I am trying to get this blog started up now officially as a way of building a series of animations and strengthening my skills for my own future. Last year, I lost my job, in January! So it has been a full year since I have had a steady job, but I have been working freelance for a few months now. It brings in some money, but it isn't what I want to do. Photography is great, and I am really good at what I do (which is photo-editing and design), but I am bored with it, and really want to create something!
That is why I am working on this site now. I want to document, and broadcast my latest projects and things that really interest me.
If you haven't read any of this blog yet, don't worry, you haven't missed too much.
Here is a brief list of what I will do with this blog:
- Project Updates on my animations
- Movie reviews
- Things that inspire me
- Ideas and inspirations I want to share
- Working through the hard times...
So let me get started with this blog this year. And to start the blog, I need to start my first animation. Well I already started last year, if you read the other posts on this blog, but I had to give it a rest for the Holidays. Since I haven't gone far, I have decided to slightly revise this site. Instead of trying to finish a project every week (which is a little insane), I will try to set a goal every week and meet that goal, and then give an update at the end of the week on what I did or did not accomplish.
So far, I have brainstormed my first animation, drawn a storyboard, researched some imagery, and even started drawing. However, I have mostly only drawn backgrounds, so this week my goal is to draw some animation, to finish all the small animation, and hopefully the drawings of the character himself.
Once that is done, I will use next week to focus on scanning, coloring, and layering all these files for use in the animation.
There is one drawback to this. The school I hope to apply to has a deadline in the middle of the month, and I will not have time to finish any new animations before then. So I will be gathering what I have done in the past, writing up some letters, and trying to get the ball rolling ASAP. Unfortunately, it may still be too late to really do this, I fear. But I have come this far with the goal of getting into a good school, and I am not going to stop because a deadline is coming up! I am going to face this head on with hope that they will accept that work I have already done.
Maybe someday I will post some of these animations online, in fact one is online now, but I will link to it later. For now, I will focus on the animation, and getting into school. Now I already have a BA in digital art and animation, but I was not satisfied with what I learned, and I want to take it much farther, hence my goal to get into a better school.
Well that just about does it for this post. This week I will be focusing on the animation and the submission process, as well as my regular freelance work. There is one more thing however, I just feel I have to mention...
For those that know me, I am a bit of a videophile... ok ok.. I am a big videophile. What's a videophile you ask? Simple. A videophile is someone who really likes and is very particular about high quality video. That means I can easily spot flaws, compression, dirt, noise, DNR (digital noise reduction), and other visual effects on a variety of screens and formats. I really love HD, especially Blu-ray, so I have been getting a few titles every so often. For Christmas, I got one of my favorite movies as a child, The Dark Crystal.
I am not going to do a movie review at this time (although I might later on), but I did want to mention something that inspired me that was on the Blu-ray (possibly also the DVD). There are 2 featurettes on the disc that essentially look back at what they did and how they did it when they made that movie. Looking at the images of Jim Henson, and his staff/crew of talented professionals, I am always awestruck. He managed to create an entire world, fully believable and alive, through puppetry. The concept is one of creating something completely new and original. While many will argue there is nothing original anymore (and in many ways they are right, and there never had been anything original), I must say that the world he created has really struck home with me. I see the passion and the eagerness he has to build and create and direct, and I am filled with the desire to just create something like he did. It took him 5 years just to get to a point where they could start filming, and I know that I have that kind of drive, if I only had the resources and knowledge he had. It doesn't help that today, puppets are mostly only for kids and almost no one uses them anymore. The only thing people do now are computer graphics. However, director Guillermo Del Toro has stated that he wants to use puppets combined with CG to create something no one has seen before. That idea also inspires me! A puppet that is designed to be partially or fully integrated into a CG creation can truly take the best of both worlds and put them together. With puppets, you have the instant interaction, the ad-lib ability with other members of the cast, and a talented actor in the form of a puppeteer. With CG, you have amazing effects that can defy explanation, you have ultra realistic characters and environments, the ability to create fully animated worlds and characters, but you lack the instant acting and ad-lib gratification without using motion capture. But if you combine puppetry with CG and MoCap, I am sure you can achieve more than ever! Characters that are completely non-human, but absolutely believable and amazing, and well acted.
So right now, the thing that is inspiring me is Jim Henson and his crew, and his ideology of combining the impossible with the possible, the real with the imaginary, to a point where the entire story is imaginary and created, the entire world and all the characters are his creation, but with the same acting talents as any live-action film.
I may explore this idea in the future.
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