Links To My Extra Research

As you couldn't actually click on the links from my presentation slideshow pieces, here is the link to a part of "The Way Things Go" by Peter Fischli and David Weiss (the whole thing is 30 minutes long!) and also Honda's - "The Cog", which have both been very influential on how certain parts can be achieved.

The Way Things Go by Peter Fischli and David Weiss:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXrRC3pfLnE

Honda - The Cog:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ve4M4UsJQo

That's it for now, but check back soon for how the final piece is coming along. :)

Take care,

Joe.

IT'S FINISHED!

As the name suggests, IT'S FINISHED!
It's taken roughly 3 months but it is finally finished and exported from Garageband with music and everything.
It wasn't as easy getting to here mind as putting it all into Final Cut Pro and matching up the clips took a while. Then once this was done it took over 6 hours to render!
The reason for this is because the files are so large but once the compressor got to work it only took 2 hours to export from Final Cut Pro which was a nice change!
Putting it into Garageband, the free music loop based royalty free software which comes with all Apple Macs, was where the fun began as I was able to finally create a soundtrack to my visuals.
I found that using only bass and drums was a great combination and whilst doing it's job, didn't distract the viewer from the dialogue and narrations. However for the more music based areas (such as the Intro and Credits) I could be a lot more expressive in terms of music and the ending I'm really proud of as it's a nice cheerful ending to go out on, rounding up what I'm hoping has been an enjoyable watch.
So far those who have seen (my family and the Peskett Family) have really enjoyed it so fingers crossed most others do too and they're not just being nice because they know me!

To sum up this module, I have really pushed myself to limits I never knew existed. But whilst doing this I have really enjoyed being so involved with a project again. Over the summer I have craved big projects like this and finally I've been given the chance and if I'm honest I was over enthusiastic and ended very nearly burning out half way from exhaustion.
On the other hand, if I hadn't taken on this project I wouldn't have learnt the things I have, both about facial hair and myself.

I've learnt an incredibly valuable lesson which is pace yourself. Don't go burning out rushing through things. I need to do what I have done on this project and prioritise and think realistically.
Last year I made myself very ill working so hard and not sleeping properly etc. and so this year I've made sure no matter how tired I am I've eaten properly, got my 5-a-day etc. and have planned out my next move so that when I need to sleep I can wake up and keep on track.
The second valuable lesson I've learnt is that if you plan ahead you can accomplish such a big task as this. Without planning and being as organised as I possibly could I would never have been able to finish in time. But here we are with me talking about finishing it thanks to organisation and efficiency.

In a way I'm sad to see this project go as it's been a big part of my life these past few months, but deep down I'm ready to move on and take these skills to the next project and see what I can do.

So as a goodbye present I leave you with the photos of all my lists as they were nearing completion. Uploading these is also very rewarding for me as right next to me is the same sheets but all ticked off and finished with.

So thankyou for reading and hopefully you'll visit back soon to see what else I've been up to and where the skills I've learnt in this project have taken me.

Until next time take care,
Joe.

HISTORY IS DONE!

Pulling a fair few all nighters I have finally finished the history animation!
But again there were a lot of set backs or what!
The main problem was that I had cut out all these photos with the intention of animating it by hand. However trying to do so proved very tricky and more time consuming than was needed so instead I went back onto the computer and inverted each photo, which I could of done at the same time as colouring them to save time in the first place.
Then once all these images were inverted I put them into After Effects with the actual book as the background.
From here on in it was just a slog for a couple of days but I was able to make some much more interesting transitions than what I was planning to do. Once all these transitions were done I was finally able to export it. Which took 11 hours!
Turns out as I'd been going along I'd zoomed out from the time line, which actually means you've zoomed out in time too not just scale so where I was putting in points of movement, they were minutes apart instead of seconds.
However, once it had finally exported I compressed it for another two hours and then was able to put it into Final Cut Pro and cut and trim the video down into separate films per information from the narration going over the top. I then matched the video to the audio by changing the speed of the videos and voila it was completed. Piece of cake......

On the other hand, whilst all this rendering, exporting and everything else was going on, I was able to get the rest of the narrations done, the final calendar transitions and the credits.
The credits as you'll see from the photos I've uploaded are of the people who starred in my documentary (Jeff and the Peskett Family) holding up fake blue beards. This way everybody grew a beard!
I've also finished the animations of our beards growing to go in front of this after the final scene and they look great so a big thanks to Phil and Jeff!
I aligned the photos so that the transition is smoother and then added disclaimers at the ends saying what happened, such as Phil going for a Handlebar and Goatee style with extended Sideburns and Jeff sadly having to shave because of a family gathering he had to look smart for!

With all this finally finished it was time to put it all together and make the final "Lego Model".

With the photos you can see the calendar transitions first, then stills from the History animation, then the credits.

Check back soon for my overview of this project as I hopefully complete it all in time!

Take care,
Joe.

VINCE IS DONE!

What a hectic week!
But the best part of it is that Vince's Introduction is done and dusted now!
However there were a few problems which sadly have altered the final version of this scene.
Firstly and most importantly, it was proving too problematic to map Jeff's mouth to Vince's face.
This was partly due to Jeff moving his head around to much and also the face I'm fast running out of time to be fannying about.
We tried re-filming Jeff's lines but again it seems that mapping the mouth up is going to be a long job and so it was with great upset that I opted for a more simplistic option of using Vince's normal open happy mouth.
This mouth doesn't move but most people I've shown this piece to have said they don't really focus on Vince and are more focused on the images he is pointing to.
What they mean by this is that whilst Vince is speaking I have included images to help explain and visually accent what he is saying, for example a map of Australia when Vince explains that Movember (the original challenge before Decembeard where moustaches are grown instead of beards) was created in Melbourne.
This animation is very simplistic compared to my original ideas but that's just the way things go sometimes, you have to make compromises and prioritise so perhaps in the future Vince will be able to talk properly. If anything, this way his mouth does match all the photos of him so I guess in that way the lack of moving mouth ties his image together well.

I also forgot to mention that this mouth to face idea was furthered the other day when I saw a kids programme on Cbeebies called "Dirtgirlworld". The animation used in this cartoon is very surreal and quite unnerving for a kids show but still the effect is brilliant as it saves out on days of lip syncing.
Sadly though I'm going to have to use this reference later on as for now it's not possible to complete effectively like they do on this show.
Here's some links to who makes it first:

http://www.hackettfilms.com/

And what it actually looks like as well:

http://www.mememe.com.au/projects/dirtgirlworld


Never the less I've also finished some more narrations and got the history images together too. It's taken a couple of all nighters this week and last but I finally finished the History research and am now ready to animate.

With the history I am going to be making images which highlight certain points of the narration (e.g. Cows wore metal false beards in Ancient Egypt and so a cow wearing one will pop up from the book) and animating by hand from an actual book. This has resulted in lots of photos being printed out and cut out ready to be animated later on. These photos are all hand drawn by me but I have traced over certain parts (e.g. the photos of famous people like Freud and Einstein) to save time. This was absolutely nakkering trying to get these all done and then colour them in Photoshop and print them out then cut them out but I've done it. My housemates were a big help cutting some out for me as well but still I need to get a move on.
In this blog I've included photos of all these cut out history pictures as well as some stills from Vince's animation.

Next time I blog I should (fingers crossed) have finished the History animation and be finally thinking about putting all this together! Again, fingers crossed because the clocks ticking.

Here in this post I've included photos of all the History photos cut out, photos of the original pencil drawings as well for comparison and also some of the photos from the Vince Animation as well. Oh and finally there are a couple of stills from the Vince Animation.

Take care,
Joe.

Narrations (I actually did them this time!)

The last title was a bit misleading because I didn't actually do the narrations, but now they are finished and ready to be put to the "Lego Bricks".
I've also included in this post photos from the Intro montage for you to see. This montage was nice and easy to make and a nice rest from the hard work of getting everything else done, yet still was productive.

Speaking of the Montages I've also finished the Decembeard Montage and the Title which is an animation of Vince's beard growing and showing the letters which spell out "DECEMBEARD" an apt and simple title I thought.
The photos are one of the set up I used to make the title and the other of a still from the mini title animation. The others are from the December Montage.
To make the title I marked out where the letters were going to go and then laid another image of vince over the top and using the light box (the platform thing they're on) I traced bit by bit the beard growing around the letters underneath.
This works quite effectively if I do say so myself and gives the viewer a taste of what the documentary is like, that tongue in cheek style of work but it's not a half assed spoof.

Next I am going to finally get round to making Vince so that I can actually make a proper start on The History of Beards.


Take care,
Joe.

Narrations

It's been pretty hectic getting MEDI 262 out of the way but now it's finally done I can focus again on Decembeard.
This week, well tuesday I went to Jeff's and filmed his mouth for the Vince introduction. This went really well and it also turns out that one calendar transition (the one from Jeff's interview into Phil's) doesn't logically work, it's meant to go from What Women Want (the Peskett Family interview) into History.
So whilst I was at Jeff's I was able to create a transition from one interview to the next via a photo frame which I've put in the same scene as Jeff's interview to tie the two together nicely.
Little setbacks like this are starting to creep up so I really need to get going with this Vince animation but tonight instead I'm going to start recording some narrations then crack on with Vince tomorrow.

Until then take care,
Joe.

Back to Uni and Poo Hits the Fan

I went back to uni this week and in some ways I'm glad and in others I'm not.
Firstly to get the bad out of the way it turns out my first scenes are subject to copyright, along with the first calendar transition because I have a "Family Guy" poster up and a Scooby Doo t-shirt on. This now means I can't use those scenes and since I don't want to go through shaving my beard off all over again, I have decided to open my documentary with a montage of famous beards and facial hair.
To do this (and here comes the good news) I have gone onto the Prelinger Archive where they have a vast selection of royalty free videos and images.
From here I have made the montage of such greats as Mr.T, Chuck Norris, Henry VIII, Santa Claus and a few others which I am now going to have playing whilst a narration goes over the top.
It is from here on in that I have started working a lot harder to get this documentary done in time but with enough time for me to be able to fix things should they need be.

Following on making this first montage I then made the second one about December 2010 and so if I'm honest this little hiccup of copyright has actually given me the boost I needed to keep going and get this all done in time for the deadline. It's still miles away but I've had a lot of stress trying to finish MEDI 262 (Experimental Animation) and so now that that is slowly getting done I can try and balance the two. I hope.

Anyway enough doom and gloom the bottom line is I have finished the two montages and although panic and stress are sinking in a little I need to keep reminding myself that I've taken on a lot but I'm on target.

Check back soon after MEDI 262 is finished and I should be of a calmer disposition and be able to tell you what else I've finished.

Take care,
Joe.

Final Scenes in Manuary

With the research animation finished and out of the way I was able to finally style my beard tonight even though it is now the 8th of January A.K.A Manuary to those who take in part in Decembeard. It's called Manuary because this is where we are allowed to style our manly beards and so I have filmed this and finished the final scenes.
I've sped up my girlfriend styling my beard (As it's easier for her to see what she's doing than it is for me to see the underside of my chin!) and this is going to go between the montage I'm going to include of the month, and the final scene where I say goodbye.

I'm really happy with what I'm calling an "Extended Anchor" although I still wish I has the confidence and the length of beard to pull off the Sparrow. Perhaps in the future maybe? haha

Also in this post are the pictures of my To Do list. I've just made a new one so thought I might as well put photos of them up then show you the new one later on so you can see how my ideas have changed. I'm sorry if you can't read them but I have posted them as the biggest size allowed so fingers crossed!

From here on in I am going to be focusing on the History of Beards as next to the Vince introduction when I get back to Uni, these are going to take up a LOT of time so the sooner I get started on them the better!

Check back soon for the next instalment of work where I'll (hopefully) be talking about a finished History animation!

Take care and Happy New Year!
Joe.

Research Photos

Here we have firstly mini versions of Vince where I tried out drawing different styles so save from wasting ink printing the bigger ones and then mucking it up.
Then we have the actual bits of paper I used in the animation.

Check back soon for when I've finally shaved and got my final styled beard!

Take care,
Joe.

Happy Christmas! and Research Animation

Before I begin explaining about how making the research animation went, I thought I should explain how forgot to say I had a breakthrough with Jeff about the Vince animation before we left for Christmas!
As Vince is going to be the introducer to Decembeard, he needs to be speaking a lot but it's going to be very difficult and time consuming to lip sync and animate Vince's mouth to the audio, so instead Jeff said why not just film the actual mouth speaking and map it to the drawn face in After Effects?
This simple idea is absolute genius and hopefully going to save me a lot of time in the long run! I also asked Jeff to be the voice of Vince since he helped make him now and he agreed.
This has led to a running joke which will be that Vince and Jeff are not linked in any way, despite the obvious fact that Jeff is the voice of Vince which viewers will find out from his obvious denial as Vince and then hopefully again when they hear Jeff speak in his interview later on.

But moving on from Vince, who is on hold at the moment until I return to Uni and can film Jeff's mouth speaking the script (which I also need to write) I have completed the research animation which shows which beard styles I am going for.

Originally I was going to show each beard style quickly but there are just too many so I have narrowed it down for the viewer but for you reading this blog here is a link to two of the websites I researched from:

The first one is Beards.org which specialises in beard culture and has a heavy influence from Decembeard and growing beards in general:

http://www.beards.org/

Next is a man named John Dyer's Blog which is a documentation of his quest to have every single style of beard that exists! So far he has managed 33 out of the 42 he knows of so far:

http://www.dyers.org/blog/beards/beard-types/

These two websites really helps me to narrow down my search and I have decided on a combination of 3 beard styles, the Sparrow (first photo, made famous by Captain Jack Sparrow of the Pirates of the Caribbean films), The Anchor (second photo) and the Hollywoodian (third photo).
However in the documentary I will not say that I have decided yet as I want the viewer to wonder for a bit longer (if they're even interested that is! It doesn't sound very exciting haha) so that the end result seems more impressive.

Originally the plan with this animation was to have a comic book of famous people all with different styles of beards and then pan over them with the camera until ending on a still image of me which is actually a frame from the final scene. The still would then become the film and the documentary would continue.
To overcome copyright I was going to re-draw each celebrity photo e.g. Mr.T, Chuck Norris etc. and put them into a comic strip.
But as I've just explained I am now going to narrow down the research so that the viewer isn't bored by the sheer amount of beard styles that are out there.

To overcome this boredom problem I have done a small animation with scrumpled up paper which scrumples out and in again to show each drawing. Each drawing is also a picture of Vince's face without a beard and in my next post I'll put some of the animation images up so you can get an idea of how it worked.

Take care,
Joe.

P.s Happy Christmas!