Faculty Review

Wow that was no fun. Before I go on to that, what I've done since I last blogged:
-downloaded a black widow model off turbo squid. I gave up on trying to use the time to model my own.
-got my production schedule and animatic down, really getting into execution now.

So as for the faculty review: I feel like I have to rethink everything now! Gavin said he didn't "get" what was going on. I thought it was pretty clear if you listened to the voiceover. I have to restyle everything and make it easier to understand, and make the voiceover clearer. Somehow. I want to make the visuals more CSI like....I'm going to talk to John Qualter this week about a good way to get the effect I want. I'm also planning on meeting with Gavin more throughout the semester to make sure I'm going in the direction that will earn me his "pass" vote at the end of the semester. I was thinking I was doing great last week, now, not so sure.

New Start

Its been a while since I've blogged...probably because I've been redoing previs! Which is both very helpful and VERY frustrating! I wish I had all of this HELPFUL feedback last semester. I've redone story, storyboards, visual script, scrip and animatic. Hopefully this means that I'm finally on the right track! I'm much more comfortable with where I am now than where I was at the end of last semester. I've redone my production schedule and now I just have a whole lot of work to do in the next 10-12 weeks. Over the summer, I met with Joe Barton, who is a script writer in NYC, and he did a great job helping me re-think my story. We met a couple times and got a great script out of it....a great 3 minute long script. Which I have learned will NOT be ok, maybe for the director's cut as Patricia calls it. So now I'm really concentrating on my visuals, and then the scrip and audio will complement them, so I'll obviously really have to re think this script, and re write. That's what this week is for. So hopefully, by next thesis meeting, i'll have a new animatic, and a a better working script for the time I have to complete this project. The next couple months are gonna be just fabulous...

Butterflies...

Wow, it's been a while since I posted! It's summer, I'm working two jobs, and trying to figure out this thesis stuff all at the same time! What I've been i[ to since school got out in regards to my thesis: I met with Mike Cushney (sp?) and we talked about my project for a long time. Basically I feel like I have to redo our previz semester, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels like this. I was at a dead and, and what I ended up with in May was not really what I was trying to come up with in January. I've talked with a bunch of writers and met someone who was a script writer in NYC, and had also gotten bitten, twice, by a Black Widow Spider! And for the real catcher, his name is Joe, which was the original name of my character! I thought he should definitely write my script. He's done a couple of drafts for me, and we're working together to get the right balance of medical terminology and entertaining narration. By reworking my script with a professional, I'm reworking my story. When we finally get the script where we want it, I'll redo my storyboards and animatic. This is what I'm thinking right now: I don't want to shoot live video. I don't have experience doing it, it's not what I'm trying to show in my thesis, and I will probably never need to do it again. Therefore, my challenge is, how do I tell my story without it? What I've come up with is a sequence of still images. I'd shoot a bunch of digital photographs of an actor, and then I'd pan over them, and move them in and out of the frame. My main focus is going to be the modeling and animation going on INSIDE the human body, so I don't want to focus on the outside as much. It will almost be like a film strip, where you have one still image, that image gets smaller and moves to the upper left side of the screen, then another still image fills the screen, and then that one moves to the left side under the first one, and it keeps going like this, so you have past images on the left side of the screen in a vertical way, and the new images keep popping up and filling the screen in order to tell the story, along with the narration. My writer is actually writing about his experience, which is actually very similar to my original idea. I'm not sure if this makes any sense without graphics to accompany it, so hopefully within the next couple of weeks I'll have an animatic to share with you. Until then, any comments would be helpful and greatly appreciated! I hope you're all having a great summer!

Progress

So it's been a while since I posted last, I keep forgetting! It's been a crazy couple of weeks, finishing projects, and it's going to be a crazy next couple of weeks. I've been working on completely redoing my animatic and figuring out the best way to show what will eventually be my 3D organs inside the body so that the audience can understand what I'm trying to say. I also need to record a voiceover, but I have all of my sound FX. I've been working on the paper also, but I'm a little confused about the research part. Are we supposed to use the same research as we had for our midterm deliverables, or should we be doing different research? I've also made a rough Gandtt chart for this summer and the thesis semester, and it's really scary! I have so much to do, and still to learn, before this fall. I have a bit of live action footage that I need to shoot and edit/composite for my thesis, and I'm not sure exactly how to do it, aka have no clue because I've never done it before. SO if there are any volunteers who'd like to help me out and will be here this summer I'd love to know! I'm guessing i will just be able to borrow the equipment from CADA? Any advice would be appreciated! Good luck to everyone in the next couple of weeks!

My Script

Here's my current script. I'm making sure it will fit in time with my animatic, but let me know if anyone thinks it's too much info. It should definitely teach you something!
Widow's Peak Script

Script

In preparation to present my new animatic, I'm writing a scrip that I can read while the animatic is playing. Mitch has been telling me that I need to show how myc thesis will teach the viewer. The whole point is that it will show realistic looking 3D images of venom traveling through the bloodstream, as well as the organs that the venom is affecting. Without these 3D models, it's hard to show exactly how it will look and the effect that it will have. I'm going to try to show this as well as I can through my 2D animatic, and reading the script while it is playing will also help. I'll post the script as soon as I have it done.

"Live Action" pictures

So these are obviously right out of my camera, but I uploaded them so that I can work on them in photoshop tomorrow from a different computer, and I thought I might as well post them here for you all to see. My sister's name is Lynzi, she's 14 and would kill me if she knew how many people were seeing her making funny faces. Anyway, I'm not sure what I'll use out of this, but its a start to making a more realistic looking animatic.
http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f321/ndeluccia/100_1512.jpg
http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f321/ndeluccia/100_1513.jpg
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http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f321/ndeluccia/100_1517-1.jpg
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http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f321/ndeluccia/100_1536.jpg