Ways To Keep Yourself Going

So this isn’t gonna be a post about animation, or techniques, and it won’t have any fancy images in it, but rather it’s just a list of things I do in order to keep my motivation up when it comes to working on my thesis film. It’s a Friday afternoon right now as I type this, and I suddenly found myself thinking out loud, “Wow, I don’t feel like working today! On anything! At all!”

But I need to press on, because I plan on putting together my 15th animatic by the end of today, and I’m also almost done animating the 3D assets for Picture Lock!! (I’m working on the last scene, woohoo!)

So I figured I would procrastinate a little more by making a post about how I keep myself from procrastinating. Ironic? Yea probably.

1. Play music: I find that this works but it needs to be done right. And by that I mean you need to set up a whole playlist, or take an entire ALBUM of songs and put them into your music player. Just putting in one song won’t work, because then that’ll end in 3-5 minutes, and suddenly your attention span disappears without the flow of tunes, and you’ll lose motivation all over again.
2. DJ Playlists: You can especially find good ones on Youtube. Here’s one for example: Mixes are great though because they provide over an hour of constant, bumpin’ beats to keep you focused on your art!
   
3. If You’re Lipsynching…: Unfortunately though when you’re doing Lip Synch animation, you can’t really have loud music playing in the background, because you need to listen to the audio track you’re animating to. One way around this though is to play light music QUIETLY in the background. You can also toggle Windows’ sound mixer to make the internet audio low and Maya’s audio high, so you’ll always hear the track you’re working with. However this still only works to some extent, and I have yet to figure out how to make Lipsynching animation not like pulling teeth when it comes to staying motivated.
4. Stand-up Comedy Performances: Standup Comedy is great to play in the background, because it’s entertaining, it’s light chat, and depending on the comedian, it’s not something you necessarily feel the need to look at. Like for example, Maria Bamford or Margert Cho are good comedians to listen to in the background because most of their comedy is driven by the funny voices they puts on. However, Dane Cook, or Carrot Top aren’t as useful, because they depend more on physical/acting for their routines, which makes you want to look away from the Maya window and will therefore kill your motivation to keep working.
   
5. Interviews: I’ve lately found that putting on an interview in the background is also really great, but has to be something that interests you (duh, because otherwise you won’t want to listen to it at all). One example of an interview I like are these Drag Race At Sea Q&A sessions that come in 8 parts and are ~20 min long each: 
6. Work With Friends: For me, working alone causes me to go stir crazy, and when that happens, I suddenly stop animating for ~2 hours and I’m instead dancing around my room to “I’m So Excited” by The Pointer Sisters. But if there’s someone you’re friends with in the room with you while you work, then that alone can keep you focused. Some people can also do this with complete strangers (hence why many people go to the library to work) but I don’t find that that helps… instead that just makes me feel claustrophobic. This method, though, reminds me of back in High School when I first started animating, and I remember my dad would always walk into my room, sit on my bed, and watch me animate. He’d very rarely ever say anything while I worked, but he just watched. And while he wasn’t actively doing anything to engage me, just having him in the room there somehow kept me focused, and it also made me feel loved. And so whenever anyone else sits in the same room with me quietly while I work, that reminds me of those times with my dad back in High School.
   

But come to think of it, I think that the main cause of procrastination/losing steam while you’re working… is fear. Fear that you’re not doing your work right, or that you’re not doing it well-enough, or if you’re in the situation I’m in right now, fear that you won’t get a good job after college, or that your film won’t turn out well, or as well as you hope it will. But the opposite of fear, as we all know, is love, and luckily love can come in many different forms, whether it’s music, comedy, listening to people you admire speak, or even just silently being around someone else while you work.

So I guess I’ll conclude my post with that — especially since I should probably get back to work now — and I hope that you all have a great Spring Break/Weekend/whatever you’re doing in the future!

Also, if you want, I’d love it if you post in the comments ways that YOU keep yourself motivated to keep working. I’m curious to see if anyone else has any suggestions for me/other people who read this. I know people are subscribed to this blog, so maybe that means people read it? I dunno.

Peace out, y’all! And of course, there’s more to come. 🙂

MOM DAY!

That’s right! I have finished rigging the Mom character in my film! And therefore finished rigging ALL OF THE 3D CHARACTERS OF MY FILM!! WAHOOOOO!!!! I’M DONE WITH CHARACTER RIGGING YAAAAYYYYYY

(I hate rigging, in case you couldn’t tell. Although I have improved at it quite a bit since I started working on this film, so hey, every cloud has a silver lining.)

However, making the mother was an interesting challenge. After all, just like how I made the head-models of the Mean Girl’s Friends, I also made the Mom’s head by taking the Hero’s Head and morphing it around until it looked like a different person. And I figured that it should really work this time, since at least the mom is related to the hero, right?

However, the challenge here was taking a male head mesh and transforming it into a female one. And not just that — a female one that’s much older. So while I was doing this, I had to figure out a lot of things — what makes a person look older vs. younger? What makes a person look female vs. male?

Anyway, below is photographic documentation of the 15 deformations I put on the Hero Head mesh to turn it from young-male to adult-female. Also, with each transformation, I included a nicely-rendered version of the head, as well as an in-program screencap of the head showing the lattice deformations I implemented:

FIRST THREE TRANSFORMATIONS (the first head is the original base head):

As you can see, my first prerogative was to make the face longer, the nose longer, and the chin more pointed. All ofthose things make the human face look older.

NEXT FOUR DEFORMATIONS:

What I then did was work in more elderly-looking cheekbones (aka more defined ones), I worked with elongating the face more, and I also did a hair-test to see how it looked…….. and it looked like the Main Character in drag. Bad drag. So I knew I still had a ways to go.

NEXT FOUR DEFORMATIONS:

At this point, I saw that it was starting to look more female, so I created a new Skin Texture, and I also think this was the point when I manually moved some of the vertices around the Eyelids to make them more “feline,” if you will. Really all that means is I pulled them up the face, and towards the sides. After all, this is just basic Drag Science — you always brush makeup up and outwards from the center of the face, never down. It makes you look more feminine — true fact!

LAST FOUR DEFORMATIONS:

And here I think I was just doing final touches, getting everything shaped nicely. Aaand that was that!

So yea. And as for making the body, that was simple, because making body meshes is kind of easy.  Haha, I admittedly am not giving nearly as much attention to the body meshes as I am the face meshes…

Now, before I finish this post, let me say that as for the design of the mom character, I admittedly didn’t put much thought into it. After all, this was mainly because I already had the perfect reference to base my character design off of!

Yep — that’s my mom! I even gave the Mom 3D model a shirt that my own real mother actually owns/wears (in the picture on the right). My mom is the best mom I know, so why not base my mom-character off of her? 🙂

Also, I think it’s awesome that my mother character has a nice big dark mane of hair like this. After all, most moms in popular culture NEVER look like that!

That is, unless they’re evil mothers…

…I’m not gonna lie, when I watched Tangled with my family last summer, all of us (and especially my mom) couldn’t help but feel slightly offended at the portrayal of Mother Gothel as a very obviously Jewish/Middle-Eastern-looking woman. Which, I mean, Jews/Arabs have always been the face of evil in pop culture, let’s face it. (Go back to some Original Series Star Trek episodes, look at the way the Klingons used to look, and try to deny that they totally looked like stereotypical portrayals of Arabs.) So with all of this, I guess I’m trying to do some community service with my thesis film as well. After all, Jew girls can be nice, too! Dark curly hair and all. 🙂

Alright, sorry to get superficially pseudo-political there. Have a good week y’all!

More to come.

Let’s Talk Numbers

So Fall Semester will be over in 3 or 4 weeks, and after that, all the time I have left to work on my film is Spring Semester! (And any breaks that happen from now until like, April)

So because of this, the question that’s certainly on my mind, is CAN I GET THIS FILM DONE IN TIME?!?!?!

Well, let’s look at the numbers.

As of today, (Sunday, November 25th) I have 130 DAYS LEFT to work on my film before Picture Lock.

Also, in each shot of animation, I need to do the following:

– Shoot Reference footage

– Animate the main body motions

– Facial animation (both for lipsynch and emotional reactions)

– Hair Animation (if I have time)

– 2D Animations for some shots

– Occasional Special effects

But how many total individual shots are there in my film? (as in, camera cuts): THERE ARE 74. (not counting opening and closing titles)

Oh my god, Max, that’s a lot! You won’t be able to get that all done in time!

Oh but I think I will, brain. After all, those 74 shots can be consolidated together into scenes. And currently, I’ve grouped those 74 shots into 30 different Maya Scene Files.

That’s still a lot!

I know, I know, but calm down! ONLY 17 of those 30 Scene Files include intensively-animated 3D Assets

And if you want to break it down even more, there are 27 different instances of animation in my film (this doesn’t count characters who are standing idly in the background, but this does count each time a character does or says something. So if there’s a shot where one kid rolls a ball and another kid kicks the ball, I count that as two different instances of animation)

OK… But is that a lot?

Trust me, it’ll take time. But I think it’ll fit in the time-frame. After all, I can get a pretty good first rough pass of one character done per day, at least. In fact, that’s the minimum work-rate I’m holding myself to, and I’ve been able to keep that pace up consistently for the last 5 or so days with no problem. So at that rate, I will most CERTAINLY have a rough-layout animated version of my film done by the end of December (which hasn’t started yet). And if I really can follow through with this pace, then I’ll have a rough-animated version of my film before Spring Semester even starts.

Also, to prove it, check this video out:

In this shot are (what I consider) 3 different “Instances Of Animation”:

1) The mean girl saying “Sure! Roll me the ball”

2) The Hero rolling the ball to the girl and then jumping in fear when she kicks the ball

3) The mean girl kicking the ball

And consequently, this shot was completed over the course of 3 days. And this is 3 out of the 27 shots!

So with that said, at this rate it’ll seem that I’ll have all of Spring Semester to get my Final Animation completed. And once that’s completed, then… well, then it’s completed! And of course I have to render, composite, do special effects, bla bla bla, but the main hard work (and the main focus of my work, since I want to be a 3D Character Animator) will be done, and boy will THAT be exciting! ;D

 

But hold on there, cowboy! You’ve completely neglected 2D Animated Assets! Will you have time for that?

 

Nice catch, brain. And while you’re right that I haven’t really factored the 2D assets in, I feel like that will actually not be too much of a problem either. After all:

 

– There are only 2 lines of 2D Dialogue

– There are only 2 shots in which 2D characters do something other than dancing that doesn’t involve any 3D assets

– There is only 1 shot when a 2D character and a 3D character actually touch each other and make contact/interaction

– There is only 1 shot in which 2D characters do something that causes a reaction in some 3D characters (when the monsters all scare the Mean Girl Gang away)

And the rest of the 2D animation, literally, is just monsters dancing. And since I’m not super-focused on making the 2D animation impeccable (in fact I want it to have a somewhat rough look), I’m not stressing myself out too much about it. (yet)

 

So yea. Don’t worry! This project will be completed. And as always, there is lots more to come! And since this post didn’t have any pictures in it, then let me post this picture of Kate Bush I just discovered today, because she’s so pretty in it. 🙂

Topping it off: Soundscape+Statement

So I made a “soundscape” that’s meant as an attempt to embody the mood and spirit of my piece. I feel like I did a good job. Have a listen:

http://picosong.com/wy8R/

Also, I made a sort of “Thesis Statement” for my Thesis Film. First, though, I made a bunch of brainstormed properties that my story is about. And they all began with, “It’s A Story Of…”

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It’s a story of a boy who abandons his human friends to go hang out with party monsters/ghosts/demons

 

It’s a story of finding yourself in the enemy.

 

It’s a story of becoming your own worst fear as a means of growing up/finding youreslf.

 

It’s a story of not going with what everyone tells you is right.

 

It’s a story of overcoming bullying.

 

It’s a story of sticking it to people who make you feel outcasted

 

It’s a story of sticking it to people who told you you were doing things wrong

 

It’s a story of sticking it to people that don’t want you to be yourself

 

It’s a story of truly knowing what it best for yourself, in spite of what other people say

 

It’s a story of being a confused young kid.

 

It’s a story of finding pride in who you are

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Anyway, then I conglomerated all of those into a sort of blurb kind of explanation of the story:

“Phantoms In The Dark” focuses on a confused, weird kid who just wants to make friends. His parents tell him to hang with the school yard kids, but the school yard kids tell him to bug off. Luckily, there is an alternative: the ghoul house. And although everyone fears the monsters and ghosts within, this lonely kid will end up switching to what everyone says is the dark side. Because when the bad guys treat you nicely, they’re not bad anymore. This is a story of finding the pride and courage needed to be oneself, and creating a friendship with what everyone else considers an enemy.

So there you go. See you all in class tomorrow!

By the way…

I’ve pretty much already made this story in an artistic medium. That’s because this story is, in some senses, about what it was like to join my fraternity at USC. After all, I’m not a typical Frat Bro by any stretch of the term, and when I ended up joining Theta Xi, it was strange, new, unusual, and at some points scary because I didn’t know what was going to happen next. It was always fun, however, and in the end, I fell in love with the “monsters” that everyone told me to be afraid of, and I’m now one of them — and proud of it.

I made a song about this whole process, though, called “Phantoms In The Dark,” and you can check it out here:

Yep. I really did make a song. Here are some answers to questions I assume you’ll have:

– Lyrics are in the description below the video

– Maxilla is my drag name.

– Yes I do drag.

– Yes I make songs for my drag persona.

– Yes I know I’m not a good singer.

– Yes I know I’m ridiculous.

– Yes I had fun in photoshop and made single cover art for a song that I will never make any money for.

Hey, when I have fun, I have lots of fun. What can I say. 😉

Mind-Mappin’

This is the mind-map I made that brought me to that 4-step story process I brought up earlier:

Basically, I knew from the beginning that the main characters in my Circus story were combating fear. The central theme of the story really is fear, and I realized that the problem with The Circus in the first place is that the fear that the characters were running from was something intangible, something hard to explain. So I focused on finding a good, crunchy, manifestation of fear that I could easily translate on screen. And from there I pretty much went. I’m not much of a bubbles person, I like writing things out a lot more, but after establishing the 4-stage process of my story arc, I then just went into brainstorming potential themes (second image) and got a bunch of ideas.

Speaking of which, here’s an update on where I’m at with it all: if I remember correctly, I ended my last post saying that I wanted the object of fear (that the main character then eventually BECOME) to be Punk Kids. But really, that’s not scary/tangible enough. I mean, sure, Punks can be represented with spiky hair, leather jackets, and metal chains, but setting it up so that I have these characters that are irrationally afraid of them (and then join them for some reason) is just kind of like, what? It would be difficult to play off.

This is why right now I’m gravitating more towards Ghosts, Monsters, Ghouls, or wild animals. I don’t wanna do Aliens so much, since “becoming one of the aliens” is a little too Battlestar Galactica, and it’ll leave people wondering if the main character was an alien the entire time all along. It has to be an implausible transformation that leaves the audience somewhat stunned yet satisfied in a devilish manner. (ooh, Demons!)

I also think Monsters/Ghouls/Ghosts/Animals works well because usually, stories that involve an innocent main character getting caught up in a group of “other” creatures will result in those creatures assimilating to human culture. The bad guy always becomes nice at the end, right? I hate that shit. I’m gonna have the good guys become one with the bad guys, and it’ll be so great.

Anyway, TL;DR?  Here’s what’s happened; I’m very close.

Thesis Idea Numero Uno

CONCEPT 1 – BROTHER AND SISTER STORY

A brother and sister experience shameful and traumatic experiences at the same time as each other, and that night they have the same dream of a Goddess who tells them that she is watching over them. Despite  this, they decide to leave home in search of reversing the disgrace that’s been put upon them, and restoring their own innocence. As they tread farther and farther from home, however, their path strays farther from reality. As they run further from the truth, the world around them and their own bodies slowly degenerate, until the end when there is nothing left. By the end, their minds, bodies, and souls have degenerated into nothing, and they are on the verge of killing themselves when suddenly the Goddess from their dreams appears to them again, and informs them of their folly. She tells them that there is no such thing as undoing the past, and that the only way to overcome adversity is to grow forward – it is impossible to cut it away. It is too late for the kids at this point, however, and they are devastated at their own self-imposed loss. The Goddess turns out to be forgiving, however, as in the end she takes their souls and returns them into her own aura, leaving them to rest in the happy place they’d always wanted to be in.

This story as a whole, however, is wayyyy too long to be done in just one  Senior Thesis project. As a whole it’s more like a feature-length film. Therefore, for my thesis project, I’d break out a small segment from the whole story, and animate that, letting it stand on its own. There are 2 portions that I think would be best for this, however. One of them is when the Brother and Sister join the Circus (and meet a lot of interesting characters along the way). In this portion, the kids find out that in order to grow up, sometimes you have to become the monster you once feared most.

The other portion that would be able to stand on its own well is near the end when the siblings are stranded on a funeral barge that is set across an interminable expanse of Ocean. At the end of this is where the Goddess makes her last appearance to the kids, and the story concludes. Over the course of the Ocean portion of the story, however, the kids reflect (haha, get it? Water reflects!) on their lives, and this would be a good way to have flash-backs onto the rest of the story.

I like this story best for a number of reasons. First of all, it’s hugely autobiographical. Secondly, the way I came about this story was very unconventional and somewhat magical — essentially, it is the result of an endless string of inspiration, whether it came from Kate Bush music, my own life, Tarot Cards, or any other strange pieces of folklore that happen to fascinate me. The story is still a growing one, and is far from being fully developed. However, I feel that at this stage, I could be ready to take on the challenge of making a small portion of it a reality.

Styles I Dig

Here are 5 examples of animated pieces that I think are awesome because they have fantastic visual or conceptual styles. Cheggitout:

GERALDINE:

This was created by Arthur De Pins, and sadly I can’t find anything that explains how he made this video. However, judging by how it looks, it seems that it’s hand-drawn animation then put on the computer and colored in. AKA, traditional hand-drawn animation in today’s day and age of computers. However, when I looked up Arthur De Pins, I saw that he is predominantly NOT an animator! Instead he’s a 2D Artist who works mostly with character design. His images are mostly of sexy over-voluptuous women with really thick body parts, and his subjects are all very sexual, not excluding Geraldine, whose theme is inherently sexual in nature. His own art style is very different from the look of Geraldine, however, because the characters in Geraldine are all very skinny and lanky in comparison.

NO ROMANTICS:

I couldn’t find anything about this video in regards to who made it and how it was made. However, I think it’s pretty obvious that this is 2D animation that used a down-shooter or scanner to enter each frame into the computer. There is also compositing done, as individual elements can move independently of each other (like in the opening shot, when the bird flies through the night; the bird and the night sky are two different moving layers). I chose this animation, however, because I really admire it as a brilliant example of concept over technique. After all, the animation style is hyper-crude and somewhat angry-looking, which matches both the music AND the plotline of the video. All together, therefore, the music video is a great success in my opinon.

YOU! ME! DANCING!:

I also cannot find anywhere who made this video. But it looks like it was made with a mixture of hand-drawn animation, watercolor painting, and compositing in After Effects (or whatever compositing program the director preferred). I love the use of the painting however, as it’s used for things that have some sort of energy to them, whether it be the lights in the buildings of the city, or the explosions that happen all over the video. My favorite example of the use of painting, however, is the shot when a man falls from a balcony to his death; as he falls, he falls by these long painted streaks of different colors. These streaks, however, simulate the effect of blurring that happens when you fall past lit windows. Brilliant.

GET BUSY LIVING:

This was animated by Mike Scott, and I found out how he works! According to his site, he uses Photoshop CS4 to draw, and animates it in Anime Studio Pro 8. He then edits his clips together in Final Cut Express 4 HD. Sometimes he draws and animates in Anime Studio Pro or Toon Boom Animate 2 for more frame-by-frame segments. He also uses Toon Boom Storyboard Pro to storyboard sometimes. I personally love Mike Scott’s style, however, both visually for its cute and crudely-shaded (but still wonderful) drawing style, and I love his sense of humor. All of his art just screams “wahh!” in a cute child’s voice. It’s always excited and happy.

WE ARE THE STRANGE:

Animated by M Dot Strange (aka Mike Belmont) who is the pioneer of the “Str8nimE” animation style (which is a mixture of “Stangeness, 8-bit style, and Anime”) and judging by the videos M Dot has posted of the production of his first film, “We Are The Strange,” it’s also an intense mixture of media, utilizing stop-motion, puppet, photography, green-screening, 3D animation, 2D hand drawn, and 2D computer animation. It’s essentially everything at once. His technique is very inspiring because it’s not much of a “perfected technique” to begin with. M Dot Strange basically works by just going at it and he will do anything and everything to get the job done. He also is opposed to perfectionism, and claims that it gets in the way of ever finishing a project. His style is crude and effective, and it reminds me of my own work habits at some level.

An Inspirational Hodge-Podge From Hell

In order of appearance:

– Kate Bush’s “The Kick Inside” segment from her Efteling special

– Maxilla’s debut music video.

– John Kricfalusi Images

– My own attempt at emulating John K’s drawing style

– Robyn’s “Konichiwa, Bitches” music video put alongside my John K drawing attempt.

– Kate Bush’s “Babooshka” music video

– Lady Gaga’s “Telephone” music video directed by Jonas Akerlund

– My animated rendition of Carrie getting pig’s blood dumped on her

– Another portion of Kate Bush’s “The Kick Inside” segment of her Efteling special

– The intro to the “You! Me! Dancing!” music video by Los Campesinos

– The dance portion from Kate Bush’s video for “The Man With The Child In His Eyes” put side-by-side with a keyframed animation version of it that I made.

– Various images being thrown at you at once: A shot from the movie “Bronson,” Gustave Doré’s “Paradiso Canto,” A photo of Kate Bush used for her Hounds Of Love single, another shot from the movie “Bronson,” and the cover of Nina Hagen’s album, “In Ekstase”

– Various paintings by John Everett Millais

– A portion of the “Everlong” music video by Foo Fighters

– The continuation of my animated version of Carrie as with flames rising higher

John K: Gotta Love Him

So we had to choose an inspirational “image-maker” and make our own image based off of this person’s art style. And I know that the assignment mainly called for people like photographers, designers, painters, or just 2-D still-image artists in general.

I, however, chose John Kricfalusi. Yes, he’s an animator (hence, not-still 2-D image-maker) but whatever. I fuckin’ love him.

Here are the images of his that I used as reference to make images of my own:

And these are the 2 images I made afterwards. They’re based on the Robyn song “Konichiwa Bitches” (I chose it because I dunno why)

"You wanna rumble in space? I'll set my lazer on stun"

"And on the North Pole, I'll ice ya son"

I think my attempt to emulate John K’s style was kind of a failure. His lines are all so curvaceous and gloriously smooth, and I have yet to ever be able to do that. My own personal style, also, is so sketchy, that trying to do John K art was admittedly setting myself up for failure. But at least these images, in of themselves, are cute. Mr. Kricfalusi, I hope you aren’t angered by my crappiness. I tried, I really did. 😦