Yes, it has been a few days. I have been working on scripts for my next video. Or few videos. When I was having issue with my other computer due to RAM shortage and eventual system crash I had a ton of ideas for some short stop mo video, just for fun. Little 1-2 minutes blurbs.

As I didn't have a way to make them at the time I took the ideas and put them into comic strips. Of course, ideas had to be majorly truncated. I had them up on the web for a while, but my account got hijacked and I was banned for producing porn. I was using the same little soldier guys I have been using for the last few videos. I have no idea how that can be construed as porn, even with my overactive and gutter hopping imagination. My guess is as I let it slide for about a month someone hijacked my feed and was sending people to porn sites. Instead of emailing me and letting me know I was just banned. I wasn't even told I was banned. I found out when I tried to sign back in to post a new comic and got the You Are Banned For Being Flagged As Porn notice.

But again, I digress. My point is that I still have all those comics and all of those ideas written down. I am busy sifting through them to decide which ones I want to develop and which ones are just plain stupid and development is a non option. Some new ideas are sparking too.

So...my plan is to get several scripts written then to produce one of them a week. I can do that. They are simple ideas. I will have to work hard not to wander into Robot Chicken territory though. That was originally what I wanted to do when I started learning stop motion. Then I saw Robot Chicken and shook my fist and yelled "I hate you Seth Green!" though I really don't. He's awesome. He just stole my idea. Who knew he had a brain ray that can steal your ideas from 1,000 miles away. When he doesn't even know who you are. *that's amazing*

Ok, enough with the silliness. Back to working on scripts then this afternoon working at the part time contract job. It is sleeting out there. In Eugene, OR at the end of February, without really having ANY snow this year, it is sleeting.  Eugene drivers do not know how to drive in this stuff. I will have to be extra careful walking to work.

OH WAIT!! I forgot to remind you to go to my video at the Douglas Adams Video Tribute Contest and vote for it. At this point I am #1. Yeay! But that may not last long. We have until April 15th. Every vote between now and then counts. Vote as many times as you want. Did I mention Stephen Fry is one of the judges?

This post on her blog is one example of why: thebloggess.com

The last few weeks have not been fun for me. They have been filled with humiliation and pain and stitches and giant bruises that only hurt worse every day. And router hacking. And phone hacking. And Twitter hacking. (Someone hacking into my things, not me hacking into someone else's.)

I have tried to concentrate on stuff I want to do, like writing a kick-ass script for my next stop mo, finishing my other one and submitting it for the Douglas Adams contest, reading, eating chocolate chip cookie dough while watching Reservoir Dogs and yelling at the screen. It still was getting to me, though. Not having a car nor living close to a bus stop, I have to walk everywhere. With my leg and face in this condition it has taken all I have to walk to work and back. Which has also led a bit of the argh-I'm-trapped-and-isolated feeling.

That is where The Bloggess comes in. (Is that supposed to be capitalized? Like a title or something?) Her silly tweets have given me the best picker-upper there is: pictures of celebrities and random strangers with twine and spatulas. Wil Wheaton getting attacked by his spatula. Jery Ryan deflty controlling hers. Penn Jillette looking askance at some twine. Simon Pegg's hand holding handles from a gift bag (though we really only have his tweet for it. We don't see his face. But I will choose to believe him because I loved Paul and Hot Fuzz and all the other stuff he does and would like him to continue to share his awesomeness.) Not only are these people I already enjoy watching at work, but they are also my kind of people away from the cameras. People with a great sense of humor who are not afraid to use it. I have not been this furiously happy since I saw the picture of Wil Wheaton collating paper. Which was also brought to us by Jenny.

So, if ever you stumble upon this blog while looking for something else, thank you Bloggess. Thank you for reminding me that though things aren't great now, they will be again. Thank you for helping me see the absurdity of my situation and helping me laugh at it. And thank you for reminding me that a little silliness helps to drag one out of the poor-me rut and back into creative castle. Or whatever. :)

In spite of what many people seem to think, animation is not an easy thing to do. Stop motion doubly so. You have so many things to take into consideration. You have to calculate exactly what needs to go where to get the effect you want. And if you don't have the money for the professional grade high-end software that will do it for you, it is that much harder.
  
I have encountered many articles on the internet that, by reason or content, seem to be saying that stop motion is a medium for children. Some even go as far as to state that if an adult works in this medium it is the equivalent of drawing with crayons. This offends me greatly. I know it shouldn't, but it does. These people are obviously ignorant of what it takes to make the Coraline's and Corpse Brides. If it really were that simple, wouldn't more animation companies get on board with it? Wouldn't we be seeing more stop motion and less CGI?

Granted, stop motion has been pushed lately by educators as a great way to teach kids patience and help them understand the mechanics of motion. That does not mean that it takes a child to work in that medium. I agree, to a certain extent, that it is a great medium for teaching children. Especially those that aren't confident in their artistic skills. And, as they are children, we don't expect Aardman-esque work from them so the free and cheap alternatives for this medium are great for their purposes and makes it affordable for most educational systems.

But what is essentially being ignored by these writers is the hard work and attention to detail that is required for this medium. To make a short, choppy video that has little to no story line maybe not. But a glance at You Tube will tell a person that any type of video is that way.

If you want to make a good smooth animation, not only do you have to take into account scenery with every shot (as I have learned the hard way), you have to make sure lighting is consistent, focus is consistent, color balance is consistent. You have to watch for things like sets peeling up slowly while you shoot, floors that have bubbles you don't notice until after you have shot the scene and assembled your images, that took 4 FUCKING HOURS TO SHOOT to get 10 seconds of footage.

There really is no way to speed up the process. You go too quickly and you get fingers in shots and you miss something that needs to fixed.

And in addition to that you have to pay attention to the story line of the video, and make sure everything you are shooting actually matches what is being conveyed. It is hard. And if you want to make something that does not look like a child did it, it takes practice and talent. Just the same as any other animation or visual media. Doing it alone while just having the few written books on the subject to guide you feels nigh on impossible. But I am doing it. Slowly but surely. And eventually I will have enough working knowledge, professional equipment and possibly assistance of other people to get a video that is wow-worthy.

With how hard I have worked on this particular skill set, if it was "simple and for children", I would have already made several full length successful features.  For someone who writes for professional publications and professes to know a lot about it, these writers are plainly ignorant.

This is turning into a longer post than I had intended. Oh well. I really needed to get that out. This is really the most appropriate platform I have for this kind of rant. I feel a whole lot better. Thanks. :)

OK....so what I originally came here to to was to talk myself through dialog matching. This is when you get your figures motions and movements to match the dialog you have recorded. This is very difficult when you are using free software. As at the moment I don't have puppets that allow me to manipulate the face, matching plosives and vowels won't be a problem. But as I don't have rendering software that allows me to calculate movement down to the milisecond, planning for dialog matching is hard. I tried to use After Effects. Not only was it hard to get it to work exactly, but the scenes that were rendered were pixelated and very poor quality. (See the One Tiny comparison). You'd think it would be easy. The math being, that if you render at 24 FPS, and you hold each picture for 2 frames, then you should need 12 pictures for each second of scene you shoot. Logical, right? Then if you calculate how many seconds you need for a particular movement, you should be able to figure out how many pictures you need for that movement and how many pictures to take of each stage of the movement, etc. Wrong. At least in my case. One of these days I may understand it enough to get it right when doing it manually. However, as most professional software out there do it all for you there really is no manual on how to do it correctly.  Frustration, argh.

One thing that I was successful with the Douglas Adams video was getting the scenes to basically fit the dialog. This was achieved by making all those calculations, determining the overall feeling I wanted to accomplish in the scene, shooting what I wanted as it came up, then cutting the audio up into spidgetts to make longer pauses so it fit. I knew at least the minimal number of pictures I needed, and went from there. Sometimes it worked great. Others, it just kind of worked. But overall it made a successful video. As I was using Windows Movie Maker, which has fewer controls, I had to tweek the math little bit, but it was the same concept.

So the question is, can I use what I learned in that video to make a successful dialog video? As I don't have facial expressions to match the words, can I do it the same basic way? One thing I worked hard on was getting certain parts of the Douglas Adams voice over to fit certain actions. For example the scene with the tree smashing. Or the scene with the bench and the books piling up. The gold-ish guy bringing the books in matched the line "Lots and lots of them" pretty precisely. That is what I was going for. I was kind of pleased that that one worked.

Anyway, I digress. I have probably lost whatever readers I may have had at the beginning of this post. But I have achieved what I have set out to do. I vented my frustrations and talked through a concept. I believe now that yes, I can use the spidgett technique to make a dialog video work. I don't see why not. 

Now I need to get to writing some killer clever dialog to match some stop mo. Heading out to get food, then writing up a storm.

If you still haven't seen my Douglas Adams tribute video (and WHY the hell not??) you can click on the big words over there to take you to it. I have recently re-read the rules, and I can't post it here until the contest is over anyway. So if you have seen my other posts or just this one and want to know what the hell I am talking about, go see it. And vote with many bookmarks for it. :)

And now I am bored. I am not quite up for doing a lot yet, but I am itching to start another project. I have given myself a few days, now I need to decide where to go next. I think I need to jump right back into another stop motion before I lose my momentum. I still haven't done one with dialog. Well, real dialog where I have to match the movements with the words. The last one was more voice over rather than dialog.

In case you are reading this before the 15th of April, here is another link to the Douglas Adams video.

And I leave you with a picture of some flowers a friend got me as a get well present:

There is hope for the rest of us. If someone can get a serious publishing house to actually produce this book, maybe I can convince to publish my crap.

Definitely gives hope to the rest of us. I found this at a library book sale. And yes, I did purchase it. It is crap, but is it is morbidly wrong crap.

ALSOOOO

Don't forget to go and vote for my video.  My dreams are few but they are clear. Make a moderately insane woman very, very happy. :) Pass the link to your friends, family and coworkers. Watch the vdeo again and again, pointing out the flaws and telling each other what you would have done differently. Make a drinking game out of it. Take a shot every time you see the camera jump. Or just tell each other how superior you are to the pathetic woman who plays with toys. :)

After a few attempts and smashing my already tender face in the process, I decided to look for already done music on the interwebs. I went with Sonitina for Violin and Piano by Kevin MacLeod.

SOOO....VOTE for me. Please?? *batts eyelashes*. The link is here: Douglas Adams Contest Video.

I am in pain and bleeding again. Time for ice cream and a movie, me thinks.

I will post the whole video on my video page. Eventually I may post it here, but for now I would rather you go to the contest page and vote. Share it with your friends. I will be a shameless promotional hussy for the next few months. :)

It is taking forever for me to get this music to the point I feel comfortable recording it. And my mandolin has a buzz to it, which I didn't realize before. Generally I either just do the mando background or live. I haven't really tried to record it as a solo instrument. Obviously this one isn't a solo instrument. It is a loaner from a friend. I sold mine when I needed money.

So now I need to make a decision. Do I continue trying to get a good sound, between bouts of pain and med haze, or do I try to solve this issue another way? Or do I just call it good and lay the buzzy, clunky music in as is. Honestly, I thought this would be the easiest part of the video. I am sure if I wasn't dealing with everything it might have been easier. Argh. Sigh.

Well, I have to get some dishes done, then I will make a decision. Whatever happens, I vow to get the video uploaded to the voting site before tomorrow. It is already almost March. Now that I finally have the shooting and editing done I really want to show people.

I am feeling so anxious. I want to finish this video. I really, really do. I haven't been able to sit up long enough to practice, so it isn't good enough to record yet. It is important to me that there be no copyright conflicts in my video, so I am not willing to use someone else's rendition of it. The music itself is public domain. The thing that would be the problem is the performance. That artist spent a lot of time perfecting that piece to get it to recording quality. they deserve to be paid for it. They deserve credits. I can't afford to pay, and at this point it might be faster to record it myself than try to get permission.

Too many people find stuff on the internet and think "It's already public, I can use it without asking." This irks me no end. I have had people take my photographs off my Flickr site and try to pass them off as their own. Which in and of itself is pathetic, as I am not that good and only have a point n shoot. I wouldn't ask for money, but I would ask for attribution. Anyone who puts thier own creative energy into something deserves at least that. This is NOT an anti piracy rant. It is a give the fuckers thier due rant. If there is a picture or song or something on the internet I want to use and they specifically say No Attribution Necessary, I still do it. They deserve to have thier name out there.

Also, if I don't, it implies that it is my work and that is just plain wrong. As I do a lot of my stuff myself, it would be very easy to take credit by implication. As much as I want to be praised for my work (eventually), I want it to be for MY work, not someone else's. I want what I do to count. And if someone just likes the part that isn't mine, then that is invalid. It is valid for the person who did the work, not for me. I want people to look at my stuff and say 'That's cool" and know that I did it. Or that me and a team did it together. And that the team get as much credit as I do.

So, to sum up, it may be a few days before I actually get it done, and I am frustrated. I still have lots of time, but it still frustrates me.

I am going in to work for a few hours here in a bit. I missed all of my hours yesterday so I need to go in and get stuff done. When I get back, if I feel up to it, I will see what I can get recorded. I have a feeling it may have to wait until tomorrow, though. It is a 1/2 mile walk, and my leg bruise goes all the way to the bone. 

It could have been worse. I could have broken my leg. I could have hit my face just a leeetle bit higher and done some really serious damage and maybe lost my eyesight. I could have gotten a concussion. Instead of pulling pieces of my teeth out of my lip it could have been a whole tooth or a bunch of teeth. I need to be thankful it is only as bad as it is, and it is only delaying me a little. And that I don't need major reconstructive surgery.

/frustration rant

Will post again when I get a chance to finish it.

So I was THIS CLOSE to finishing my video. Last scenes done. Douglas Adams audio added in. All I had left to do was record the background music and add it in. That was the plan when I got home from work.

Apparently, the universe had different plans for me. I just got back from spending 4 hours in Urgent Care. I came out of there with 9 stitches in my upper lip, inside and out. Apparently, when your mother cautions you about running on linoleum in stocking feet, it is really a thing. I slipped, tripped over a chair and broke my fall with another chair.....and my face. Fortunately I didn't do too much damage. Just mangled it up a bit and broke bits of tooth. Not important parts, though. And I have a pretty purple welt on my leg too.

Right now I am on vicoprofen, which I have discovered the last time I had a tooth extracted makes me really hyper for 30 minutes then I crash hard for 3 hours or more.

My plan is to finish the video tomorrow, if I can. Depends on how mangled I feel tomorrow.  I hate being so close and yet so far. The music will be Invention N0 1 Part 1 by JS Bach, played on my mandolin. when I do manage to get it done, I'll post the results and a link to the voting page.

Now that the crash part of the pain meds are kicking in, I'd better end this before I fall asleep.

I worked really hard yesterday to get all my shooting done. I worked from 7am till 10:30pm, refinishing sets, building mini deck chairs, making the guys move in SAND. Which, by the way, is really, really hard. Getting them to stay in the deck chairs was even harder. I finally got what I thought was my last shot. When I tried to transfer my images from my SD card to my computer, my computer decided it was hungry and ATE half my shots. I usually copy the images over to the computer then clear the card for the next round of shooting. Not only did it just copy half, it ate the remaining images from my SD card. That card is blank.  This was at 10:30pm last night. I was going to write about it last night, but I just wanted to cry and throw a temper tantrum. This post would have been an incoherent rant of expletives and sobs.

Fortunately it didn't eat everything, and coincidentally the point it stopped was actually a good place, as it was during a scene change. In the last scene they fight over the powerbook then head to the beach. The images lost are just from the beach scene. So I compiled the pictures for the powerbook scene and rendered the video. Now I just have to reshoot the beach scene.

Fortifying myself with eggs and coffee and web comics then heading to work.  Oh - I also did some playing with the audio the other day. I cut it up into pieces - or spidgetts as I decided to call them. When I was deciding on what to do I wrote down each sentence or group of sentences I wanted to brainstorm. Each spidgett follows that pattern. I played with adding them into the video in Windows Movie Maker. It doesn't work if I already have the scene rendered to video, but when I went back to compiling the pictures I could decide where each spidgett starts. Can't add sound effects or a music track though. It makes it too big and it doesn't want to render it into video. As it doesn't have multi track capability I would have to render the movie, add the next layer of sound, render the movie, add the next layer of sound. So I will still have to figure that one out. But at least I can add Douglas Adams voice in now. 

*SIGH* How low budget am I? I can't wait till I find a real paying job so I can get a camera that doesn't decide to autofocus even when autofocus is turned off, a computer with more umph and storage space, software that will work better for this, a camera that will actually allow me to capture to that software, and actual puppets instead of toys. And real lighting instead of a pair of desk lamps.