Current location:	SPACE
Current mood:	meh
Entry tags:	animation, uni

so.
Finally the crazy end-of-semester week is over.

We had to finish our damn project AND write our exams in ONE WEEK.

So my week looked like this:

Saturday&Sunday: PROJECTPROJECTPROJECT + some learning for Media Culture = no sleep at all

Monday: Media Culture Exam (which was easy, whoo!) + PROJECTPROJECTPROJECT + 1.5 hours learning for Media Technology = about 4 hours of sleep

Tuesday: Technology Exam (which I have definitely failed. They had us mis-informed about that exam! Almost everyone's sure they failed this one...) + PROJECTPROJECTPROJECTPROJECT + temperature way too high to sleep = about 2-3 hours of sleep

Wednesday: Project presentation! + 3 hours of sleep + learning for Informatics = about 7 hours of sleep

Thursday: Informatics exam (possibly passed...I dunno) + some shopping


Ren & Stimpy Time Warp and Star Trek Academy Simulator blabla! Look at how dirt cheap they were! Haha

And then I SLEPT

I slept so much, I'm almost as tired now as I was before.











Our project was a 3D animation called "Space Talk" (lol, we made that name up on the very last day, 5 minutes ahead of the final presentation).

It is an alien Talkshow and their topic is "Are there any alien life forms out there?"

Since their assumptions about alien life, very much like our own of course, are at their very roots based on facts (though of course twisted and obscured by myths and horror-stories) their concept of an "alien" is basically what we would call a "human being".

Also they seem to have taken a liking to Michael Jackson.
(yeah, we planned this HALF A YEAR ago, and when we finish it, the man dies. I don't know.)


Our characters

	the moderator designed by nepi, with some finishing touches from me modeled by Enrico Weinert animated by me He's a showbusiness man through and through. He's all pomp and circumstance, his ultimate goal a good show and the audience's love. He'll be sympathetic, if the audience demands it, but just as quickly he'll be stomping on his guests feelings, if that's what it takes to get their story out of them. He was fun to animate, even though he was lacking a "happy" expression.
	the "abductee" designed by nepi modeled by me animated by nepi, some finishing touches by me The abductee is SURE he/she was abducted by those gruesome humans! He/she even made a sketch. HORRIBLE! Whatever one may think happened in the fateful night of his/her alleged abduction, it left the abductee nothing but a bunch of nerves. Twitchy, jumpy, nervous and scared as the abductee may be, he/she still found the strength to come to SPACE TALK and explain his/her situation. I only added some more twitches and some reactions to the prof.
	the prof designed by nepi modeled by me animated by Fabian Kees A professor with about a million PhDs in all kinds of subjects, mostly known for his brilliant works in the field of astrophysics, he is a man of science with a love for cold hard facts. To him, this talk about "humans" and "abductions" and "UFOs" is nothing but a load of bull...feces. He won't believe one bit of it unless one of those humans comes up to him and shakes hands with him. Maybe not even then. With that kind of character he was supposed to be a little stiff...but our animator took it a little too far, tbh.
	the veteran designed by nepi with final touches by me modeled by Valeryia Krusteva animated by Valeryia Krusteva, nepi and me The veteran isn't one of those wimpy new-age hippies (like the abductee?) and he still believes in humans. Because he's BEEN THERE. He was one of the young soldiers who hauled in the crashed UFO and watched as their doctors cut the "human" into a million tiny pieces. Of course now the government wants to hush it all up and he has to go to a talk show, in order to get his message out. But he doesn't care, as long as he does get it out, and at the same time gets a chance to throw some curses at the other guests. Who does that professor person think he is? Where was he, when they shot the **** UFO down, with his beak in a book, that's where. Books won't tell you about the horrors inside one of them **** humans, it won't! I had to animate him idling for a few seconds and was all "animating someone idling is SO hard" to leelakin who in turn was all like "make him scratch his ass" and so I did!
	the "human" designed by nepi modeled by me animated by me The "human" is a freak of nature. Did you see that face? All white and...horrible! Also, did you notice HE DOESN'T HAVE A FLYING SEAT THINGER? He WALKS! On his feet! He even does something that I want to call a "moon walk" even though I have no idea what that is supposed to be. GRUESOME! AAAH Goddamn, animating this guy took for ever. And it still looks very wonky in many places. (Please bear in mind that this was my first ever animation...) Still, it also was kind of fun to do. And I'm kind of proud(and surprised?) of how well the turn turned out!
	the audience designed by no one in particular modeled by me animated by Fabian Kees, nepi & me The audience has seen better. It probably also has seen worse, but that doesn't matter on this very evening. Humans, yawn. But wait...what was that? AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGHHHHGHGHGH I animated them in the last scene, which is like all PANIC OMG. Doing this was kind of hard, since I couldn't simply animate them in the finished scene, because of MASSIVE MAYA LAG. So I animated each and every one in a separate file and then imported them into the final scene, hoping they wouldn't clip through each other or the human. I think that last scene turned out quite well, though unfortunately there's some small mistake and you can see two of the fleeing aliens simply freeze and not move anymore for a few milliseconds. Had we had more time...

Now about the project work itself...
it was HORRIBLE.
Seriously.
I mean, you probably noticed in some of my earlier posts just how annoyed I was with the whole thing.
We were a group of five.

One of which, though a perfectly nice person and even willing to do some work, was simply...y'know...not...very...talented.
In other instances, her work was suddenly brilliant(like the veteran she modeled) but you just couldn't really depend on her.

The second one, we never really formally agreed on having him in our team, he just pretty much...invited himself?
So we told him "you do the soundand gtfo" which in retrospect was a patently bad idea.
Some people...some people just seem to have NO SENSE WHATSOEVER for what looks/sounds/feels good.
He also did some animations, but yeah...you see how that turned out.

The third one, our "joker". The only guy who knew some stuff about Maya. He was important.
But also (in my eyes, other people will tell you other things) largely a lazy, party going...person.
Not necessarily lazy in the sense of "too lazy to do something" but "too lazy to do it NOW".
He worked hard, there's no denying that, but he also worked mostly only when somebody was breathing down his neck.
Which can be pretty annoying, when he is the one needed to do some stuff, so some other stuff can get done.

The fourth one, she basically knew as little about Maya as I did (maybe I knew a little more, because she'd borrowed me her awesome Learning Maya book and I actually READ it) and was mostly responsible for the 2D stuff like concepts and the 2D arts in the animation.
She did all her work, and did it very well, but sometimes also taking her sweet time to finish stuff.

The fifth one is me, and of course I am perfect and willing to work and learning very fast and did I say PERFECT?
Honestly? I'm calling myself a lazy lardass.
I could have done and learned SO MUCH MORE during this project, but instead of for example stepping on the joker's toes and making him show me how rigging works, I just sat at home and complained why it took him such a goddamn long time to finish it.
Overall, instead of relying on others so much (and then complaining) I just should've done more stuff myself.



Now the movie itself...it sucks!
It really does!
For one because of several technical problems, like MASSIVE MAYA LAG(tm) which made the animations much much faster than they were supposed to be. (We animated to the sound clips of the aliens talking. In Maya = perfect fit. Outside of Maya = WTF 2 seconds shorter than the soundclip?!)

Then the sound. The sound is just terrible. Not so much our voiceacting, but the effects.

Also the postproduction. But it was bound to be. For one, we had only about 1.5 days for the postpro and secondly no one of us had ever done postproduction in After Effects and Premiere.

Some small mistakes like the mod's belt suddenly being yellow in one or two scenes, or the earlier mentioned frozen audience, or some not so nice animations, that I oversaw during my short animation-fixing-phase.

And last and but not least, the storytelling.
In the beginning there was this kind of funny idea of "haha, let's make a talk show where the aliens talk about humans, as though the humans were aliens!"
and then a lot of stuff happened, and the Michael Jackson idea happened and a lot of stuff got cut, because of time limitations
and now we have something that WE (as the group who made it) understand, because we've been there throughout the entire creation, but anyone else most likely won't.
That is of course a bad, bad sign, but I'll chalk it up to a) the group not being very good and communicative and b) the time being very short.

THE MOVIE

...is atm still HD quality and thus way too big to upload it anywhere.
Also I can't quite be arsed to upload something which is so bad, when I know that I'm going to work on it some more.
So I'll probably post it here once I've worked on it a little more.