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!!)