Milestone #1

My first milestone review is tomorrow morning, so I'll post here what progress I've made and what I still have left to do. But first, an updated Gantt Chart again:


So my 3D animation is nearly complete and ready for rendering. That's the good news. The bad news: it's going to end up being about a minute long, instead of the projected 20-30 seconds. Whoops. That's around 1500 frames. Each frame seems to take a solid 20-40 minutes to render (it depends on what computer I'm rendering from, among some other factors), so it doesn't take a math genius to figure out that it would take an entire month's worth of rendering if done from one computer. Yikes! Thankfully, I'm not doing it from only one computer--I plan on hijacking a bunch of computers from the Collaborative Media Lab for this sole purpose (a feat I can probably only get away with solely because I work there). However,the big consequence of all this: a longer animation means less time to make more styles to switch back and forth from. I am still doing the 1920s style one next, but chances are very slim that I'll have any others done before spring break. I only really need two different styles for this project to work anyways, but having more would still be nice. Perhaps if we're to continue working on it after break, I'll get more completed.

So anyways, enough ranting. Here's what I hope to have ready to show tomorrow:

• Storyboards
• Hardware rendering of my 3D animation (or at least parts of it)
• Production-quality rendered still images
  

Gantt Chart Revision

Here is my Gantt chart revision, as requested for Wednesday. It will be re-updated before my milestone review on the 31st, where it will hopefully look like I'm not as far behind as it seems (isn't it sad that I spent almost 120 hours working only on the 3D animation, and I'm still not done with it? This project is going to destroy me).

Winter "Break"...

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.

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.

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.

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.

Multi-Technique Animation: the Variant

So after doing some brainstorming, and after having a talk with one of my capstone classmates, I have a variation to my capstone idea. This is how I described it in my intent in the Pool:

I will still be using many different animation techniques. But instead of it being a linear narrative incorporating all the techniques into one piece, I was thinking about using a very short narrative (maybe 30 seconds long), and animating it using each of the techniques (so that there would be a 30-second long 3D computer animation, a 30-second long 1920s-era cartoon, etc.). The narratives would be synchronized with each other, so that the action was happening at the same time in each animation.

After all the animation is over, I would assemble them all together (in Flash, MaxMSP, or something) so that only one of the techniques will be playing at a time. The viewer can then push a button and effectively switch the style of the animation from one technique into another instantly, during playback of the piece (and since the action is synchronized, the switch wouldn't disrupt the narrative much). This gives the viewer near complete control over the visual style of the animation.

The narrative itself is something I am yet to work out, though. It would be very short, though, so that I would still have time to animate all the different techniques. I also haven't decided if I was going to use a normal narrative, or one that loops. Either one would work for this variant.

This might be more work for me in the long run, but it would prove to be a more interesting (and more interactive) piece.