The 4/17 Recap & Class Reflection

The festival was pretty spectacular. Actually, the staff who made this Visions 5 festival as successful as it was are all spectacular, because when people stick together and work hard... other people get blown away. Not literally, but compared to Visions 4 (the spectacular predecessor) the turnout was terrifically splendid; I'm not trying to write everything that pops in my head... Ned Flanders...
Meeting the filmmakers prior to the event was interesting, and really opened my eyes, specifically interpreting personalities with their submissions. I basically tried to read a certain auteur's relationship with their work and others who were attending the festival. Frogboy, The Sound of Where, Beast, these films we viewed together on our computers before passing judgement became gladiators of the theatre, on that day in April, on the 17th. The highlight of my day at the festival was the radiance of the Visions bumper, which received an unexpected amount of praise from both staff and filmmakers alike. Oh, and Caroline Roberts delivered probably the most inspiring presentation I've had the pleasure to witness for the past three years. Our very own Bahr slayed that second conference block, and Ceiling Finger is still haunting my dreams.. 

Heroes and Villains united.

The class was not what I had originally perceived it to be. While I was able to perform my regular duties as a staff member, you were also required to (emphasizing on this) actively share your thoughts on literally everything in class. I understand why this was more important, something that was valued more than anything else because without discussion, progress would be far from nigh. Regrettably not an ideal environment for introversion, but I'm thankful for involving myself in this type of experience. I never thought I could master my fear publicly speaking (this is a half lie) whenever I was required to showcase art-related content. Over the course of the semester, I became wary of the importance of my role; even after three weeks of agonizing pain that still lingers, I pushed myself to continue working on portraits for the staff members. My role was that of exposure, and I was given the privilege of creative freedom at my fingertips, the 'world' in my grasp. In the end, my hard work paid off. Funny how I was the first of my kind... Lead Animator. I just hope that, I'll never be that introverted weirdo that never speaks because of his 'hyper' social anxiety in any class environment ever again. 



To my successor as Lead Animator,

I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking for ransom I can tell you I don't have money, but what I do have are a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a mentor for people like you. If you give up your current role now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you and I will support you!!

Good luck mystery person, I have a lot of faith in you!! Wishing Visions 6 all the best!!

blog post 4/11/15

On my computer. Working hard to keep promoting the festival. After Effects. Installing 'xscale' font for clearer purpose; usage being creative accessibility to wider audience(s). Starts with regular black solid background and creates a text layer. This text layer uses the 'xscale' font, and then duplicates it several times. 3D boxes checked, complying layers parented to the adjustment layer for security purposes; wouldn't want the composition to collapse because of some error made on the editor's part.

Just a few of the several thousand steps it took to make exmachina.

4/3/15 Update

Two more weeks 'til the grand finale. The last bumper was decent, and hopefully the next two will be just as good. First, I plan on working with the upcoming bake sale promo (new approach), and changing the concept of the it's vanilla state. Then, I will finish the green 'atomic' bumper so that people will be drawn into the festival like mosquitos. Just kidding. I'm content over the success of the headshots too; most of them were a bit aggravating because the images were small. Still though, gradually being accustomed to making the headshots helped with the overall process. Not that they need to know, but I'm also really proud of my group last week for kicking major ass with brand new content. Two more weeks to go.

3/30 Update

It's been a short while since my momentary leave of absence. I'm hoping this recovery could speed up, and cease distracting me from all of my work. Produced a lot of work for the department this weekend; it should pay off via the special presentation this week. Prepare yourselves.

Week 7 & K.O.

Week seven was a short period of time before my ultimately leaving school for a dire medical condition. The week consisted of frivolously working on headshots of Visions 5 members, and uploading them to the drive as they were being uploaded to Facebook (and other social net. sites most liikely?). Work was constantly being interrupted by my condition which is why I left and...

K.O.

...had to receive immediate medical attention. My "knockout" period of three weeks was pretty ruthless; despite being in an abundance of pain, I tried to work on several of the photographs for staff members that had remembered to upload their headshots on the drive. Despite the fact that I was receiving treatment and in a bed for quite some time, I still worked on the headshots (this was mostly towards the beginning of my absence) which was always a somewhat long processing consisting of brushing 'contours' and aligning outlines with the pixels of the images. Most of the images weren't lossless so their resolution collapsed whenever I zoomed in any section. The rest was simple.

Week 6-Work Update

Pictures. Faces. Eyeballs. I've been staring at these everyday for the past couple of weeks. The staff bios must be reflec... wait. I think I'll just create these kickass photos and not worry about relating with the written part of each staff member's biography. Saying that procures a 'sort-of' idea I have in mind; a very special 'celebratory' animation that combines everyone into a fiesta of awesomeness. More details on that later.. but for now lets discuss the photos. The style I'm using spurred from yet another idea that took Kyle's concept, and multilayered the crap out of both the target picture and brush tools. The more I used this method, the sharper my technique became (has becoming). To those who are dissatisfied with their photos, the following should be noted:

Ask me for a redo, please. Thanks.

-Mike

Week 5-Work Update

The first director interview is in limbo, not that it hasn't been done, but I'm thinking of other creative ways to showcase this type of project. While the speech bubbles are great, there has to be something that separates the interviews from every other animation made in class, or even all other videos in that promotional category. Despite all of that, Kyle's new approach for the interviews may fare well with the content itself. If it works, it works! On a side note, the proposal for three dimensional promotional videos is something I think will rock; bluntly put because no other word can describe my excitement for the next promo I've been putting together. Time however is problematic considering how tedious this animation has been, and will eventually end up being when I'm nearing a conclusion. Alright, back to work.