application that runs on the Mac that can do the same functions as the iPhone app I proposed. This way I know I can actually make this.
Home Delivery environment
Wednesday, December 24th, 2008I have some great advice for anybody looking to make some awesome plants, download the free trial for vue espirit. I did and it’s awesome, I don’t know how to use it properly so I just exported the plants and used Cinema 4D to make my little garden. As I type I have finished the environment the Home Delivery will be set in, and I rendered out a beautiful shot of the opening scene (though it took 30 mins to render!) which will be at the end of the post. The file is killing my Mac Pro but I think once I have all the elements in and have the primary animation path sorted out I can then split the main file into the different camera angles then delete the stuff I don’t need for that particular shot, also I haven’t baked the lights yet so that will definitely cut down render time. I doubt I’ll be able to get it done tommorrow but I think after that is sorted I’m about 3/4 of the way there, so I should have it finished by the end of the week. MEGA HAPPY!
Home Delivery and the Temple of Doom
Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008Despite the fact that in 15 mins I have to leave to go to Leanna’s dad’s for xmas I have some good news, I have finished texturing up my temple and my spider, I way ahead of schedule at the moment, so I’m a happy bunny, I think tommorrow before I go to Leanna’s tommorrow I’ll try and get the whole enviroment sorted out. Then it’s just a case of importing it all in and animatimating it
temple