Final Blog Post.

1. In general, what did you like most about this class?
Overall the thing I liked most about the class was the people, which is something I never thought I would say. I was nice to be able to work on projects and have a sense of comradery when everyone's projects were presented to the class. I loved working with flash and doing what I do, but the people made it very enjoyable to work with. I looked forward to coming to class to work by myself and to still be able to chat every now and then. I also had the freedom to ignore them with headphones, which was nice as harsh as it may sound.

2. What was your favorite project and why?
My favorite project to do was the Rotoscoping project. It had good specific in what needed to be done and while it was painstakingly long and hard to do, I also found it was one of the easiest because it was mostly tracing over film. I fell in love with it.
A close second was the 11 second project, since the audio was provided it was very easy to animate to because of it. It was short, sweet, and to the point.
I enjoyed the final music animation video, but oh my it was long.


3. In general, what did you like least about this class?
The deadlines, the rush to get everything done, the projects assigned halfway through doing another one. It drove me slightly more insane. The year has defiantly gone by far too quickly, I don't even believe it's the end of the year. Sometimes other students are loud and obnoxious, but I'm just chalking that up to my low blood sugar making me irritable. The stress made me very reluctant to get back to projects, but that's not something you can ignore if it's a job. So I guess I'll just have to learn how to adapt to it. 


4. What was your least favorite project and why?
3D, if for no other reason than the fact that I was completely unfamiliar with the program and how to work it. It was very beneficial to me, I learned to think of things in a sense of 3D when drawing, but I didn't enjoy it. I prefer 2D animation for sure.

5. What are your future plans upon graduation?
Complete panic. In all seriousness, I really hope to go to college and find a job. I really hope to take a few drawing classes over the summer. It's just very frightening, thinking this is what I'm going to do for the rest of my life, for work, that this is all there is, and it's nerve racking. The years will go by quickly and I will be happy to have a few more hours in the day over the summer, but it's just so much different from what I'm used to. I am hoping for the best.

6. Do you feel that this class will help you achieve your future academic or career goals? Please give specific examples.
Absolutely this class has helped me career wise. It's helped me in every sense of the world. It where I learned camera angles and other cinematic techniques that are required in animation and drawing. I finally got to use and work with Flash Professional and now I have it at home to use whenever I wish, and I plan to. It has provided the opportunity to enter contests and encouraged me to show off my work. It has shown me what it will be like when I go further into the field of animation and an example of the type of working environment I may be in.

7. What advice would you give to incoming students?
Animation and drawing while fun, is still a job. It is not something to be taken lightly or too seriously, but it isn't easier than any other job to do. You have to be able to enjoy and love doing it because you won't make it otherwise. I adore it and I still find it tough to do sometimes. Work on it everyday, even if it's just a little bit, because you will regret it later when you've waited to do it later. Listen to the teacher, she knows what she's doing.

8. Additional comments:
It feels as though the year had gone by too fast, but I have enjoyed my time in class. I enjoyed leaving regular high school to come in everyday and work on things I love doing. I will miss the class dearly, I am hesitant to leave. I give my best wishes to everyone and anyone involved.

Monday Part 2

Well, I have a half hour to sit here, so I'm going to do a post of interest.
It's about an animation I have watched for a while, at least a year or two.

It's called Neurotically Yours, which is a web comic and webtoon created by Jonathan Ian Mathers. The central story line revolves around the interactions between Foamy (a pet squirrel) and Germaine and, on occasion, their relationships with other characters. Made with flash, from the looks of it. It's better known as Foamy the Squirrel, and most of the time, it's not appropriate to view in the workplace. However, the animation is decent, the dialogue brings up excellent points when ranting about a specific topic, and has greatly evolved since 2003 to the present.

 First Episode

There are at least 200 official episodes, some just rants, others talking about a specific issue, and also blending with a storyline that deals with character development and story arcs. If you get past the language, cartoon violence and all else, it's a pretty good web show to watch. 

The Website is here: http://illwillpress.com/

Monday

I really do not like this day. This is a terrible day. The day is dragging on solely for the purpose of prolonging my misery associated with this day of the week. Mondays are terrible, I have bad luck on Tuesdays, and I could never get a handle on Thursdays. Bah! The weather is intolerable. I hate it, It makes me irritable, I also hate it because it makes me irritable.
I don't know, I'm just completely flustered... by EVERYTHING.
Too many things are going on, I have no idea what, by back hurts, I am somehow suddenly behind on just about everything, I hate anything to do with college, jobs, school, I haven't really drawn or written anything since I've been focusing on assignments, there's no time to juggle everything and nearly every person I know is repeating over and over on what I need to focus on, I am constantly feeling ill... everything is just chaotic. I wouldn't care if I had many things to do, if this damn anxiousness would just leave me alone, I'd be fine. But no, everything is just in a state of disarray and I hate it.

Friday part 2

Well, time to write the last one for the week.

This week I learned sand animation was a thing. Odd, I don't believe I've seen it before. Though it looks interesting. I would like to learn about about independent animations, I think a few of them would be decent, heck that's how South Park started. 

I got to be lazy for a few hours, watch the new movie The Devil Inside Me on paper view. I liked it, until the end. The ending was kind of dumb. 

As for a post of interest: 

A rotocope of someone skateboarding, it gets pretty detailed at one point.

Ciao, I'm going.

Friday.

While I am glad for the weekend, I am a little disappointed.
I have yet to do anything that is even close to be considered productive or important to contributing to the continuity of my goals. But enough about how great I am at procrastinating at the most dire of times. I'm trying to get Adobe Flash Pro, my only hope right now is to get the student & education edition. Only. Hope. I hope it won't become tedious, I hate paperwork and jumping through hoops.

I cannot for the life of me think of anything particularly interesting for the post of interest, so I guess I'll just do a little lecture of traditional animation for it, cel-animation to be precise. Not that cel animation isn't interesting, I find it fascinating. Here we go.

The two people anyone should know about when dealing with cel animation is John Randolph Bray (who produced the second animated film in color, The Debut of Thomas Cat (1920)), and animator Earl Hurd (known by creating and producing the silent animated short, Bobby Bumps). Hurd and Bray are jointly responsible for developing the processes of cel animation, and were granted patents for their process in 1914. It is a part of traditional animation where each frame was drawn by hand, the drawing is then transferred from paper to a thin, clear sheet of plastic called a cel, a contraction of celluloid (the original flammable cellulose nitrate was later replaced with the more stable cellulose acetate). It was then inked and when it dried, on the opposite side; colored in with acrylic paint or something similar until technology advanced to the point where it could be inked and colored in digitally.

One cel typically contained one character, another sheet to another character and the background was the bottom image, then all the layers would go on top of each other, a glass sheet on the very top to flatten any irregularities and then photographed by a special animation camera (also called rostrum camera). Each cel has registration holes, small holes along the top or bottom edge of the cel, which allowed the cel to be placed on corresponding peg bars before the camera to make sure that each cel aligned properly. If the cels weren't aligned correctly, the animation, when played at full speed, would appear "jittery."

Sometimes, frames may need to be photographed more than once, in order to get camera effects. Pans are created by either moving the cels or backgrounds one step at a time over a succession of frames (the camera does not pan; it only zooms in and out). Once every scene in the production has been photographed, the final film is sent for development and processing, while the final music and sound effects are added to the soundtrack.

Cel animation, despite the long process of creating it, saved a lot of time and labor from previous animators. In very early cartoons made before the use of the cel, an example being Gertie the Dinosaur (1914), the entire frame, including the background, characters, and items, were drawn on a single sheet of paper, then photographed. Everything had to be redrawn for each frame containing movements. This led to a "jittery" appearance; a scene of drawings, each frame slightly different from the one before it.

When not everything is redrawn, such as a head or body of a character that is talking, and only having their mouth moving (a style Hanna-Barbera is known for), is referred to as limited animation and was frequently used for small budget cartoons. Limited animation is also well recognized for animation loops, where the background scene repeats itself. A promotional music video from Cartoon Network's Groovies featuring the Soul Coughing song "Circles" poked fun at animation loops as they are often seen in The Flintstones, in which Fred and Barney (along with other Hanna-Barbera characters), supposedly walking in a house, and wonder why they keep passing the same furniture over and over again.

A personal favorite of mine since I was little.

Thursday

Well, we went over our final projects.
I liked a lot of them and I plan on finishing mine as soon as I possibly can.

I also have to work on Journalism and a Government project. I hate the gov project, it replaces the big exam at the end of the year, but I would much rather take the exam. That's just me though.
Hurt my back playing gym, which is stupid. I keep thinking there has to be something more productive to do then fricken capture the fricken flag. But no; no alternatives and a 0 for a grade if you don't participate. I can't run, I can't dodge, I can't get people out, the game is so pointless for me to do and I just end up making a fool out of myself. I get it, I'm not athletic, can we please not make it a public event? I must have twist or turned the wrong way because it hurts to get up and down. Dishes are going to be a pain in the *** to do and it's not like my lazy sister is going to help me. Gah.

I'm going to go home, I would like to watch TV but I will settle with watching clips on my computer. It's hard to focus when every five minutes lazy fricken sister someone is yelling and bitching on the phone. I'm finding people a lot more irritating today. Oh well.
Um, I would type and submit something with more substance, but I really don't have anything right now. Which, I suppose is good timing because we have to leave in a few minutes anyway. Bell is about to ring, and stuff...and things. Now I'm just babbling. I should stop before it gets worse, the sentence should end abruptly in the mid-

Tuesday.

Well, yeah.
I don't even know anymore. I'm very lethargic today. Feel like I'm in Limbo.

Well the test assessment ting is over. Was glad on the animation and visualization score, not so much on the television and video production, in which case I didn't like the questions. And people still feel the need to talk while others are concentrating, *sigh*. Whatever.
Have an hour left of class. This day has been very off for me.
I think I will go clear my head, starting to get a headache. Oh well. Good day.

Chuckimantion

Well, I really don't feel like scouring through everything to find something new and interesting, so I'm just going to briefly talk about Chuckimation as a post of interest. 

Chuckimation is is a type of animation created by the makers of the cartoon Action League Now!, which was created by Tim Hill. The characters and props are thrown, or chucked from off camera, or wiggled around to simulate talking by unseen hands and was combined with traditional stop motion animation. It was originally part of All That and then KaBlam! on Nickelodeon, and was later spun off into its own short-lived show.

 

A full episode was generally around five minutes long and while it is very primitive compared to other forms of animation, it is easily the least expensive, least time consuming, and most simple to do. It had 11 seasons and consisted of 49 episodes in total. I find it impressive how they move the props and the use of camera angles to conceal how they move the toys by hand. Action League Now! was also the only segment that was on every single episode of KaBlam!, a show I loved when I was younger. I can appreciate the script and lampshade hanging now that I've studied it.

Wednesday.

Well, I couldn't wake up this morning and ended up oversleeping. I didn't get to regular school until later, but hey, I'm pretty much caught up on everything. I'm planning on going home and taking a nap and then working on... well, everything. I'm going to see if I can do anything to help my neck, it's rather distracting now.

Tuesday Night.

Well, it's Tuesday night and I am working on my autobiography. Still have to do the resume, so much work to be doneeeeeeeee!. Pffffft.

.:Edit:. Finished autobiography. It's only past midnight, no big deal. Not sure what I am going to do next. Really want to go to bed, but the final project is hanging over my head so I don't know what to do at the moment. I mean, even if I sleep right now, I'll still be tired tomorrow and will still have work to do and the week will already be half over and deadlines will be closer and dear deity this is driving me mad.
Well, that's life. Meh.

Monday Afternoon

...About 22 minutes after noon to be precise.
Anyways.
Turns out I didn't save before transferring some FLA files over to my flash drive, nothing big, just everything I fricken did last night. PFFFFFFFFFT.
That's what I get for not going to bed earlier.
Meh, I just want to go home and watch a movie. I hate it when I have things hanging over my head, I can't keep track of them all.
It's really annoying since I have to constantly fight with Flash at home. It hates me, I'm convinced.
Oh well, the only thing that's really bugging me at the moment is my neck, hurts like you wouldn't believe.
Got to go, ciao.

.:Edit:.
Woah, published on 2:22 ... that's odd.

Monday Morning.

...Really early in the morning.
I got up at 10 today and started working on all the homework that needed to get done. I tried doing it yesterday, but it backfired and exploded in my face. I basically wasted three hours of my life. And it has been stressful getting the portfolio in ASAP since the college I'm looking at demands it and I've been working on that since Friday. Which is good, just tiring. Since I've been working all night and called it a night an hour ago, then lost track of time browsing the internet, I figured, why not just do a post. I end up forgetting about them anyways. Pffffffft.
Here's something of Interest.
Yes it's typography. I will be sure to pick something different later this week.

On a completely unrelated note I went out and saw the "super moon" Saturday, it was epic. It illuminated everything, you could even read a book outside. I thought it was awesome.
I'm leaving now, I have to be up in about 4 hours and I realized my sentence structure is abhorrent when I'm tired. Ciao.

Friday.

Hello,
I since I have many things to do I am going to make it short, sweet and to the point.
Something of interest:

A Stop Motion Animation Fight By Samxma Productions

Samxma makes many stop motion videos with clay and hundreds of pictures to make a very smooth animation. A lot of the videos involve black comedy, but I find it hilarious.

This week we learned about portfolios and how to present them to get a professional look to them. Something I want to learn is how to speak basic German. Why? Because it's such a beautiful language. ...OK, it isn't but still, being bilingual is said to raise your IQ so it can't be a bad thing to learn.

Thursday

Well, so far this week is going splendidly. I'm really enjoying it, yesterday I went out and got a milkshake. It was awesome. Though, I'm going to be busy for the next few days. I have to finish the animation and regular school. Most importantly I have to create my portfolio since the college I'm applying to is requiring it and I have to get it in as soon as humanly possible. Pffffft.

As a Post of Interest, I'm going to do Star Trek again, if for no other reason than the fact that I cannot think of anything else at the moment.

Star Trek: The Animated Series

The animated series followed the original series in the 60's. Better known as Star Trek TAS, it aired in September of 1973 and ran until October of 1974. It had two seasons with a total of 22 episodes in a 30 minute air time. The animation was fair at best due to budget restraints and frequently used stock images. Occasionally, there would be quality animation. The voice actors did not perform together, typical for animation and recorded their parts separately to avoid clashing with other voice actor's mistakes. 

The production company's of TAS was Norway Productions & Filmation. From 1960's to the 1980's, the only real competitor of Hanna-Barbera Productions with TV cartoons was Filmation. Filmation later went on to create He-Man (1983–85), which occasionally used modified character and set designs from TAS mostly as background material. 

The characters of TAS.

TAS has had many influences on other Star Trek related works, such as the same dialogue being found in the 2009 movie as a reference and Kirk's middle name being revealed as Tiberius, answering the question of what the 'T.' in his name stood for in the original live action series. However there are many "canon" mistakes and it is unclear whether or not if if TAS is officially considered to be part of Star Trek. Star Trek: TAS was named the 96th best animated series by IGN. They declared that although the series suffered from technical limitations, it allowed the writers far greater freedom and creativity than was possible with the original live-action series (though you still gotta love the silly costumes and cardboard sets).