Week 5 Tuesday: Howard Rosenman response and Lighthouse building plans

I think more than anything of what I learned from Howard's lecture was the importance of networking and how simple it can be and how to be friendly and engaging with an audience. All the stories that Howard brought up of how he ended up working for by people by simply being their waiter or of Todd's story of how he set up a business deal through facebook show the importance of how easily connections can get started if you do it in a professional but efficient manner. Also I enjoyed how relaxed but informative Howard was about giving his lecture. He was inviting and interesting to listen to because he sounded as if he was talking to all of us individually. He wasn't reading notes nor did it come across as if he rehearsed a thousand times even though he did. All in all he was an effective speaker and he was able to get people to listen to him. Also he was able to be patient and kind to people's questions no matter the relevance. He inspired me to try to be more natural and easy with public speaking and proves that it is possible to be an effective speaker without being uptight and impersonal.

Week 5 Tuesday: Results of Research and Meeting with Gadsby

Background Research:

So from the results of my rough story-boarding critique, I realized I needed to really reseach into older lighthouse run on oil and how they looked in previous centuries before electricity. It was the most obvious thing lacking in any of my story boards because I was subconsciously drawing around the lens (while inserting some crude icon for it) when in fact that is also one of the major characters of this story. Mostly what I looked into were Fresnel (fray-nel) lenses and carbide lamps. Many Fresnel lenses employed electricity but i was thinking of just replacing what would be the bulb with just a glass funnel and Nerine light the lens with an old fashioned carbide lamp (were extremely bright) like what was seen on old bicycles and even before that in lighthouses. Also I thought about the entire lens being rotated by a clocking mechanism that has to be rotated (by weight) every few hours which would show how high maintenance the lens is and show how easily it could be slightly inaccurate in rotation. I looked into size too. All lenses are measured by Order with the largest being 1st order (around 7'-8' tall) to 6th order (1.5" tall). 1st - 3rd order lenses are used for coastlines and reach the greatest distance. 4th - 6th are used for harbor areas and have the short light range. I was thinking of the lens being somewhere around a 4th order or roughly 3' tall but up on a pedestal column in the center of the room. One of the glass panes on the lens would open revealing the gears and lighting mechanisms.


Interview with Gadsby:

I went to meet with Gadsby about how think schedule-wise in seeking internships and resume mock ups. She suggested to me to look into really trying to have a remote internship in the Spring semester around here in Memphis while still enrolled. My plan is to still at the least have a Summer internship. I'm strongly considering furthering my education in the Fall with possibly trying to get a Masters or at least a certificate school. Many of the places I'm drawn to are in California and are very expensive so there's a lot to consider and weigh in on to decide my best options. As of right now Gadsby just wanted to focus on interning somewhere to at least have that experience before I leave. Right now I'm investigating local Memphis businesses. Also she helped me with my resume as to catering it for this particular field which I've haven't really done yet. Apparently what I had so far was good but I needed to cut out things that weren't directly related to getting me hired at an animation company like just other retail job experience details. While they're nice to include to show dedication and reliability, they don't need to be in detail as the main focus is on my skills as an animator and what I can create.

Week 4 Thursday: Pitching Day

Elevator Line: A rampaging sea monster, in a twist of fate, forces a young woman to choose between her beloved lighthouse or her future.

Theme: My story deals with memories holding back someone from moving forward in there life; essentially a coming of age story.

Quick Synopsis: Nerine lives in historical lighthouse located in a commercially developing area. She still lives in this lighthouse after the passing of her parents, which is also her family home. One night while thinking of her parents, she absentmindedly makes a pot of tea and then tends to the lighthouse oil lamp. She fails to notice that the lamp itself is slightly off kilter when lighting it but is interrupted by her tea kettle whistling downstairs. While she goes to address the tea pot, the light's beam reaches out into the depths of the ocean and awakens a monstrous fish. It decides to physically attack Nerine's home. As the fish rams itself into the side of her lighthouse, Nerine is trapped inside only to witness the destruction of it. Finally, the foundation crumbles and the tower falls into the sea. While the wreckage is sinking, Nerine hesitates to leave the lamp and swim to the surface. The fish decides to intervene and pull her to safety on shore. Nerine realizes that her home is destroyed and decides to pack whats left of her belongings and travel to a new city.

Week 4 Thrusday: Reference Photos

   Reference Photos from Background Research:

Week 4 Tuesday: Rough Draft Storyboard

Week 4 Tuesday: Updated Story with Final Major Editing

The scene opens with a focus shot on Nerine's lighthouse from the ground level entrance. She then walks into the scene with her back facing the camera. The shot cuts to her approaching the front door were she puts down her bag of groceries to notice the eviction notice taped to her front door. Her hand hesitates but then she tugs the note off the door and with her shoulders slightly deflated enters her home. The next shot is from inside facing the door. We see her take off her flat shoes and place them next to a pair of heels and pair of men's oxfords. She tosses the eviction notice into an over-spilling waste basket by the door. The scene cuts on her walking to the kitchen (towards the camera). The next scene is facing the kitchen from the entrance she just left. The viewer sees Nerine's back as she makes her way to the table at the other end of the kitchen. Its full of vases of flowers in various stages of wilting.
Then she walks to the stove just to her right to make a grab for the tea kettle. The next cut is now from outside the window over the kitchen sink looking in to watch Nerine fill up the kettle with water. Then it goes back inside now from Nerine's right shoulder. She looks up out the window and pauses. The view outside is of the new lighthouse across the bay up on the cliffs. Back inside she looks over her shoulder. As she does the shot focuses on her fridge with many family photos on it at various points in her life (and a sympathy card or two). The camera focuses back on her as she glances up (metaphorically making eye contact with the lens of the lighthouse upstairs). We get a close up of her putting the kettle on the stove.
The next shot is from at the top of the lighthouse as Nerine is making her way up to the platform. She pauses when she gets to the top and stands there. Her back is to the viewer and we see the entire room including the lens in the middle. A vision of her and her father turning on and positioning the lens flashes before us and then disappears. The camera cuts to a close up of her face in a bittersweet smile and then walks forward. She kneels down and starts tinkering with it trying to get it to turn on and all it ends up doing is flickering before dying quickly. She starts to get rougher with it to turn it on but is suddenly startled by the kettle going off (there is a quick cut to the kettle whistling). She accidentally gets it to turn on and the light shoots to down in the water (show on the surface of the water the light focusing). Nerine looks at it for a second and then leaves quickly to get the kettle.
The camera cuts to the surface again and submerges down to the bottom where the light focuses on a dark shape. Cut to quickly Nerine picking up the kettle. Cut back to the dark figure as one of its eyes opens. Then the camera is set back a little to see the whole creature swimming upward. Back in the lantern room, Nerine merges with a hot cup of tea. She walks over to the lantern and sets down her tea. Down below, the fish is swimming around at the base of the lighthouse and when the len's light shines in its eyes they glow frantically and it roars. Then it submerges quickly and jumps out of the water. A quick cut to show from a profile view it hit the side of the lighthouse.
At the top of the lighthouse, Nerine falls over from the impact. She then gets up and looks out one of the windows to see the fish ram into the side again. She braces herself against the window. Then she looks over and focuses on the lens as the lighthouse continues to shake. She runs over to shield it from breaking.
Then the fish rams the lighthouse one more time and it with the lighthouse all come crashing down into the sea. The camera focuses on whats left of the foundation and slowly zooms out to the same shot as the opening. A large fin appears out of the water with Nerine and lays her on the shore. She opens her eyes to see the fish submerge into the water. She then looks over her left shoulder to see whats left of her home. The camera switches to a wide view of the remnants with her standing as the camera slowly zooms out. The next shot is of her sitting aboard a train with the view of the lighthouse ruins. She looks at it one last time but then looks down to a brochure in her hand. The train continues over a hill into the distance.

Week 3: Thursday Demo/job research Blog posts

The demo reels that were posted were all over the place in terms of timing. I felt the most successful ones were between 35 s - 2 mins. Anything over that I could easily feel my interest waning. Also I would actually hesitate to click on them just knowing how long they were beforehand; similar to when you see that you have to read pages of text to understand a concept. You naturally don't want to do it and I can imagine with companies that have to look through reels everyday. The second they see that your reel is like 5 mins then they think if you can't tell me why I should hire you in 2 mins or less then we'll move on to someone who can. I noticed many people picked 3D work including myself. However I noticed that many of the videos were specifically about modeling or texturing which I found odd since most of the class is doing 2D based work and therefore wouldn't have to worry about modeling/texturing. Some of the 3D reels that cover character designs and animation are fine or effectively showcase a tight reel or weak one. I feel though that most 3D reels look very similar and after awhile I would get them confused. Basically I felt individual personalities were lost on some of these. Also the best videos included a variety of content that showcased different skills but ultimately felt related and displayed their personal interests. The ones that didn't work involved basically one piece, or very few, and had an agonizingly slow pacing combined with choppy, awkward transitions. They often had little carry-through in the transitions whether its matching actions or fading in and out.

The job research mostly involved linking to high level jobs. Very few people looked into internships or if it was then it was just like one. All the others were full time, dream jobs. These are nice to have a goal to work towards but what about what to work on in the meantime? From what I've seen most of these jobs look like a much higher level of skills than I imagine we have now. Many of these jobs would only benefit from already working in the industry and are ready for director titles. Also many people just inserted links with nothing else to go on until you click on the link and quickly try to scan the site.

Week 3: Tuesday - Outside Reviews, Job and Demo Reel Research, and Updated Plot Points

I. The 2 Outside Sources

The first person I pitched to outside of class was a grad student at Harding School of Theology named Jake Stalvey. I pitched with him for overall concept and thematic concerns. He brought a much needed fresh pair of eyes to my story. He mostly critiqued the idea of Nerine letting go of her lighthouse in the story. He felt (and rightly so) that the impact of her turning off the light in the confrontation with the fish wasn't there. I decided to work it in the story now that she always turns on her lighthouse every night even though the modern lighthouse across the bay is always on too. Nerine's lighthouse's beam of light isn't as strong and doesn't travel as far enough proving that it serves no real purpose outside of her own. By Nerine turning this off at the end it shows more tension and greater sacrifice on her part.

The second person I pitched to was Meredith Root. I went to her for technical/visual concerns but she also helped with adding a little more context to my story as well. Some of the minor things were like making the historic lighthouse's light clearly inefficient compared to the modern one and at the beginning of the story having Nerine receive an eviction notice from her home due to it being dangerous to give more tension to her staying. Also with the eviction notice there could be some sympathy cards for the loss of her parents to immediately give background context to prior events off-screen. Her biggest concern was what visual format I was going to use. For the longest time I've been leaning towards a "cleaner," and fluid type of animation with the individual actions done in Toonboom and then the pieces mostly composited in After Effects. It was a sort of pegged character/ traditionally animated hybrid. Meredith brought up that some of my better work has been utilizing puppetry or puppet-like animations. She felt that having more of an intitional, stilted look to my piece would help with making it seem more "handmade." I was thinking of drawing up characters by hand and then scanning them in and animating and coloring digitailly so that they appear more "puppet" like. This is of course taking my visuals in a very different direction.

New Inspiration:

"Looks That Kill" by Yuki 7


 This is a James Bond parody done mostly in After Effects with little handdrawn elements. I really look to the overall character pegging and how that benefits and plays into their sort of limited movements. Even though the characters are very clean (vector) in their overall design they still have a handdrawn, illustrative quality to them that I'm interested in trying to replicate.

Alice: Madness Returns - Intro Trailer

This is the opening trailer for the recently released video game, Alice: Madness Returns. While I don't intend to depict things as gory and macabre as this game does I do like puppetry aspects and again the overall handdrawn feeling to all of the animated characters. I would want my characters to move around a little more than how limited these characters are, mostly allowed to only swing their heads and arms.

II. Job and Demo Reel Research

When looking into jobs I mostly looked into internships mostly because I haven't done one yet and imagine those are one of the best ways to working towards a future job in the animation field in particular parts of production.

http://www.obsidianent.com/jobs/art/jobs-intern-2denvironment-20110629.html
Obsidian Entertainment is looking for an intern to help work on 2-D backgrounds and props. They want the intern to work with senior artists to help create designs from sketches to final illustrations. They require good knowledge of Photoshop and Illustrator. While they are looking for a 2D artist it is seen to grasp a good knowledge of 3D environment art. They also obviuosly require a good understanding of architecture, perspective, and color. You'll work in a pipeline environment with being able to come up with creative solutions to problems. Its also a plus if you've worked in webite design, 3D programs, After Effects, and experience with creating teaxtures. They want a web portfolio the demonstrates examples of 2D background work.

http://www.mandy.com/1/jobs3.cfm?v=42359797&utm_source=Indeed&utm_medium=organic&utm_campaign=Indeed
Mariposa Pictures (based in LA) is looking for an clean-up artist and colorist to help with a live-action short blended with traditional 2D animation. You'll be ultimately responsible for helping create 12 minutes of animation with the studio. They preferably want someone using vector work with Illustrator and Toon Boom. Mostly your job will be to make the sketches and rough designs into the clean overall asethtic standard, coloring using a provided color palette, and keeping all the files organized on a hard drive.

https://careers.timewarner.com/1033/ASP/TG/cim_jobdetail.asp?jobId=585576&PartnerId=391&SiteId=36
Time Warner, Inc. (Burbank, CA) is looking for interns in many different job titles. This one is specifically in  the Action Adventure Development section. They're minimum wage and last 12 weeks at a time which would be difficult to transplant yourself for 3 months. The program is designed to teach interns about development processes in both live-action and animation projects. They want to focus on writing and analytical abilities because most of the program consists of working with the intern supervisor and see a project go from pitch to script to screen. Special projects will be assigned according to the project at hand.


Demo Reel Research




This is a graphics motion reel by Diana Paez. I personally was attracted to this one because all the use of pegged characters and animation. Her opening and closing bumper titles were nice bookends that draw the viewer in and help give an overall theme in her work. There are some pieces that I feel aren't as successful in execution or drag on for too long such as the scene with the women unclogging the toilet (00:22) and the growing flowers (00:57).




This is a character animation study by Dony Permedi. In this reel he mostly showcases his 3D commercial work for advertising. He awkwardly placed a vector based 2D animation 00:45 seconds in which I think just ends up cutting the reel in-half because after that segment it continues with more 3D. He has many different transition shots and cuts which makes the reel lively. All the movement selected from each piece and the overall design aesthetics of his work are cohesive. The piece outside of the one 2D all play off each other well and its nice how it ends by the bird jumping off the cliff and the appearance of his information.



This is another character study by Aziz Kocanaogullari. It is all 3D work but has no sound. I understand that some reels focus mostly on the work presented and don't recognize the sound in their work unless they are interested in sound production. It just comes across as silent and creepy especially with 3D work and how it can sometimes come across as vacant and sterile. Its just ultimately really annoying how the first scene had dramatic music then when it cut, it was just silence. Most people naturally turn up the volume assuming a speaker problem. Then the next time the sound kicks in when the girl is talking it can dangerously blow out your ears. His movements of the human faces and the many different types of characters are all wonderful. The problem I feel with this reel is that the actions of the characters carry for far too long. The cutting in sluggish feeling and even though the movements are nice and appreciated knowing the time and skill that went into it but it ultimately comes off as boring. The three segments that include sound at least have that to carry the movements and keep the viewer tuned in but the ones without would loose interest quickly and make the viewer want to look up something more entertaining.

III. Plot Additions
After my pitches with outside sources I've decided to add to the story that in the opening scene there  are evening establishing shots of the room and Nerine lives in at the bottom of the lighthouse. Then the door opens and Nerine enters. She puts down her bags and looks to her desk to reveal on top an eviction notice of the lighthouse but she pushes that away to look at sympathy cards she's received. The viewpoint will show a family portrait hanging on the wall. Then as she's putting on a pot of tea she notices the sun sets and the other lighthouse automatically comes on.  She hurriedly makes her climb up the steps to manually turn on her light. Its not near as bright and the beam doesn't travel as nearly far out as its predecessor. By Nerine turning on the light every night even though its clearly not needed it further develops her need of this light being on even if it serves no other purpose than for herself. I think it allows for more sacrifice and tension when she finally decides to turn it off later. I was thinking of when she uses Morse code to talk to the returning fishermen that the kettle of tea has started whistling which startles/distracts Nerine and that allows for her to shine the light down into the water. Then it gives the fish some time for introduction and the plot to show consequence setup while she is distracted. When she returns to the light she witnesses the beast attacking the boat below. Also from the feedback I received I was thinking of a more "nebulous" time setting where its clearly established that man utilizes electricity and sensor monitoring devices but that not all individuals take on such advances nor are they always present.