SO-

I'm still at it. I've rendered off scene 11 in parts and I have to compile it.
FIRST I kinda want to build and use the REAL X-wing (or Sith Wing should I decide to redesign it) and I need to nail down how I'm gonna do the lasers- which I should really just draw in flash- for the coolness of it.

So, I'm not gonna put up any pictures today.

Double Whammy-

Double whammy because this is my second post for today AND I have two things to say:

1. I got the greeble situation handled- I'll have to render in sections and composite. Which I'll do with part one of scene 11 tomorrow.

It just took some organization and planning- which is becoming more of a necessity as I go along, eh?

2. You'll note I've dropped the name Ponomo Studios (logo change too)- as I've dissolved the company sometime ago and I've grown out of the name. Hell, I only ever produced Stems and Seeds under that name anyway.
Working on a new name and I got a couple of ideas I like that I will have to investigate in the future. No hurries.

Oh. And here are a couple of pictures to see you off. I've been working on a style inbetween these two shots.

The Riz

I'm thinking heavily about The Riz today.
I think I better let you know who the Riz is-

John Rizzo.
The Riz.
J-Rock.
The Rizzinator.

He's one of the baddest editors we have at Maury- And Maury's shop is loaded with some badass editors- myself included for all ya'll that don't know! Whassup!

The Riz is more than just an editor- he's an AWESOME graphics dude.

Johnny Rock and I bullshit about a lot of things: Star Wars, cars, politics, conspiracies, cakes, farts- but over everything else we both have a love of the visual and often share notes on what's going down out there in the graphics world.

During one of these conversations we were lamenting on how we never really have the time to do something RIGHT.
You know, really pulling the best out of your work without a time constraint or a producer sitting over your shoulder- looking at their watch and giving you 3rd grader suggestions on how to improve something.

I'm talking about REALLY taking in a piece and making sure each part of it ROCKS-
"...You know, like spending a day trying to get 7 frames to look right..." is how The Riz put it.

And now that I'm on hiatus from Maury I find myself in that position!
(The reason I hadn't posted in a while is because I was pulling 70-80 hr weeks getting the Maury Show ready to make their big move).

So it's been a week and I've dedicated a great deal of it to doing this animation.
I organized a bunch of notes, drawings and files to streamline production. Then I began an outline and storyboard.

During storyboarding I learned that I prefer a looser form of the process where I have a folder filled with lined paper and post-it notes as the frames.




I didn't say it was pretty.
I probably like it more because it doesn't feel like I'm filling out a form as I do it. It's for my eyes only so it doesn't HAVE to be pretty- I just have to get it done so that I can move on to the next phase which is a "compositing-board".






In this I kinda break down HOW I'm gonna try to pull off that frame of the storyboard. For me it's a half step between storyboard and animatic. Some might consider it an extra/unnecessary step but I get a lot of ideas at this stage I'm finding.


SOOOOOO...

I'm working on this so's I can at least get a bit of the animation done- I decided to focus on scene 11 as I really KNEW what I wanted to happen.

Now, I did a little animatic for this scene as a test:





I got a turret in there and a stand in X-wing and everything- :).

I didn't like how big the bulk was inside the trench so I stopped and decided I needed to go BACK and redo the panels I used to make it (that is also why you don't see completed panels on the edge of the trench).

Sigh.

Having gone back though- I really like my panels now. I like them but my computer does not.

I tried to render a scene with them and the computer just said- NO and crashed. :(.

It's an old computer and if it doesn't get it's soup in the afternoon, it's cranky.
Honestly- the greeble-age is just too much for my desktop to handle and my tablet (which is Vista) doesn't run my old version of Max.

I'm thinking I'm going to have to break down the greeble shots and composite them in After Effects.

Here is the scene with the new trench UNGREEBLED:



All of this revelation has led me to remember what The Riz said and I realize I now AM spending all day- SEVERAL days on just a few frames. It's got a little frustration to it but it's FUN as hell. Kinda like a puzzle.

Next I'm gonna try to greeble it and see what happens- AFTER I post this (you know, in case old cranky decides to crash under the weight of my creative power!!)

"Freestylin'!"

...or "Going Commando!"

I mean, getting at your art without any rules, baby!

That's usually how I go at creating something.

For example:

I'll pick up my pad and I'll say- "I'm gonna draw Spider-Man!" So, I'll start drawing him and while I'm doing it, I'll decide to make him shoot a web. Then, I'll be like- "Oh yeah, he's on a wall too!", so I'll draw that in and so forth.

Same with a song.
I'll decide to write a song and I'll tap out something with an instrument (usually a bass or a drum) 'til I find something I like and then I'll start adding to it.

It's the rush of the moment I like- It's like you are creating something but the spirit of the creation is guiding you through it's completion.

You don't do that with an animation.

That is- You don't say "I'm gonna make a cartoon about a cat trying to catch a mouse" and then just sit down and draw it.
I mean, you COULD try to do it that way but you would probably lose interest after a while because the project is too big to be handled that way.

You have to PLAN a motherfuckin' animation.

Now, this is all common sense- I know. But you don't know how many times I've started to do an animation just like that.

All the cartoons I've ever completed were were written out and storyboarded first.

This one is the same- SORTA. I have everything plotted out- I haven't written it out shot for shot though, so sometimes I will be tempted to jump ahead and try to animate something without having storyboarded it.
This is stupidity- because I don't know what I'll need. Which means I'll be over animating- I mean, like WAAAAAAAAYYY over animating. Wasting time and resources-

I figured this out when I started trying to animate some scenes over my death star- just because I was so excited that things are working with it so well.

I then went back and storyboarded a section of the battle that is supposed to happen on the end and putting shots together was so much easier. I will post that later when I have access to those files and the internet at the same time.

So- I will storyboard more and thanks to writing this little blog entry- I kind of realize maybe I should write out the beats of the video as well.

Tattoo Challenge

A friend challenged me to write a song using the lyric

"C'mon baby, C'mon. Let me show you my tattoo."

Which, of course, is a line from the Allman Brother's "I'm No Angel"

So I've been picking at something and this is what I got so far.
My lyrics are:

Yeah, I was sixteen-
And she was twenty two
She lived in the loft upstairs

And she would call me-
For some "Honey-Do's"
When she couldn't do 'em for herself

It was an evening-
I saw her coming in
As she was headed home

And it was early-
For a date to end
and to be all alone-

I noticed something different on the back of her leg
A trail of stars and dolphins and it took my breath
That's when she caught me looking and she cocked her head-
She turned to me and said-

C'mon baby, c'mon
And let me show you my tattoo-
Then she lifted up her skirt
but stopped before I seen it all-
Now, if you wanna see the rest-
there ain't much you have ta do-
I took her by the hand
and we slipped into her room

And then for two weeks
Or maybe three
She really played it straight

When she called me
For those little things
You know I couldn't wait

Sometimes I would meet her at the top of the stairs
A look in her eye and a flick of her hair
She'd checked to see who's looking but I didn't care
And she'd say with a dare-

C'mon baby, c'mon
And let me show you my tattoo-
Then she lifted up her skirt
but stopped before I seen it all-
Now, if you wanna see the rest-
there ain't much you have ta do-
I took her by the hand
and we slipped into her room

This is an mp3 of what I got so far- THIS IS VERY ROUGH- Haven't been working with this as I have panels to build but I thought I would put it up as I'm sure my panel work is boring ya'll.

Tattoo

Hurdle Level COMPLETE

SO-
Let's just put it out there-
When I set out to have 16-20 panels done in a week (which ended, like, Tuesday) I was obviously high on toxic fumes of some sort as I have failed THAT task.

I mean, I could have done it- it just wouldn't have looked good.
And in my failure I discovered SOOOOOO much more.

I started out building the panels- Greebling them- and then saving them as meshes but this proved to be too taxing when it came to testing the animation.

Then I thought building the panels- bulking them out and then grouping them before I greebled them would be the way to go because then I could turn the greeble efx off while I was figuring out the animation- This worked but then I realized I didn't have an idea as to how the ships would look (in size) compared to the bulk of the panels.

SO- I set out to build a trench made up of some longer panels and some stand-in, simple shaped ships.
In the process I figured out how to make the neon lights that are going to line up the Mac Star trench. And put a glow on it.

Then the big thing happened.
I have always wanted to do a black and white animation in that Frank Miller style- sort of like this commercial by Psyop.

So while messing around with Max I figured out how to do it!!!
This is a major success because not only am I really close to nailing down a style
for the video- I will also be able to save render time!!!

I also figured out a way to use the panels I created for the trench on the surface as well!


Here are some samples of the Mac Star trench and one of the...1, 2, 3, 4- 8 panels I've built so far.












FLEX!!!!!

The Bulky Panel Hurdle

Okay-

I laid out the panels and played a little bit.
Lemme say- THAT SHIT WAS HARD TO MOVE AROUND...

But I knew that was going to happen, right? I said so in my first post.

WELL-

Now I'm thinking that there has got to be a way to create the walls and turn the greeble off to animate.

The other thing was- when I saw the panels together- I was like: "Oh SHIT!- These are much bulkier than the Death Star's panels! I'm a failure. A FAILURE!!!"

Here is what they looked like:

















I was playing with different rendering techniques already- :)

A little silly I know but-

I was pretty unhappy with the bulkiness of the situation. :(



Then- after a day and a half of reflection, I decided to watch the run on the Death Star, again.

The Death Star was plenty bulky, yo.

See how these hurdles hurt you? I was messing myself up.

I'm going to continue with the Panels but I think there is a way to make them to where I can turn the greeble effect off- It would be worth it to give it a shot. And it seems to be a problem that can be solved with organization...








Yeah. I'm fucked. I know.

The "Can I Be More Efficient?" hurdle...

When one creates an animation- maybe even any creative outing- you often stop and ask yourself "Can I be more efficient?" or "Am I tweaking this enough?"- or "Have I over tweaked it?"

This is just a hurdle- Sometimes these hurdles are hard to get over- or even crash the creation completely. The way to deal with them is to fix it- or realize you can't fix it and press on- the answer will come eventually.
Still- hurdles suck.

I'm kinda having one right now as I build these panels.

My dilemma is- I'm building like 16-20 different panels- I will then lay them out like tiles- repeated and rotated so that they look like the surface (and trench) of the Death Star.

Now, each panel has hundreds (if not thousands) of polys because they are all greebled.

When I put them all together- they are going to be one MASSIVE slowdown to my system because I'll have all these polys to calculate...

Greeble actually has a mode that allows you to turn OFF the greeble effect especially for the purpose of being able to animate easier.
That would be great EXCEPT for the fact that I'm going to have 16-20 panels- remember? Repeated and rotated. Some of them are made up of multiple greeble settings.

Hmmmmm...

WAIT! I GOT IT!

I'll make a pseudo surface (one with only a few polys) and place the panels on top of it. THEN, when it's time to animate- I'll HIDE the real surface and animate over the pseudo surface.

Awwwwwww, YEAH!
Maybe this blog IS helping my process!


Here is an example of the panels.
This one is where I'm really getting
comfortable with greeble's effects.

Other panels have more...uh bumps?
Like this:

OMG! Cool Idea!

So.

I've been working on my tiles- Which I could TOTALLY Greeble in 10 minutes, but I want some of the shapes to look original and I also kinda want to pay tribute to the work that went into the actual Star Wars film, so i continue to labor at it.
More about that later*.

The whole time I've been working on this video, I've been thinking of... well,
Some of you may remember that old Star Wars arcade game from back in the day?-








Yeah. THAT arcade game.




Well, you may remember that as you move up in levels, the Death Star trench run would get harder and harder. At first you would have pratically zero opposition.
Then there would be more turrets lining the walls of the trench.
THEN, there would be these bars that you had to manuever through as you flew down the trench and dodged the barrage of asterixs that came from the line of turrets on the wall.

Like this:











Now, I remember when I played the game- I thought it was an abomination to the real thing- but it did make the game hella fun!
So all this time I wanted to incorporate those walls in the Mac-Star.

I'm already going to be stepping away from the real thing because I'm going to have to line the floor of the Mac Star with some Neon tiles in order to explain the Apple-esque glow around it's center- so I thought- So what if I add some walls for the ships to fly over?! It'll add more action to the whole thing.

But I could already hear people going:
"Dude! What's up with all the barriers in the trench! That wasn't in the movie!"

But I wanted to pay tribute to the game somehow. Hmmmm...

So I was doing (REALLY ROUGH) sketches:



This is the Mac Star- that I will rebuild- You can see it as it is now on the Sith Vicious Myspace Page





And HERE is the IDEA!





What I'll do is that when Sith goes to use his "targeting computer" he'll look into the visor and "see" the video game as the graphic.

Then the graphic will have him level up to level 3- and the walls will have turrets and barriers appear.

This will surprise Sith- and he will look out at the ACTUAL trench and then he will see the actual walls and turrets in real life.


It's PERFECT!

So I will be moving on to working on that animatic after I get the trench done.




Now I have to decide at what point that will happen in the video.

To blog or not to blog...

It's been a long time- ABOUT TWO FREAKIN' YEARS- and over the time I've been thinking-

What the hell am I doing a blog for?

More than anything else- it's a distraction. I mean, nobody's reading this thing and I'm just writing in it to feel like I'm working on my projects more than anything else, right?
It isn't like I need ANOTHER distraction- between being a husband and the father of two- Work, Netflicks, Facebook AND Xbox- I GOT enough distractions.

You saw that? I just got REAL on ya'll! Ha! Ha!

Of course, since no one is really reading this I'm just doing a little self therapy.

So anyway- a couple of years has gone past- I have completed a project or three- mostly videos edited- and I haven't blogged a lick about it- to no ones loss.

The other thing about blogs is...you gotta have one that looks worth a damn if you're gonna be posting about graphic art and all that.

That means that you have to spend s decent amount of time designing it- which is fun as hell- don't get me wrong. And then teaching yourself the latest CSS tricks to put it up the right way and all that- I could spend a week just laying it out!

THAT'S the problem- That is a week I could have spent actually working on a project as opposed to designing a blog that no one is going to read anyway.


So I was teetering on shutting this blog down.

What drove my feelings home was when I was researching how to build a Death Star surface for my latest project and I stumbled across this blog:

http://animwatch.animationblogspot.com/

I could totally see where this dude was coming from (and I didn't even put a tenth of the work into my blog that he did his.

At the same time I was saddened this site, that had not only showed me how to create my Death Star surface but also seemed to be chock full of cool little animation tidbits, wasn't going to be around anymore. I mean, I would have been a reader if I knew it was around...

So the question weighed on my mind- To blog or not to blog?

I thought about the projects I'm working on and the ones I have in mind- and about how maybe someone somewhere might stumble upon my crap and maybe learn something.

I was leaning- but then I put it to Dave who said:


"I think blog entries can help nudge you to get
something done and
gives you a yardstick showing how far you've progressed...it
also
can provide feedback from people reading it. I've got
several things
that I'm working on that have been made a lot better because
of
suggestions."

I guess he's right.

I decided to blog BUT only under two circumstances:

1. My blog would have to be PART of the project process. It's going to be a yardstick and a DEADLINE.

and

2. It has to be reader friendly.
Meaning I have to post regularly and the post has to show progress or have something interesting for the viewer such as a tutorial or sketches and designs or what have you.


So that's my deal. If I can't keep that then I'll just kill this blog and keep on truckin'.

My first goal is that a week from now I will have my 16 different surfaces built for my Mac Star Surface.


The other thing is I ain't gonna spend a week redesigning this site- I'm just gonna sabotage some premade template.

Well. Maybe I WILL make a jpg. to go up top eventually...