Class Final Project

OK so, as I've stated in the past, I've been extremely busy with school projects and next week is the last week of classes. That said, I will be finishing my epic 4 minute long music video over the weekend and into the beginning of next week. I will be posting it on NuShift as it it's a combination of Flash, After Effects, Photoshop, and Maya so the filesize will be quite large. It's around 2.5gb uncompressed right now so it'll be up within the month.

And Now for Something Totally Different

A few weeks ago, an animator by the name of Pendleton Ward came to visit my school. You may not have heard of him but he created this awesome short called "Adventure Time". He came to talk about the animation industry and how to get in and showed some finished movies and some animatics. He was a funny and cool guy and drew pictures and autographed them for everyone.

Preliminary Drawing and Ink

Here's a screenshot of Sonic vs. Shadow from act 2. It's been a while since I've last worked on this shot so it's not finished but this is always how the first steps come out looking.

Even if it Kills Me

So fall is quickly approaching and the semester is in full force. The leaves will soon begin to change colors and fall to the ground as they eventually begin to die as the weather grows cold. However this is not the case for Cosmic Chase! Granted I have negative amounts of time to work on it these days as I have school projects to focus on. I plan to make an animated music video for my 2D animation class so I will be working on that feverishly until it's completed before the semester ends in December. Depending on filesize and whatnot when it's finished, I'd like to post it on Nushift so you can all check it out. It's going to be drawn in Flash and composited in After Effects and whatever else I decide to use. The backgrounds will be done in Photoshop and I'm working on doing some 3D models to animate and save time on drawing. This is just what I'm thinking so I may or may not end up doing this in the long run.

Since the class is about After Effects, I'm hoping to make it as commercial as possible and really blend the lines between Flash and production quality film. We'll see how it goes. In the meantime, I'd like to post some screenshots of this video as I begin to work on it as well as showcase some CC shots.

I'll finish CC eventually...even if it kills me.

I Am Tired and Hungry and Totally Useless

The spring semester has two more weeks left before summer classes begin. I have literally had no time to work on CC in the past month pretty much due to extensive reading, writing, researching, more reading on top of the daily grind. I stayed up last night working on CC for a short while however, just so I don't become lazy again. I seriously hope my summer class is not as intense so I can get some animation done.

At any rate, Act 3 is looking really good so far. I've got about 18 seconds of animation done on it (or whatever the previous post says) and it's top notch animated quality. Not to say the first two acts are poorly animated, but there has been significant improvements between acts; it simply gets more awesome as the movie continues. No doubt my first year at art school has actually taught me some versatile techniques and that is what is making CC look more and more polished every day.

There are still no plans for release but I hope to do some promo work when that time nears. I know everyone is complaining about how long it's taking for me to crank this movie out it will truly be a spectacle to see. Everyone is like "it's 2007 where is it" blah blah and "why did you make the trailer if it's not a real movie" and stuff. To those people I say this: it's worth the wait.

SXCC Progress

Overall: 85%
Hours Logged: 1149:15
Animation Time: 6:24
Estimated Time: 7:30

SXCC News

I've been working hard on CC all week and hope to continue working on it. More detail is going into the final act so there is no telling when it will be finished. I'm still working full-time and I'm only taking a couple courses over summer which will hopefully give me some free time to animate.