First semester of capstone is finished, and the next one will unfold in a month. It has been a rough semester for me, but I managed to develop a capstone idea that I am excited about (and probably more importantly, one that won't fail me at the end of the year).
The lack of time that I have remaining before capstone presentations has me worried, though. I would feel so much better about my project if I knew I had more time to work on it, but I feel that too much time was spent in areas that I feel are not very important to the overall piece. This is not to say that I've been slacking--I must've spent over 100 hours working on the 3D model of my character--but simply that animation is a slow process that requires a lot of patience and time. On the plus side, I have all of winter break to work on this, and I am hoping to get a lot of it completed by the end of it, but at the same time I know that the chances of me getting "enough" completed by then are pretty slim. But that's my plan for this so-called "vacation".
Fun.
Wednesday, December 12, 2007
Multi-Technique Animation Media Proposal
I forgot to post this a few days ago to the blog (I think I posted it everywhere else that I needed to), but anyways, you can find my media proposal for my project here. It also has my prototype on it, made in Flash. The ActionScript behind it was quite annoying to work out, but after a few hours of kicking and cursing I managed to make it work.
Sunday, December 2, 2007
Computer-Free Capstone (again)
Now to do the computer-free capstone assignment again, except this time for my current idea.
This exact project would very likely be impossible to mimic without a computer. However, with some modifications to my current idea, it could be done. Instead of having all the animation clips played simultaneously on top of each other, and switching the clips back and forth so that you can only see one clip at any given time, they could all be played on separate TVs, all next to each other (so that one TV is playing one style of animation, and the next TV is playing another, etc.). They could play from VHS tapes that basically consist of nothing but that one animation clip being looped over and over on it. Of course, the animation techniques would be limited to those that don't rely on computers to do in the first place (3D computer animation is obviously out, but claymation, which is also 3D, will still work). Each of the TVs would begin to play at the same time, so that all the VHS tapes are synchronized. To simplify my idea even further to the bare essentials of it, I could forget about using animations at all, and simply use paintings in a gallery--each painting is of the same object or scene, but created using a different style (realism, abstract, impressionist, cubist, etc.). This would be the simplest idea of the two.
I think out of the two ideas above, the animation one, although more difficult, would be the more effective one. However, I feel neither of those ideas are as effective as the one that still needs a computer. First of all, removing the computer would remove a couple of possible animation techniques that require it. Secondly, I feel it is more effective when only one technique is playing at any given time, and that having all the clips lined up next to each other detracts from the overall effect of the project.
This exact project would very likely be impossible to mimic without a computer. However, with some modifications to my current idea, it could be done. Instead of having all the animation clips played simultaneously on top of each other, and switching the clips back and forth so that you can only see one clip at any given time, they could all be played on separate TVs, all next to each other (so that one TV is playing one style of animation, and the next TV is playing another, etc.). They could play from VHS tapes that basically consist of nothing but that one animation clip being looped over and over on it. Of course, the animation techniques would be limited to those that don't rely on computers to do in the first place (3D computer animation is obviously out, but claymation, which is also 3D, will still work). Each of the TVs would begin to play at the same time, so that all the VHS tapes are synchronized. To simplify my idea even further to the bare essentials of it, I could forget about using animations at all, and simply use paintings in a gallery--each painting is of the same object or scene, but created using a different style (realism, abstract, impressionist, cubist, etc.). This would be the simplest idea of the two.
I think out of the two ideas above, the animation one, although more difficult, would be the more effective one. However, I feel neither of those ideas are as effective as the one that still needs a computer. First of all, removing the computer would remove a couple of possible animation techniques that require it. Secondly, I feel it is more effective when only one technique is playing at any given time, and that having all the clips lined up next to each other detracts from the overall effect of the project.
New Proposal Paper
I've been doing a lot of catch-up work recently, ever since I changed my idea over to the animation. I already have a prototype set up for the project, but I will be posting that later, once I get the media proposal up and running (which won't take too long, I hope, except for some issues I'm currently having with Cordova). The new text proposal can be viewed here.
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