7/29/02:
Have been a little lazy updating the site, but that doesn't mean I haven't
been working. I have been working on the final renders of the backgrounds.
Every time I move on to the next background, I find myself 'fixing' things.
The devil's in the details.
I have also decided to re-do all the character designs. Well, most of them.
More to come.
6/24/02:
Working on the new Hallway Pan Scene, going OK.
Trouble and stress at work. I might be forced to return to college to obtain
an advanced degree. The Art Institute, where I have been teaching for going
on 7 years, has applied to grant advanced, accredited degrees. This requires
ALL faculty to obtain a certain level of education. I was hoping that my professional
work and experience would count for something in the accrediting body's report,
but I was cited after inspection. I am not alone in this respect. A number
of faculty on staff was cited. I am irked I might be forced to return to school,
this would mean this project will be put on hold for a number of months, perhaps
years.
I like teaching, I am confident I am a good teacher. I am faced with a decision
of either fighting for my position with justifications, going back to college,
or looking for another job. None of those options tickles my fancy, I just
want to do my job and make my films.
6/02/02:
Well, I decided to add yet another scene. I've been working on the paintings
that would appear in the King's Throne room, and there is too much information
contained in the paintings to warrant the chance the audience might not notice.
I had wanted to illustrate the death of the Queen through the paintings on
the wall, but I no longer want to take the chance that audience might miss
the references. I have decided to add a scene between the Establishing Shot
and the Throne Room Scene. A quick dissolve after the Establishing Shot to
a Hallway. We pan down the hallway, past the paintings illustrating the King's
marriage to the Queen, Portraits of a Young Princess with the Queen, The Queen's
gradually weakening, and finally a painting of angels taking the Queen.
Alpha Wolf had suggested a while back to have some kind of Memorial set up
for the Queen, such as her throne with her crown positioned in the Throne
Room, But with the Hallway scene, it will be easier to construct, complete
with fresh flowers, lighting, etc.
I have been drawing more lately, hence the lack of regular updates. Plus the
added annoyance of being forced to upgrade to version 7 of Painter. It seems
I have too much memory on my new workstation, my older version of Painter
(5) would not run (Version 5 will not run on any machine with more that 512
megs, and I presently have 2 gigs). Painter has been my software of choice
for the last 10 years, and I am a firm believe that you shouldn't fix what
not is broken. I was quite satisfied with version 5, and now the aspect of
learning an upgrade irks me. I'm struggling along with new brush controls,
thus something that would normally take me a few days to paint is taking a
week. I'm sure I will get the hang of it, but it annoys me to be forced.
After a month and a half of rendering out the Establishing Shot, I still have
125 frames to go(out of 500). This is the largest scene with the most complicated
moves and mapping. I wonder if this is worth it, after all the titles will
be super imposed on top. I have people walking all around, fountains, sculptures,
all with a crane camera move. There is only one other crane shot that will
probably take a while to render, but not nearly as long as the Establishing.
I am old fashioned, meaning I like establishing shots to illustrate exactly
where we are. Mine shows time period, a happy, busy, wealthy kingdom. All
very important in setting the initial mood of the short. It is also a strong
contrast to the Baron's castle. I'm just impatient and want to move on to
finishing out the other backgrounds.
It seems now I probably won't be able to finish the animatic till next year
sometime, but once that done, all I have to do is animate. As far as I am
concerned, animating the easiest part, it's all the work leading up to animating
that's time consuming.
4/02/02:
Been working on the short, although not updating the site regularly. I have
finally bought a new workstation, and starting to do the final renders of
the backgrounds. The Establishing shot is 'only' taking 1.45 hours compared
to 5.15 with the old system. I will hopefully have the animatic finished by
the end of summer, and finished by next year.
I'm waiting for the royalty free CD's I've ordered to start on the musical
score. I'm going to try using Acid with a library of loops to score it myself.
I unusually do all my own music, but I've never tried anything of this magnitude
before.
3/09/02:
Finished the first pass with he Baron. He'll be OK. The Shepherd still
needs some tweaking, the Knight seems all right to me, but the Princess is
bothering me. She has varied too far from my original design and concept.
Since she's in almost every scene, I feel I will start to lose interest in
her character if I don't like her look. I might go back and rethink her design.
2/02/02:
I have been working on the character designs. I've started with the Princess,
but I'm not sure about her design so far. I'm not unhappy with it, although
I am not jumping for joy with what I've done so far.
I've been having a hard time finding a working scanner and the time at work
to scan in the updated storyboard panels. I never thought about buying a scanner
of my own, I have access to them at work, but the last two weeks I've been
carrying the panels around in my briefcase and either the scanner I find is
not working at the moment or I just don't have the time to sit down for an
hour and scan them.
My schedule at work has changed this quarter, I used to work Saturdays. This
freed 3 week days for me to work on the project. Now that I'm not working
Saturdays, I find I've lost a day in project time. Saturdays are spent carting
the kids to one place or the other, or taken up with family matters. Instead
of spending 24 hours a week on the project, I'm finding I have to fight for
15. Instead of updating the site twice a week, I'm updating only once every
two weeks.
I want to state that the project is never far from my mind, and how frustrating
it is not to be able to spend the time I am used to.
1/20/02:
Why can't I use a Knight? I can change the first scene into the Knight starting
to confront the Baron instead of backing down, and the entrance of the Princess
interrupts it. The Knight can try to save the Princess when he finds her imprisoned
by using his sword to try to break through the glass tower. He still will
have a crush on the Princess and I will add panels to the wedding scene. His
promise of bringing back help doesn't have to translate into him being afraid
of the Baron. He can also be brave until his end.
Part of the reason I'm changing my mind is the research I did on knights.
They and their horses wear such cool armor, it's too good to pass up.
1/19/02:
I had to take a small break from the project, a new quarter was starting
and I had to prepare for classes. I ended up drawing a course I haven't taught
in a few years and had to learn the upgrade. I've drawn out the new sequence
of scenes involving the Court Member and his attempt to save the Princess.
I also want to establish the court member has a crush on the Princess, so
I have to add a few panels in the first throne room scene and the wedding
scene. These will be scanned in in the next week and the storyboard updated.
I'm still having problems with his character traits, no revelation was forth
coming.
I often pull back and recharge before starting to draw the keyframes. It as
if I have to think through everything over and over again until I can 'see'
the acting in my mind. Once I have the main keyfames drawn and traced, have
the sound track composed, I'll put the animatic together. I figure I should
be able to start compiling the animatic in 6 months and hopefully have it
completed a year from now. Animating is the 'easy' part, once the animatic
is finished, it shouldn't take me more than 6 months to complete fully.
1/02/02:
I hope everyone has had a safe and happy Holiday and New Year!! Although I
took a few weeks off to celebrate the holidays, The Princess in the Glass
Tower was constantly on my mind.
I have scripted out a new scene involving the Court Member who irks the Baron
in the first act. I wanted to have him portrayed as a knight, mostly for contrast
again the Shepherd, but I don't think a knight would have backed down from
the Baron in the first place. The Court Member will discover the Princess
imprisoned in the glass tower after the time lapse sequence showing the changing
of the seasons. He then 'tells' the Princess (through the magic of thought
bubbles) he is returning to tell the King and will return with an army to
save her. The Princess is ecstatic and watches as the Court Member rides away.
Cut to the Baron watching through the crystal ball. He smirks and his eyes
glow red. Dissolve to Court Member riding in woods. It gets dark suddenly,
and the horse starts to shy and will not continue. The court Member dismounts
and tries to lead the horse, and a shadow covers them. The horse rears and
bolts, the Court Member looks up in horror and raises his arms in a defensive
gesture. Seeing only the shadow of the Court Member, the shadow of the Dragon's
head enters and swallows him whole. Cut back to the Princess waiting, smiling,
and day dissolves into night, back into day, into night and finally into day,
all the while the Princess slowly realizes nobody is coming and she starts
to cry again. The scene in which the Baron entertains the Wench is continued.
I just need to figure out the character of the Court Member. I already know
he is afraid of the Baron, and he returning to elicit the King's help in rescuing
the Princess rather than trying to save her himself follows that vein. I'm
just not sure of his stature. I don't want him 'wimpy' but basically he is
a wimp. I want to have him evoke a feeling that maybe he could save the Princess,
but not be a love interest, at least in her eyes.
Eh, I'll sketch out the panels and maybe a revelation will come.
12/6/01:
I just want to state for the record, I have been working continually on the
project. I have been dealing with the storyboard and trying to organize them
so I can start creating an animatic.
If you read the newly added 'The Beginning" of the Animatic section of
the web page, I state the self inflicted problems I've been having the past
few weeks. This doesn't really touch on the frustration I had with myself.
Last weekend I was in tears. I had completely lost control of the storyboard.
New sections had been added with absolutely no numbering, some had been scanned
with even less information, and I was facing almost 300 panels with no idea
of the sequence. Many of these panels had been replaced, some were redrawn,
and all of them were lumped in one folder with only part of the date they
were scanned as the title.
I took a big breath and started all over again. I created folders for each
of the scenes (wedding, honeymoon, etc.) and went through each and every scanned
panel. I then placed each panel in its proper folder. This took two days.
I know there are panels I have edited out, but I wanted them at least separated.
I then took the all the drawn panels and spread them all over the family room
floor in the order they should be, and marked the ones that needed to be scanned.
While doing this, I realized I needed more panels and quickly sketched about
20 new panels. These will be scanned this Saturday.
I am now going to attempt to create an interactive storyboard in Flash. Hopefully,
once I get the storyboard organized, I can number the panels and start the
animatic.
Let this be a lesson to all who are following this production, write down
the changes you make in the story. Have a journal dedicated to just the storyboard
and it's changes, along with what has been scanned, and what panels have been
edited out. Keep an accurate numbering system that you use exclusively on
every panel. Never assume it will all fall in place. Even though I am well
aware of production procedures, I foolishly thought since it was a one woman
project, I wouldn't have to be as organized as if I were a part of a group.
Short cuts are for foolish, take the extra time to document every change.
I would have saved myself two weeks of needless frustration.
11/16/01:
Spent most of yesterday rebuilding my AWN site (this one). AWN had changed
servers and in the move I had 'lost' almost 200 files. The webmaster was very
prompt in returning my emails with some of the problems I had with the new
server, and everything is back to normal.
I am getting closer to the final Baron Interior, it is very hard to put myself
inside the character. I am starting to worry if I will have the same trouble
when I start to animate him.
11/12/01:
I'm thinking about revising the online production web site. I've always deleted
test renders of the backgrounds in order to help keep the download size down.
I'm now thinking of having pop-up browser windows for each render, this way
all the tests can be accessed, even the very first attempts. Doing this would
be a time consuming task, probably taking me a week or so to go through all
the background sections. Might be something I will do when I hit a wall.
Another birthday has passed. I always reflect on my life and where I am during
this date. I am satisfied with my work, both teaching and independent. I feel
my independent work is developing, but I want to be able to hang an award
on the wall. Hopefully, 'The Princess in the Glass Tower' will be the first.
I'm very happy with 'Five Little Monkeys', I've gotten into international
festivals, often competing against 700 other films, and I recognize the honor.
I just want to be able to take that next step.
10/26/01:
I had to step away from the Baron's Interior, his throne room. It just wasn't
working for me and I felt I was going in the wrong direction. I had taken
some of that time to redo some storyboards and add a few character designs
to the web page. When I did go back two weeks later, I decided to start the
Baron's Interior almost completely from scratch. I deleted almost everything
but the floor and walls and was able to get a fresh view.
10/11/01:
My sabbatical is over, back to the grind. I will only be able to update twice
a week, although I have some character sketches I will scan in on Saturday
and add to the site.
I visited a site that inspired me, an animator by the name of Keith
Lango. I read his section on production notes, and he talked of the frustration
he felt and how he had almost trashed a production he was working on. It's
very easy to lose confidence in what you are doing, the road is long and filled
with disappointments, plenty of time to doubt the verity of one's work. Especially
with the recent tragedy, I tend to question the time I spend working on this
project. But it all comes back to this is what I want to do. This is what
I feel I should do. It's not a question of how others might view my work,
but how I perceive it. Maybe my mark on the world will be a small one, but
it wil be MY mark.
9/23/01:
Starting to have nightmares again. One night, I was in a plane. Lasers cut
the front and back of the plane off, leaving me strapped in the middle section.
The other passengers fell out, and I was all alone.
Last night I dreamt I left my SO. I was dating a really stupid guy. We were
walking down a dark street and two thugs held us up. They demanded money and
Stupid Guy gives them a hard time. One thug pulls a gun. I'm yelling, "Give
them what they want." And finally he gives them all the change in his
pockets. The thugs start to run away, I'm looking for a cop, and Stupid Guy
announces they didn't get his cash, and proceeds to pull out a wad of bills
and begins counting. The thugs aren't even out of sight yet, they look back,
see the cash, and now both of them pull out guns. I'm thinking this guy is
stupider than I had thought and the thugs start to fire.
9/21/01:
Two days ago, I received final confirmation about "Five Little Monkeys"
acceptance it to the Chicago
International Children's Film Festival. That night was the first time
I failed to have a nightmare. It took something as simple as a festival acceptance
to shake me out of my funk and motivate me to start working with a vigor.
9/19/01:
I'm having nightmares. They start out differently; I'm in high school, at
work, in a bar, at a party. I'm old, young, the age I am now. I'm having a
good time, laughing, seeing old friends, and meeting new ones. Suddenly, an
explosion happens across the room.
A huge fireball starts to spread through the room, coming closer to where
I am. People are screaming, running, some are flying through the air, falling
to the ground. People are running past me, for a moment, I cannot move, then
I turn and run.
I am caught in long, crowded line, cannot move forward. Sometimes I'm in a
car. The other cars are so close to the sides of my car, I can't open the
door to escape. Sometimes I'm on a footbridge, the people pressed up against
me so I can't move. I look back and see the fireball growing and coming closer,
engulfing people as it approaches.
I think if I had only starting running sooner, I could have escaped. The fireball
roars closer and I awake with my skin tingling and heart pounding, gasping
for breath.
9/17/01:
On Friday, Sept 14, I had to retrieve some forms my family doctor had filled
out for me. I went to the medical complex his office is located in after regular
patient hours, and the entire complex was fairly empty. Walking down the corridor,
a member of the cleaning crew was vacuuming. He looked up, saw me, switched
off his machine and his expression contorted into one of pure horror. His
face was so intense, it stopped me in my tracks. I admit some people have
extreme reactions when they first see me, but stark terror isn't normally
one of them.
I was about to glance over my shoulder, expecting to see an ax wielding manic
behind me, when I realized this man was of Mid Eastern heritage. He was bracing
himself for some kind of attack from me. My expression softened, and I started
to walk toward him. I smiled at him, hoping to convey he had nothing to fear
from me and excused myself as I slid between the machine and wall. He just
turned his back on me, and started fiddling with his equipment.
I wondered how many times he was threatened, how many names where thrown at
him as hurtful as daggers. Did he feel safe in his home? At his workplace?
Where his children tormented as well? When I came back through the hallway,
he and his vacuum where gone. As angry as I was due to the events that happened
three days before, I would have never noticed his ethnicity if his reaction
to me hadn't had been so strong.
Driving home, I felt my anger dissolve and an immense sadness take its place.
I realized the innocent victims were not limited to the to souls who lost
their lives and the families who loved them. Some have fallen victim to anger,
to grief, to hatred, to a helplessness that frightens them. My 'thirst for
justice' is gone, replaced with anguish that this is only the beginning.
9/14/01:
On Tuesday Morning, September 11, 2001, I woke up late, around 9:00,
turned on my computer and TV and settled down for a day of work. I had decided
the night before I had been taking short cuts in my independent project and
it was hindering the creative process. I had a lot of work to do and was starting
to get into the zone when the mindless program I use for white noise was interrupted
with a breaking news alert.
They were showing a gaping hole in the World Trade Center in New York City,
and although they could not report exactly what had happened, initial reports
were a plane had crashed.
I shook my head, recalling a news report not long ago of a small, private
plane that had been fined for flying in a restricted airspace above the city
while sightseeing. I hoped the casualty rate was low and wondered how a plane
could not miss the tall towers. I had been to New York City a few times, and
the World Trade Center Towers seemed to loom twice a high as the skyscrapers
around it.
I was thinking some testosterone filled Gen Xer was buzzing the observation
deck and got too close, when suddenly, another plane slammed into the second
tower causing a horrendous explosion and cries of shock from the anchor persons
reporting. My skin crawled with disbelief, as both the news anchors and I
seemed to come at the same conclusion at the same time that this was no accident.
As the news progressed, and speculations where flying as haphazardly as the
falling debris, they cut to a shot of the Pentagon in clouds of smoke, reporting
a third plane had taken a suicidal plunge.
My first thoughts were of my colleagues at the Art Institute of Philadelphia.
The school is located directly across from the Liberty Towers, twin skyscrapers
dominating the sky line. Was a plane making it's way now to obliterate a section
of the city, were there more planes destined to be human filled bombs? I could
not watch anymore. The constant repeating footage of the second plane slicing
into the second tower was overwhelming, the reports of the thousands of people
who work in the towers was too much for me to comprehend. I flipped through
the channels, and each and every channel was filled with the same horrific
images. Like a junkie who knows what they are doing is killing them, I would
pause at each station until I could bear no more and then move on to the next.
I was crying freely now, wanting to stop watching, wanting to go back to bed
and awake again, this time have it all a bad dream.
9/5/01:
I am struggling with the Baron's interior. Everything in the scene feels
too bulky, just not getting a feel for the background. And when I started
modeling, the scene changed from my layouts. My finished backgrounds frequently
(well, always) look different from the layouts when I start modeling, but
I'm not feeling the atmosphere and hence not translating it.
A large part of the displeasure is that I have downloaded a number of free
3D models from sites. I spend time *fixing* them (a good number have 2 pt
polys and worse), texturing, and making glass cases. I feel this shortcut
is detrimental to the creative process, that it *cheapens* the production.
Rationally, I argue it's not the collectibles that make the scene, but the
number of them and how they're displayed. But I'm old school, and my work
ethic is nagging at me, and I'm considering trashing the free models and searching
through the models I have done in past independent productions or just making
low poly models dependent on the texture mapping. Ugh, I guess I know what
I'm doing tomorrow.
8/31/01:
I have finished the King's Interior (Throne Room). I am so glad I decided
to start over. It was probably the reason I stopped working on it in the first
place. I remember an art instructor I had, who gave me the advice that if
something is not working, take the best element and erase it. I didn't realize
the wisdom in those words until lately.
My Academic Department Head called me the other day to remind me I only have
one more month left in my sabbatical (gee, thanks Jeff :P). I had hoped to
be further along in production, but with my adding 100 odd story panels, the
backgrounds sprang from 15 to almost 40. Also, the added pressure (but very
much welcome) from colleagues who visit the site and offer criticism has kept
me on my toes. I create something and in the back of my head, I'm wondering
how it will look to Alphawolf or Dave, and try anticipate what they would
comment on. It has really helped knowing people were watching, it pushed me,
and I thank everyone who contributed.
My SO, Mike, has taken an extra long weekend off for Labor Day, and my time
on the computer has competition. Actually, I do have to start the new layouts
for the Baron's interior castle, so I will probably spend the weekend sketching.
8/23/01:
I have been doing over night renders of the establishing shot. I am rendering
every other frame and will time stretch it in AE. We are also planning on
getting a new workstation in the next few months, a larger, faster system
that I will be able to render a final. These will be just test renders to
out put to video to test. I'm hopeful I can have all the backgrounds tested
to video by the end of September. I am getting *slight* scintillation, and
I'm wanting to see if I'm over obsessing before rendering it in full.
End of summer is coming, and I'm fairly pleased with the work I've done. I've
gotten very good feedback and can hardly wait to be able to concentrate on
the character animation.
8/20/01:
Redoing the King's interior, the main hall were he spends his days with his
court. This will also be the place were the wedding takes place. I'm having
problems with scintillation in rendering the backgrounds. When I replaced
all the tiling texture maps with procedure mapping, I thought at the high
resolution I was rendering I would have no problems, but I do. I am trying
test renders every night in hopes I can find a formula that will save me from
redoing the mapping once again. The renders are taking a long time (the back
layer of the establishing shot is about 40 minutes, the front layer's 5 hours).
I get frustrated when I set up over night renders and still get scintillation.
If I have to change the mapping, it will be the fourth time I do.
8/19/01:
Ack! I have lost about 15 to 20 storyboard panels I had drawn at the beginning
of the summer. They were depicting the first time the Princess and the Baron
meet. They are probably tucked inside a sketch book, I can't imagine them
being accidentally thrown away, but I am redrawing them anyway. Luckily, I
had scripted out the panels before hand. I don't always script, maybe 50%
of the storyboards are drawn from a script. I will add and revise to the original
script while storyboarding. Usually I script if I don't have access or it's
inappropriate to draw storyboards (on the train or late at night and I get
an idea and too tired to actually draw).
I only have 5 weeks left in my sabbatical. August was a rough month for me,
but I shaking off the trauma and moving one. I'm sleeping better, but my internal
clock is out of whack. I'm wide awake at 2 in the morning, and half asleep
at 2 in the afternoon. I've been getting up at 7 or 8, hoping to be able to
fall asleep at a decent time at night, but if I'm not asleep by midnight,
I'm up all night.
8/13/01:
My drawing skills are coming back to me. Although not to the level I last
had, and it takes me more than a few drawings to warm up, I am feeling better
about my skills.
Over the weekend, Due to massive thunder storms restricting my computer time,
I have added over 50 panels to the storyboard. I have other sequences rattling
around in my brain I have yet put to paper. I had realized I was telling my
story using events, rather than the characters. This is due to reading (and
rereading) ‘Acting
for Animators’ by Ed Hooks. This book opened my eyes to reveal more of
what the characters were thinking, rather than letting the audience follow
along with the story.
I find myself in the middle of a massive bout with insomnia. I am prone to
a few sleepless nights a few times a year, and every few years sleep eludes
me for days at a time. Usually I just ‘go with the flow’ and work through
these periods, but this has got to be the worst bout I’vet ever had to deal
with. Although I will fall asleep for a few hours (6 or 7 every few days)
I wake up sluggish and drained. I do not want to take medication, but my motor
skills are suffering.
I am getting weary of the backgrounds. Although they are falling together
well, I find the rendering of tests breaks my creative flow and grow impatient
with the progress.
8/10/01:
I find my creative pattern runs monthly. One week I can be so productive I
cannot stop. It just seems to pour out of me, and sometimes I will amaze myself
with what I do. It’s almost as if some outside force is in command of my hand,
and I am just a vessel. I will often pull all fighters, and if I’m not working,
I’m thinking about working. One week I cannot produce anything at all. Everything
I do seems to go in slow motion and I seem to lose confidence in my abilities.