time to learn

This is an odd question, what can be done differently to help me learn more, what helps already, and what hurts me.

During class it’s always great to see some work by professionals that inspires me do think of new ways of making something etc.. When our teacher shows us really cool technical aspects of software were not too familiar with is a big help. Although most of the stuff we would need to learn can’t be done in the class room I don’t think unless we were in a computer lab all the time, doing exercises together etc..

I’m not too keen on most things that are hurting me, maybe pointless stuff we may already know but that’s about it, the only big thing that can hurt me in the class room is myself, being sleepy or just zoned out not paying any attention which happens sometimes.

I’m not too sure what can be done to change things. Like I said most of the work is on me because we know this field changes every year and it’s hard for one curriculum to keep up with all the new happening and things that make it awesome.  Hopefully I will keep my right foot forward and keep learning more and more. I’m already blessed being able to use all the equipment and things of that nature for our work, because one day I will not be able to use most of this stuff, then I will have to buy all the crap with my own money, which will suck really really bad. 

omg film 1...

Film one was fun and a huge learning experience for me. Simon was right you can do things very fast, but it’s bad when you wait till the last couple of days because once you have completed it, you can’t go back and change anything.

This was my first animation, ever… While it’s easy to see why ha. I’m pretty sure my characters were received well, whether they were spleens, livers, hearts, or whatever anyone wants to call them. They story line in my opinion was the best part of my film, because it’s obvious what’s going on, girl leaves the guy he cries. I wouldn’t do too much different with this film. I would definitely take much more time with it, adding more elements and making things much more smooth in the future. So the characters won’t look like they are skating across the screen etc..

My next film I am very excited about it because I’m not procrastinating and it just stop animation with a risk set. Which is awesome, not many computer elements involved except uploading images and putting them into after effects. Although this may be the most tedious project I ever do it’s simple and straight forward. Picture more character picture move character picture move character so on and so on. This makes me extremely happy and I can’t wait to see the result of my work! 

practice makes perfect

When it comes to my work, practice is important. If it’s true what they say, to become professional at anything you much complete over 10,000 hours of your art or whatever you do.  THAT’S CRAZYY!!! But hey let’s face it, nothing is easy and it would be a shame for someone to just jump in a be great, although that can happen sometimes.

                Usually practice for me is kinda different most of the time I don’t consider it practice, practice is me sitting playing guitar trying to learn song and running through scales. Practice for media is much different. I like to sit and find a neat tutorial online and usually following it, open up some more options for my own work, and other than that playing in photoshop just to doodle on different things or just making people’s faces look funny

                Its really hard to explain what I do, I could just post a ton of links to different tutorials I have done, or say I Practice 4 hours a day drawing straight lines with the TRACK PAD, but that would be a lie. So in the end I love this work and try to work with something different daily, from working on my website to trying to recreate some sick thing I’ve seen online, tv, etc… Word to ya brother.

That's That

         Every time I see a new film or short on the internet. I always ask the same question, how was this made? It’s really simple in the end, but in the past I have seen some mind blowing effects slash videos that truly were made simply, and it blows my mind to see it done. It’s a simple question but I helps me to know which directions I want to go with my creativity and where I should look first.

        Most of the stuff that is created in our class have much of the same elements but the biggest concern I have is, why does everything have to be funny, or have some great punch line at the end. It’s never written into an assignment that we have to have a hilarious piece, but I feel like that’s what everybody wants, for instance my first project will not be funny at all, and I intend it to be that way. It’s just the same when we pitch our ideas, if the class doesn’t laugh at it, it’s not good enough?

         Here’s a great topic, how much should we charge as artist for this type of work, let’s say a free-lance job, where do we start, and how to we pursue such a thing. It’s very simple question I guess but I think it needs to be answered.

         Overall I’m not that picky, I’m normally easy going and don’t have many questions. I just like to get the job done and that’s that. 

why

               Why, why, why, why, why, who what when where and why. Why am I doing this anyway, why did I decide to become a media arts major, why do I like to sit and draw, why on earth do I like to create stupid slash funny things on a computer for some quick laughs or possibly a pay check. In many ways it’s very simple and others it’s very long and complicated. It’s really hard to say sometimes but others I enjoy telling the story of how I became a media arts major in the first place.

                When I came to school I started out as a civil engineering major, ended up hating all the math then decided to switch to pharmacy. I could keep up with the work and all, but I just didn’t enjoy the major at all and truly didn’t know what to do. But one awesome day, my friend had a video assignment due for some crazy class, and he knew I played around with stuff like that sometimes and he asked me to help him. We ended up making an awesome video and he got an A on his project. Then he suggested to me that I should do this for a living, and I took his advice and I’ve been very happy ever since.

                It’s weird sometimes, all the work we have to do as media guys and girls. But 99% of the time I do not feel like I’m doing work at all, I’m usually having a great time working on these projects making it fun in the process and the work part of it disappears and I just love what I do. I know it’s weird to put it that way but it’s cool in my mind. I know I will finish growing up doing what I love and I will always be happy in this life choice of mine. I enjoy media and I always will. I’ve always been able to draw well as a kid and now I finally get to use it for something practical, and get paid while I do it. One day I will get to thank my teachers for helping grow in my subject but I know there will always be more to learn, since new things come out every day. Hopefully I will get to make something that makes kids smile and adults laugh in the process and have my name in the credits being proud of what I had accomplished. 

my idea

       It’s always fun being able to create media persay, but usually in school we have to use certain criteria, follow certain rules and have the subject matter submitted a certain way. This time however I get to decide what I want to do, how I want to do it, and when.

It’s not that difficult for me to decide what I want to do, work wise, I know which software I like and what I do not, but the true idea itself can take to most effort, because without that I have no clue where I should go. Usually I sit down and decide what I want to do, and start drawing out little creations of mine, and let them flow until I find three or four I like then I start to revise the best and work from there. Thinking where I can go with it to make it funny or sad, and finding different solutions to problems that arise.

                Overall this has been working well for me, because once I roll with an idea it’s fun to keep working on it letting it bloom more and more in the process. I always find ways to make it better and never truly let myself down when it comes to my own creativity. As long as I don’t procrastinate and keep things in order I expect my work to run smoothly, and end up with something I can be very very proud of in the end. 

storyboard

tOOns

               Cartoons have always been something I was interested in and cared about.  Every morning and every evening I would always try to find something to watch on cartoon network, or something on nickelodeon.

                

                Very early on my relationship with each cartoon was different; I started to develop certain styles that I liked, although at the time I didn’t realize it. I could see that I liked any smoothed out drawings like todays “Family Guy” and most like that, although others were very interesting like “Hey Arnold and Real Monsters”.  Every day I tried to watch these shows, and also tried to recreate and make my own drawings as a kid, when I was inspired by them or just felt like drawing.

                

               Although one day my brother decided to show me and great anime called, “Dragon Ball Z” this was phenomenal change in what I like at the time, following each episode closely on cartoon network. The action and the art was amazing, not to mention the repetitive plot line that I loved. This was a huge chunk of my younger years watching TV, and drawing at the time. That’s all my friends and I tried to do, was talk about “Dragon Ball Z” and draw each character the best we could.

                

                As I was growing up, most of my qualities in cartoons did not change, only the shows that I watched. I could tell over time that I developed a good memory for the shows, with the weird ability of remembering almost every character’s name from the shows I liked most. Even today I still watch cartoons, any day that I see an old show or a replay of a series. I will sit and watch and enjoy my childhood.

                

                Overall the evolution of my relationship with cartoons hasn’t changed very much; I still love the same styles they used and the crazy humor of “Family Guy”. For this reason it has set me on a path to create something that I’m interested in, with my own style associated with the cartoon. I think it will be a lot of fun to take the time I have now and create something that I think is funny or meaningful. Cartoons have been a very important and special part of my life. I’m inspired by the time and effort that the creator’s take to make the shows for children and adults alike.  Seeing how they create each frame and find ways to do it faster is a big advantage, all the software that they use to help them create even better productions. Hopefully one day I will be on the same level or even something better so I can put my ideas down to paper and some great network to show off all my work and my crazy mind. 

ca-ca-ca-ca-cartoons

   So, this week in class we were assigned to make a flip book. Yes this sounds easy enough, draw some figures changing their movement ever so slightly over time. It sounds easy enough, but when you get down and dirty and about fifty frames in, it’s not so easy anymore. This is where you learn patience is a virtue.

Over the span of my life, a whopping 21 years. I’ve always loved to draw etc.. but I’ve never really tried to make a flip book, it has always sounded easy enough but when I actually started to sit down and draw each individual card out, I realized, although I was only working with stick figures. 100 notecards can take an awful long time.

My initial idea was to draw a stick figure dancing with a ball bouncing beside him, in the end he catches the ball. But wait a minute the ball is a bomb, he blows up blood everywhere, surprise at the end. In the end I stuck with this idea because I thought it was rather funny and sorta kinda fit my sense of humor.

When I actually sat down to do the drawing, I decided I wanted to devise a way to quickly and accurately, draw these to conserve as much time as possible, so with a clear drawer and I lamp later, I engineered my own light desk. So I could correctly draw each figure moving them ever so slightly in the next frame, creating that illusion when they are flipped by, that it’s actually moving.

So in the end it was pretty good, I liked the big explosion of blood at the end, anybody I showed it too laughed and wanted to see it again, so I would call that an success.

Now here’s the fun part, I have to take each card and scan them into my computer, and then open it in after effects to create a lovely around four second clip, with about 5 hours of work. That is a very nice ratio. Thankfully Simon Tarr our professor did show the class how to create such a clip in after effects, so I anticipate this shouldn’t be a problem, when I hit the grind once more.

Overall I’m really enjoying doing the work for my animation class, I admit it can be very tedious, and time consuming, but thankfully this is the work that I enjoy doing so I can’t really complain, because one day I know I will get paid for this kind of stuff. And it’s true the demands of a real job in this industry will be much more extensive that any kind of work were doing right now in class. Thankfully Simon tries to keep us busy every week with work, making it simple for us to get into the routine of punching out, in this case an animation every week, word.

Dear Spring Version of Self:

Dear Me,

                Overtime I realize that it has been tough, your life keeps trying to move forward. Still your mind seems to be stuck in the past, although it’s ok to go over things that have happened.  Now this is what you need to do, take advantage of the time you have. Look at how much you have accomplished thus far in your life. You’re not a rookie by any means, there hasn’t been a problem or a situation you couldn’t solve so far. That’s why you’re a junior in college that has so many opportunities to advance in this life. Take this time to sit back and think of what you have to do next to get to your goal. I admit it, no one is perfect, but you can be one of the best if you just believe in yourself and keep striving forward.  I know you have a ton of work to do with two 300 level classes and Simon’s animation fun. With big projects that need to be submitted to a film festival or they won’t be considered completed. Yes, I know it’s a lot on the table. Although with everything you have completed so far, don’t you see how much you have progressed, take a minute to look at your work. Just sit back and be proud of what you’ve done. You said it yourself perseverance is key, don’t ever give up, letting stress rule your life. Take one thing at a time and get to work! You’re growing up and it’s getting to the point where you will no longer be in class, but in the real world, and let’s face reality. It’s tough and ruthless out there, but you know how to handle yourself. There has been very many conversations about your attitude and what you should do to take advantage of the time you have so keep working hard. Nevertheless this semester is almost completed and one more chapter of your college career is over and you will be one step closer to your overall goal. Getting that B.A, then you will be able to put on some big boy pants and walk with your head held high. Know what you have accomplished so far. It’s nice to think and relax for a change, but there is still much more work that needs to be done, before you can take those steps as an adult. Don’t worry you can still have a lot of fun, but remember what mom always says, you need to be responsible. And with that said there are still a few things on the table you need to do, so get to work and well, be responsible! You’re doing great Max don’t fret now, you have a whole life ahead of you with bigger dreams and goals that would impress anybody. I know you will find a peace in what you have done and truly be happy in the end, but we all know. Nothing is easy in this life, so keep it up!