We've been working on our final animations for the past month or so. I almost wish we'd been working on them for longer than the four weeks we got but I suppose we actually had to learn at some point before that, so.
I've realized what I wanted to accomplish for this animation is just not possible for me at the moment. I really wanted to make something that didn't look like it was made in flash (that look of heavy bold outlines and wow look at all the vectors) but I haven't figures out a way to accomplish that, unfortunately, which to be honest was a huge downer for me. That, and that no one seemed to enjoy my concept in creating a 'teaser trailer' for a longer series sort of combined to make this project more difficult than it probably should have been. This whole project was just one disappointment after another, and not even the actual animating part, but the conceptual part of how I wanted to render it and how my ideas were received by my teacher and classmates. By our second animation update I didn't even want to continue making this piece, I just sort of wanted to go to sleep.
Now I could say something inspiring about how giving up 'just isn't in my nature', but really I finished it because 1) I still wanted to see my idea pan out even if nobody else wanted to see it (for all I know college will be the last time I'll have the ability to create whatever I want to) and 2) because I wanted the practice. Besides I figure there will be a lot of times in my life where I have to work on something that I don't particularly want to, so there's practice for that too. Look at all that life experience. How great.
Animation-wise, everything is fine. Still using the same types of tools - tweens, movie clips, anything I've used for my past two projects. This time I tried to do a lot of movements that I hadn't done before, like running from a different angle, movement of semi-humanoid character, fire, some other things. I really enjoyed working that that stuff and I wish I had more time to go in and refine everything. With limited time and other classes to worry about I feel like my final animation will read more like an animatic than a finished project, especially because of the lack of shadows. Backgrounds also presented a problem here continuity-wise. Some scenes were planned from the beginning to have backgrounds drawn in photoshop, but for some scenes a background was drawn in flash for the sake of understanding the transitions. I think it sort of works in some ways - after all the different scenes are supposed to be taking place at different times so in that way the changing background types might help to differentiate the scenes a bit - but maybe it just looks sloppy. It's hard for me to tell - partly because I've been working on it for so long but mostly because even when I render it out to watch in quicktime my computer won't play it without skipping around. It's also started to like a really fun game called 'crash every adobe program'. Despite that I feel like I've gotten a fair amount of work done.
I did end up cutting about 30 seconds out of my animation somehow. It was just a few scenes here and there that I really wasn't feeling anymore, but they added up. I'll try and add a few more things to push the time up but I don't want to just add filler that makes no sense or is boring to look at. I think I'm also going to add a few (by a few I mean one) effects from after effects to help with the scenes with fire - after doing one layer of fire that repeats and has disappearing particles I realized shading was not something I would have time for. I think it reads as fire, but maybe there is something I can still do to push it further in after effects. Maybe.
Right now I'm actually most worried about sound. I've sort of accepted that I'm not at the skill level yet where I an make flash look not like flash (and definitely not at the skill level where I can make all my movements completely smooth and perfect), but I still haven't even started on sound yet. I have collected a small sample of sounds from other classes and personal projects from summer, but it seems off to work with a sound I've already worked with before. Especially when the projects are really different. That just makes it weird.
Anyway I'm sure I'll finish on time and I'll be happy that I did. But if anything I feel like I learned that sometimes no one will like your ideas and you have to work through that (which I already learned in my horrible but brief time as a fashion major - which is actually the only thing they teach you) more so than I learned about actual animation. Still, a lot of good practice and that's the most important part. I think. I mean, the idea of 'art school' is kind of strange when you think about it. People are attached to it because they like creating art because it's fun or it's personal or it's expressive, but then you get to the 'school' bit of it and you sort of have to decide what 'art' really means.
And while “Art” is itself, it is also
reflective of the artist, it is deceptive in beauty or subtle in meaning, and it is subjective to the
audience. But before all this, it must be applicable to society, marketable to a
population, and responsible in message - otherwise no one will see it (or in the case of a stupid message, it will...just be pointless). The problem is there really is no way to measure these things so it's a very hard thing to learn, because there is not right or wrong answer. It is also a community that seems to be in a constant civil war where old ideas are either seen as the 'correct' way or are predictable and overrated and new ideas are seen as 'incorrect' or 'innovative' - and the only difference is which new ideas worm their way into pop culture for whatever random reason and which ideas stay in obscurity. And the whole time the idea of 'art' is sold to people as some 'noble and ancient pursuit' about 'the human mind and/or the soul depending on what you believe - because we're all artists and artists have open minds - except when it comes to other artist's art, in which case only one way of doing things can possibly be the right way'. It all just feels a little disappointing.
Well that went way off topic. Anyway, animation.
I'm putting everything together in premiere and of course nothing will play in real time (hence the rendering to quicktime), so that's frustrating. But I don't really have a choice, my roommates have to work too and neither wants to drop everything drive me to campus whenever I need to work on something and then pick me up whenever I get tired. That's totally understandable though. I just wish my computer was a bit stronger. I am really liking premiere though- before the only video editing tools I'd used were the default windows/mac ones and corel, none of which are utterly terrible (except windows'), premiere is just much better. It really helps the editing process go faster and lets you refine in ways you certainly can't in flash, so hopefully if nothing else I can make my animation have decent transitions.
I think that was everything I needed to write about (+ bonus art school crisis rant, 100% free with 'thank god I didn't go to RISD' subtext). Time to do work.
