my thesis version 1

Version 1... for now.

I want to add to it.


I still hate myself for recording the reaction in the theater then deleting it while i was half drunk. I prepared for that!!! I prepared for that!!!! DANG IT!!! I will never get it back again!!!!!! My first screening in the theater!!!! T_T I am so mad at myself.


Anyways.... what's passed is passed.

I am not thrilled with my work anymore anyway, but i still love it, right now i am just too tired. 2 days screening straight.

Again, thank you SHELLY for letting me stay over at your place. If it wasn't for your kindness I would have to hang out there in a cafe/pub until 4 am in the morning. XD


Then a bunch of other things, too much screenings, too much city.

i want to curl up in bed, shut myself in my room for 2-3 days, and not care about anything in the world.


To be honest, I feel like shit right now, from the tireness, and from the critiques I have been getting on its imperfections. And needles gets me more than honey at this point, as much as i want to treasure the good comments, the praise, and knowing there's no perfect film.


I know it's good, I know I can improve, and I can't say "I am done and I don't care anymore."

I want it to be better, what sucks is that... I thought I could feel better than how I felt after my second year and third year screening, but it turned out I felt the same, like crap. Not very satisfying.

With all said and done, i still enjoyed the time at the screening, us friends congratulating each other, and so on so forth.

Due date rush

OMG..... This is how it feels like, and this is how I feel like right now:


Gundam Sousei couldn't put it better. This is the stress against deadline. Literally pouring one's health onto the screen.

Though I am done with my thesis overall, my classmates aren't. I'm trying to help my classmates right now and almost everyone has gone without sleep for days. I can't do that, I don't have the stamina, I have already pushed beyond my health limit and is getting kick back on that. I lost my voice starting Friday, now I am a mute. lol~ Feeling fever in my head but I have to sort out my sound problem I have to go to school tomorrow.
I will probably stay up the night for my classmate to hopefully see him finish coloring.


CRAZY　CRAZY CRAZY TIMES!

Though strangely satisfying and frustrating, I hope we can look back to it as a fond memory years later.

But I hope we can all finish together! >_< HURRRRRRAAAAAHHHHHHH


Edit: I helped 5 students, and not just 1 scenes each.

Derek, inked, colored, more than 20 shots total (didn't count) Recruited 2 people for him.
Mallory, tweened 3 shots?
Jackie, 1 scene, 20+ second scene.
Maria, tweened, cleaned, colored 2-3 shots
Jennifer, colored 4 scenes, recrewed 4 people for her coloring.

I hope that's a record?
because I got myself sick doing this. >_< (though I have recovered, i think)

Those who are helping me to help others are all the same girls... they deserve big hugs and big lunches. (except they all live very far away from me. ^_^b)

Thesis guidline for the new comers

Some thoughts on SVA 2D thesis planning guideline.

This isn't what thesis committee says, but its what a senior, who finished her thesis early and is helping out other people, and has been observing for 3-4 years of thesis students have in mind.


Common pitfall of thesis students:

1. Too ambitious. Don't make this your last film, make it your first film into the pro world. Do your big big big project after graduation when you are searching for jobs or something. If you just can't shake that big grand idea, storyboard it, but plan an exit for the worst, you are going to need it.



2. Have trouble with stories and sticking to it. Some people might be more technical minded, if story is not your thing, pick a story that's simple, and a story that can totally make your strongest point shine on the screen. Go technical first then make sense of it.


3. Over estimate their time:

Don't allow yourself to think "Oh, I still have time"
Instead, double all the amount of time you think you will need, and that's what's likely to be realistic. If you think you can animate the shot in 1 night, think 2 nights instead. If you think you can finish a scene in 1 week, plan 2 weeks. It hasn't failed for me.



For the ambitious:


* The limit is 10 minutes, you can't go over 10 minutes to make a good film. You can make one over 10 minutes, but make sure there's.... a lot of still shots and talking? (TV show content will work)

* From my observation through out the 3-4 years of thesis screening, the limit of a single artist, doing a good looking animation for thesis alone is actually 8 minutes. Even if you have people helping you, you can never make that "feature" in your mind.

* You can try, but 1 person, 9-12 months, just can't compete with 4 years, 200 people productions. Make it work as a short film. 10 minute is your limit as an animator for 9-12 months, even if you are fast as lightening, you will have other duties as a student bogging you down.


* If you want it really really high frame rate and feature quality, stick with 2-3 minutes, or you can plan it so a few important scenes are that way, and tell longer stories from other scenes that require less.

* If you want it really really artistic, stick with 2-4 minutes.

* If you want to tell a good story, 5-8 minutes.

* If you never made a whole colored film for around 2 minutes before thesis, stick with 2-3 minutes.


* If you have done a whole colored film before thesis, then you can try going for longer.


* In your third year, make a fully colored film, whether the professor require you to do it or not. To give yourself some experience to prepare for the thesis.


* Start thinking about your thesis idea in second year summer.


The due dates from thesis committee, it's order of production may not always suit every artists' needs, figure out what takes the longest for you to do first, do that first, then go to full fill everything else required if you can. As long as you have something to show, it will be fine.


I personally layered my bigger film in production along side my thesis, when I wrap up my thesis, part of the pre-production of my next film is already done, recorded, and story-boarded, it became one of my biggest advertisement to employers, and animatic can be on the way once my thesis is finished.


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I don't know, maybe this is going to be pointless to some, but i just thought I want to put my experience, observations, and thoughts into some written form for next gen of SVA graduate to take notes of. You are welcome to pass it around if you feel this helps.

Rough cut

The rough cut is finally timed out, plus credit it ends up around 6 min 2 seconds, but it will be changed again quite dramatically, my brothers gave me good crits that i really needed, it will improve my cuts, but it will also increase workload unfortunately. (I should have shown him my storyboard or animatic...)

There are some scenes/lines that got cut in my first rough cut because of timing issue... for some reason, whatever I did in flash, always end up being shorter in timing compare to after effects. I have no idea why.... -_-b

Even if i composite at the same time frame count exactly, the sound itself just got lengthened or changed outside of flash, thus some of my sequence become too short, some become too long. Not a fun experience finding this out.

I think my film will get longer than 6 mins.

this weekend

Finished compositing this sequence..... and that's all i managed to do on the weekend unfortunately. :( Because of alot of sensitive timing issue this took a lot longer than normal sequence.

What just gives a blow to my moral is that my mom said the animation is not detailed enough right after I finished it. When I already tried my best effort that i currently can do.... this whole sequence has 250 drawings just for the walk, wait... maybe it's not my best yet, if i want to i can tween more. Argh...! Whatever! The hell with it. I am pretty happy with the outcome except one little thing in the end which i will fix later.

Too late now, i am not adding anything.
I will just admit I am not the best tweener.

Ka-peesh, this is done, damn it.

I have to get better than this.

Fight 2

Today's progress: Fight 2 WIP C

I was slower than i expected...

A bit of notes:
1. ending Jeremy cycle needs to slow down, with a back step, the last slash needs to hit harder, Lead still need to be animated.
2. Need to finish cleaning up this weekend, ink done by next weekend and have it sent out so i can get started on the eagle scene and the first fight scene.

If all of my major scenes are not done animating and cleaning by Dec I should be panicking, Nov is crunch month, crunching ahead is never a bad thing.

Oh dang... O.O

Just checked my subscription to blogger, wow, am i watching a lot of good artists or what? I ought to step it up a bit and post some serious stuff here. XD


This sequence is done! 11:40pm @ Oct 11 2009 HELL YEAH!!! (where's thy lady manner?)

WAIT, today's my dad's B-day! Oh man... (I will shoot him an e-mail i guess, he's far away in China right now)

i will composite this next weekend and have the next big sequence finished.



This looks like a painting.... but it will be moving, everyone is at different speed too so that will be alot of... er... comps to play around. :P
This sequence nearly drove me insane, I have been on it for 2 months... *ever since end of August.* I'm so glad there's only one. T_T


I hope this scene renders..... i really wonder if my thesis can render safely.... anyone who did HD widescreen before got any advice?

Model sheets, do it once, do it all.

There's a reason I hate doing model sheets, its one of the most tedius must do in the animation production...
Usually the character come out more "dead" looking than usual as well because of all the technical concerns. Not my favorite thing to do. (except model sheets on expressions and key frames) XD

Thankfully, I use the same characters, so if I do it once, i have done it all for my own series. (at least for the base)

However, that is not happening with other more professional pitch and series work though. :P
American cartoon industry doesn't work this way.... I have to... (again) separate my own work from my more professional/class work.
(But i can use my own work as reference)

Taking my own same set of characters to pitch at different places because they are different series doesn't work well with the copyright and release law at all.... and because of my range with my characters, I can't count on one single channel to take it all.
Either I will have to build my own empire (like Disney) or find someone I will forever be happily living under. (Like One piece on Shounen jump) That's the dilemma of mine for the day.

animatic for thesis

For my 2D thesis in SVA.

thesis wip

Wip for a shot in my thesis film.

I like working on my thesis because i made it so i can do all my favorite subjects ha ha.

I would like to be where Jeremy is right now...

not here swamped by my commission work. lol (even though I love my job, in most cases.)

A shot planned for my thesis film.

We had our senior thesis screening last night, the next year I will be the one having my work on the big theater screen. I am glad we get a real theater now to show our work. (computer arts people have a better theater dang it, but I am happy with our cramped one, I think it has more seats though the seats are more crappy. XD ) But matter not, we get to LOOK UP to our films, that gives us a better reason to work our ass off for our big show.

This year's turn out is great, out of the 46 films I liked 19 of them, a much better percentage than the last year. (sorry yr2007! you were great, still) the biggest surprise to me yet is seeing three students link up their thesis film and have it work as one story, told from three different character's perspective, each struggle with their own little world.

That... completely blew me away.
I don't think the next year can even pull that off right now as we all started on our work already.... You need to have 3 like-minded artists with the same thesis prof to have that happening.

Next up, my favorite has to be Alex's little light bulb story, the most cinematic of them all, closer to what I want to present. However, I am going to state competitively here, his is what I want to beat for our school, but I have someone else's thesis in my mind, "Lady Ice" the difference is... she hasn't finished hers, but I want to finish mine. So I have to think hard, and work hard to finish it.

I am going to make a suggestion to have our thesis film compiled into DVDs for the next year screening if possible.


I love SVA, as imperfect as it may be. <3

Everyone went party last night, i had to go home right after... no fun. sigh. I will make an exception next year and go out for a drink and take the morning train home.

lipsync

It keeps breaking

Why CD?

Thesis animatic rough test

Thesis animatic rough test

Got down my butt and finished it today so we can move onto the next stage, adding more dialogues and music! :P

Thesis

With all of the lines recorded and in place... the whole thing is 236 seconds so far, that's about 3 min almost 4 mins, I am still debating whether Jeremy should fight with Lead, that would be the ONLY action sequence in the whole thing..... but it might lengthen this already pretty long/high quality animation that I need to do...

I am leaning to adding it in, but i still need the right idea. *This feels like One Piece's author trying to do a short on his long long story without giving too much spoiler...*

holy...

I have begun timing my animating and recording my own voice to make the early stage of animatics for my thesis film. (cuz its a long one)

I can't believe it, I am almost all choked up and crying at my own voice performance when it's matched up with the graphic.... (where I was so embarrassed and laughing previously...) The timing and pacing, and the right graphic really does magic.

*However, after listening to myself for over 20th times... all emotions fade away and it started to feel long and draggy.... OTL I hope my audience won't feel the same about it as I do right now.*