Weekly Comments

   This week we learned how to make explosions KABOOM!!!!! Not real ones, just special effects. What made me happy this week as that we are now finished with shadowers for awhile. What made me sad this week is that I am barely making any progress on my Typography, I definitely chose something with way too many words! In the future I hope to learn how to write interesting dialogue!

     My link of interest this week is to a silly video edit I made of Geoff, Patrick, Nathan, Connor, and Brady the other night whilst fooling around in after effects, I actually learned a lot just by fooling around!

Thumbnails and Planning

      Planning Planning Planning. Planning is one of the most important parts of animation. Without planing animating would be a nightmare, and movement would be very jarring. 

      By planning you can spend less time figuring out where to position and pose your characters, additionally planning allows you to test motion without having to go in and tediously put together each frame. Sketching out your shots also helps put together compositions that look good, being able to try different angles fast allows you to pick the best one for your shot.

     Only recently have I realized how important story-boarding, animatics, and roughs are. Time and time again would i find myself angry over how much time I had spent animating a scene only to realize it looks like bad. Eventually roughing out animation became one of the most important things in my process.

You may never be as good as you want to be.

   Every filmmaker aspires to be their best at film making, and reach a goal where they feel satisfied with their skill. Sadly, we will never live up to our expectations.
   Everyone is always in a constant battle with themselves when they work on projects. A feeling overwhelms you saying to yourself that you are doing a bad job. As you learn more as a filmmaker you start to understand more and more of what makes a film good. This makes it harder and harder for you to appreciate your own work and move towards those expectations you have set for yourself. This lack of motivation and inability to enjoy your projects makes it hard for you to work. This causes you to procrastinate and possibly close you project before it is finished.
     To overcome this is not an easy task, but the easiest way is to not focus on how the film affects you or your career. Focus on how it will affect your audience, and how it will affect your peers. Additionally don't compare yourself with others, you will never be able to accept that you are getting better while comparing your work to theirs.
     Interesting article! Finding ways to overcome disappointment in yourself is very hard. By far focusing on how your films affect your peers rather than yourself would be the most effective way to see how good your work actually is! Definitely seeing what other people think is the best way to improve yourself.

Weekly Comments

     The shadowers are here RUN! This week I learned a lot about after effects just by working on my own, mostly just a bunch of different effects whilst working on my typography project, but also some important things like audio scrubbing. What made me happy this week is that I got to demonstrate software to shadowers! I like to meet new people and socialize, so I enjoy showing them some software and whatnot. What made me angry this week is that I cannot use bridge with after effects. Why does it have to stop working during the typography project! GRRR!! What I want to learn in the future is how to make props so I can use them in scenes.
    My link of interest is to a cool animation I saw on vimeo! I thought it was so clever and silly and the animation itself is very smooth and appealing.

Creating Complex Transitions

     Transitions are one of the key ingredients in your film, a good one is easily appreciated, and a bad one is easily noticed.
     When attempting to make good transitions there are a lot of things to keep track of. First make sure that the colors of each shot match up, and their exposures and focus are similar, try to make the audience search as little as possible. When in post, make sure to move your clips around so they flow from one to another. Keep the motion on path so that they play well together, opposing movements will appear very confusing and will pull your audience out. Sound also can play a big roll in your transitions, they help match up shots even if there is no similarities inside the footage itself. Lastly make sure to grab many shots and sounds, the more you can pull from the better! A large library lets you experiment if the transition you originally chose does not work well.
     Next film project I create, I am going to keep transitions in mind. I never thought you could do so much with them. Just remember when making transitions  keep them simple and don't get to complicated, all you are doing is connecting two shots.

How Mythic Structure Can Benefit Your Writing

     When writing about a hero, make sure to remember mythic story structure! Symbols and representation are very important when framing a story and bringing everything together in the end.
     The world is full of patterns. Patterns are very easy to see, and allow us to understand relationships and history very easily. It allows us to see things that happened in the past, and what possible hardships, struggles, or challenges could face our hero in the coming future. Patterns bring significance to characters  and how they are important to their world. Make sure your story is epic, an epic story will have an epic impact on your audience. An epic story will bring new light to your audience showing them a world they have never been before.
     Be clear about your characters desires. Desire is what drives people to act in different ways, it makes it easy to understand what characters do and why they do it. Their wants make them easy to read. Additionally explore the possibility of your hero losing. Not everyone can win, there always has to be a winner and a loser, the fact that a hero is not perfect will give an audience a deeper attachment and more hope in your character. Lastly, have a lesson the audience can take away from the film. Causing the audience to learn something is the best thing you can do to create a lasting image in their mind and bring satisfaction to their mind.
    Mythic stories are always something fun to explore. Their characters are easy to understand, and are overall very enjoyable. When writing fiction, mythical structure would be something very fun to explore. It seems like a very easy framework to work off of, and would provide a way to access a larger world with less detailing and explanation.