Take Me Out To The BallYes i know i said i wouldn't be posting much because of work, and yes i am doing said work. But in between that work we were given the choice to go to a Baseball game in the stadium not far from here! Thanks to the Baptist Church who often do trips us exchange students can tag along with. This was Vasilena and i's first ever baseball game, and after having the rules and scores explained to us, we had a really great time! The weather was a bit chilly but there was a double rainbow which stayed in the sky for a solid 20 minutes! And the game was actually really interesting to watch, even if the players weren't too great. Most of the game consisted of people getting strikes or caught out, and our home team the Flying Squirrels lost without getting a single person to home base, but there was often a wow moment like the opposite team getting a home-run, the many balls which landed in the crowd, and the many many mini events happening in between team switching. This varied between people shooting shirts out of cannons, people racing in giant peanut costumes, people in drag dancing while combing the fields dirt, and of course the mascot dance offs. It's hard to explain how bizarre it really was at times, but it was certainly entertaining. I would definitely go again, and recommend to anyone who can go, even if you're not a big sports fan like me.
And at the end, there was a spectacular fireworks show which had the whole stadium ooh-ing and ahh-ing.
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Our First TornadoThis morning we were awoken to the city sirens blaring. And so with a quick search on the internet it turned out to be a tornado warning. That explained the rain, as it was the most rain i've ever seen, and i live in England! Long story short after about 15 minutes the alarm went off and we never got to see the tornado. But it did come by Richmond apparently but you would never guess it from a few hours later. In true Richmond style, the rest of the day was so sunny and hot all the rain was gone by the afternoon. Busy Busy BusyWith finals coming up fast, it will be likely i won't post much in the next few days as i will be doing nothing but working on my stuff. Ordinarily i would update my progress but since there is such a small time, i will just post my finished work when it's done.
Nothing, That's What.Ok maybe that's an exaggeration, but it's always nice. And something else that was nice was the Kinetic Imaging Gala.
The Gala has been hosted near the end of the year for the past 7 years, and is a small event which any Kinetic Imaging students can attend. It was hosted at a local club which had a stage, and the night features free food, awards given to students, a raffle, even karaoke. There was even a surprise at the beginning of the presentation where they acknowledges us, the exchange students, and presented us with a free VCU Arts Tee Shirt each! It was a surprise and was super nice! We left after the presentation and awards, but not before watching the first person do karaoke. My sound professor Josh. He was actually surprisingly good... at parts. We would have stayed longer but we were spending the day doing our 3D projects and wanted to get back to work. AgainSo from now on i have no classes until the finals which were mentioned in the post below. This means much more time to do the projects i need to get done. Unfortunately for me, they're not the only projects i need to do. As an exchange student there are certain projects from Bristol that i still need to do throughout the semester. One i have already completed which was critical perspective. But the hand in for professional practice is on the 8th. For this assignment, i need a 500 word report about 36 hours of work experience, a business card design, a showreel, a portfolio website (Located here: www.harrydawsonconfusedandfabulous.weebly.com) a CV and finally for whatever reason, a 10 page portfolio highlighting my work. I find the last one extremely pointless and a waste of time for numerous reasons the main one being as an animator the work i do moves. That's like... the main thing it does. So why the heck would i showcase this on paper? The least practical way of showing anything that moves. Not only that but if we have to keep our CV below two pages, what employer would have the attention span to look at 8 more pages?
Well for whatever reason i still have to do it, which piles even more work that i need to get done. Probability i will complete everything? Low. A Productive Class Of TwoToday's video class was a work day, and so that meant if you didn't want to come in, you just had to send Bob an email. I decided i'd get nothing done if i didn't go, so chose to go in. This was apparently an unpopular choice as the class consisted of me, Bob, and ONE other student. For the entire duration of the class. I of course did not mind. It was a lot more chill, and after a eureka moment in bed last night, i finally had an idea to discuss with Bob about for my final project. After discussing it with him and having a more fleshed out idea, i worked for the most part of class. But towards the three of us ended up talking about all manner of things, politics, first jobs, horror movie dolls, bats. Even my Independent study head Pam, and my sound professor Josh popped by. It was like one big crossover episode. But what is this idea of mine i don't hear you ask? Well you can ask me, or you can as... Me. I started working on this handsome devil yesterday as i wanted to practice rigging again, and didn't feel like rigging a basic dummy. And so i made something better. Me! But it wasn't until last night that it clicked to me that i could use this for my video project, tying in well with my last virtual reality themes piece!
So the plan right now is to have two computer screens next to each other. On one screen there will be a video of me sitting in a room doing a variety of actions. On the other will be the digital me, doing the exact same thing! As the video progresses i plan on having each of me do things the other cannot. This will be a comparative piece. And instead of the real me traversing digital space, i will have the digital me mimicking real space, digitally! It sounds interesting to attempt at least! During my 3D i got James to help me a lot with the model. While it looked the same before and after he helped, t was all about the topology of the model. Topology for those of you who don't know, is basically where the lines, or edges, of a model flow across the surface. It sounds trivial, but it becomes very important when it comes to how the model moves and animates later on. Now all i need to do is rig the thing. And don't worry, he will look a lot less horrifying once he has an actual expression, instead of this lifeless nutcracker expression. A Change In ScheduleI was informed in Video class today of three things. The first is that we will now begin our final assignment. This consists of anything. Literally anything. And so you can understand why i have no idea what to do yet. The second thing is that i got an A for my last project! Which is nice. It's the first grade i've gotten back for video, so i hope it bumps up whatever grade i've gotten so far. And finally the third, which is that finals week is soon, and that it doesn't work like usual. In finals week, you have no classes, aside from one final extended class for each subject which does not abide by the usual schedule. I will update this post with the dates of my final classes when i find out. Hello from the future! So as far as i'm aware, this will be my schedule for finals: 3D - 9th May 1pm- 3:50pm Video- 11th My 8pm – 10:50pm Sound- 11th May 1pm - 3:50pm The Return Of Clock FaceMeanwhile, in 3D class, i braved re modeling and rigging Clock Face once again. This time combining all i've learnt so far. And once again... I failed.
OR SO I THOUGHT! Every time i went to move the character after finishing, my Maya crashed. And i was very disappointed. I tried to keep the model simple still, but a little better than my latest most simplest model. Despite this it was still too much for my tiny surface pro to handle. But upon trying to move it onto the mac in the classroom, the rig worked fine! So it was my laptop, not my rig that was the problem. So my plan now is to refine everything in each scene except Clock Face, and then move the files over to a mac and finish it off there. A Jurassic DubOver the weekend i planned to start and finish my sound project. You know the one where i had to re record a scene from an old movie. Well on Saturday i had a very lazy day of no work, so that just left Sunday. Once again i did it in just a day, and i spent the day searching my room for all sorts of things to record. I'm proud to say all of the audio was made by me, i didn't have to resort to cheating. I ended up trying something funny, and while it's a matter of opinion as to what is funny or isn't, when showing it to the class for crit i got good reception with laughs throughout, which is a lot better than i thought i'd do. And here it is.
If i'm correct in understanding, that's the last graded work i'll be handing in for sound. If that's the case, then yay!
A Post About No PostsSo for the last few days i haven't updated at all. This could be due to having so many exciting things going off all at once i couldn't update. But that's really not the case. It's the opposite. The last few days i've been doing nothing but working on my hybrid project. It was the last meet up today until our final hand in, and so i wanted to show a decent amount of progress. And here it is. it's not much, but compared to how it was, it's a big step forward. After about 50 seconds nothing happens, but i kept it there so if you wanted to check out the hands you can. The main points of interest is the addition of the 3D Character (although the camera movements are not final) and the first animation of the 2D Character. That as well as the smoke from the chimneys. Again it's nothing to brag about, but i'm posting it here because you will see the final result eventually and can be like 'oh yeah i remember when it looked awful! It turned out pretty ok in the end' Video CritSo because i of my date mishap the other day, i couldn't book the production room on such short notice, which i meant re using my old test footage for the final piece. It did end up working out pretty well though, and i even managed to work out all the timings for the piece. Of course i didn't know for sure until today as i couldn't exactly test it without another 13 computers. First let me show you what i did. The quality is a bit... well terrible, and i apologies. I wasn't sure how to record the thing.
Now i don't know how simple it looks to you, but i can assure you it wasn't for me. For starters, i had to make 14 individual videos for this to work. In order for each screen to play what i wanted in sync, i couldn't just use the same one. The darkening of the screen, the everywhere at once, even the audio on specific screens without overlapping each other required individual timing on each video. My work space in Premier Pro was all over the place. But i must admit... It was pretty fun.
As for setting up, it took about 30 minutes. I had to log into each of the 14 computers, put each video onto each computer, set the video ready to play, set a timer to go off every 3 seconds, and then play each one 3 seconds after another to time it. That's why the beginning is cut off, because i had to start each one, run over to the camera and start recording. Unfortunately for me however, i never actually got to show anyone. Because my piece was so big, it meant using the classroom, whereas everyone else's was in the Depot. By the time we finished looking at everyone's the class was over, so i'm showing mine next class. Hopefully the computers wont have been wiped and i wont need to put each file back on again though. Because that part alone took a while. The work that we did look at was really cool. The production room was like a mini art gallery, with everyone's instillation pieces on show. A lot of them were bizarre. In a good way though! I didn't take any pictures, and it's very hard to explain what most of them were about because they were very unique, but in regards to my piece, i think i'm about on par with most people. So i'm happy about that. Suffice to say i've never handed in 14 videos at the same time before. Apparently?It's amazing how one screw up can be like a domino effect. Now i wouldn't say i pride myself on time management. I get the work done and it works for me, but there's a lot of all nighters in my schedules. But one thing that's essential to the Harry Dawson System of Workflow. And that's knowing what the gosh darn date is.
So imagine my surprise when i find out Easter is in fact on the 16th. Not the 14th. I don't know why i thought it was the 14th, but i did. But what does this have to do with my work you ask? Well since i though it was the 14th, i also thought i had a whole 3 days to re film, edit, and complete my Video Project. But no. My Video work is not due Wednesday, it's due Tuesday. That's... 1 day. Huh... Not only that but it also means instead of working on my Sound project which i need to have started by tomorrow, i must do this instead. Well i do like challenges! As for Easter itself, it is ok. We couldn't find any egg dye, so we couldn't paint eggs. But theres always next year! Anyway Happy Easter Everyone! |
IntroductionHello! My name is Harry, a 20 year old Animation Student from Bristol. Archives
June 2017
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