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No cursing here! Mebbe...
2006-01-19 15:18:54
It's pretty bad the language some people use in their journals. I am not an avid reader of them, but it seems like a pretty bad sign that all but ONE which I've peeked at is not family-friendly.
Bad bad bad bad baaaad stuff. My project, not the cursing. I am succumbing to the advanced stages of massive loss of interest in something I've been working hard on for, well, months now. I have a really, really bad habit of throwing myself headlong into the planning of a project (whatever it may be), and then immediately ditching it when the time comes to act on those plans. Apparently I should be a wedding planner, taking care never to plan my OWN big day. *rolls eyes*
Fortunately I can force myself to work on "Addict." Besides playing touchy-feely with AE and attempting to learn all I can about it, so as to discover the most efficient way of implementing the assorted plans I have, I'm doggedly roughing out my video sequences (on paper) and becoming more and more depressed the clearer it becomes that I don't have the footage I need. NOT because I didn't rip it, but because it doesn't exist in the series. This calls for massive compositing and basically hand-drawn frames, something that bores the hell out of me. Whoops, I said a bad word!
Throw in a significant amount of back pain, neck pain, hip pain and eye strain; a stack of anime-to-be-watched piling up beside my desk, staring at me accusingly; school starting in a little more than a week; financial pressures; getting into a nasty fight with my sister (she used bad words and hung up on me); my driver's side, interior door handle deciding to break, trapping me in my vehicle every time I get in; taking a cat to the vet and discovering this previously healthy pet is about to die a horrible death by drowning on his own leaking lymphnodes, so must immediately be put down; my dog looking more and more pathetic every day, causing massive bouts of guilt because every moment I spend on my AMV is time away from her, and she's already alone 8 hours a day; ... bleh.
Any words of encouragement are appreciated.
"Nice job, Lauren, if you don't finish this AMV and it doesn't come out well, you just wasted hundreds of hours of your free time, contributed to your health problems, alienated your sweet little dog and are just not a decent person."
Thanks, thanks a lot. -
How cool is this?
2006-01-16 12:54:51
#1. I discovered an effect filter in AE 6.5 that allows you to display, in real time, the waveform of your audio in a variety of ways. Can you imagine the shortcut possibilities?? Yeee!! I'm sure this has some kind of potential.
#2. AE's paint mode allows you to clone - get this - not only video from another clip, but the audio from another clip! Aka, you do not need to exhaustively mask out and in a character's mouth to lip sync, just paint the little bugger on! Or, even better (but potentially complicated), find a clip of that character speaking whose mouth most closely matches the lyrics you want to sync, then use the clone brush to add THAT mouth over the mouth of the actual clip you want to use and voila. You don't even need to go into PS to do any of this. :D
#3. Nifty (for me, since I didn't know) is the alpha channel paint mode, which easily allows one to mask in/out a layer's transparency simply by brushing it on. Great for cleaning up ugly artifacts, random pixels and harsh edges.
Yah, so we're moving on to phase two of my hours on this project. It took me about 90 hours to achieve ready-to-edit status. (Appalling, I know, but you have to remember how often I screwed up, or was screwed over or just was really slow.) Phase two will count the hours actually spent putting "Addict" together. The tally so far? It's a little hard to say, given the work I've already done (but may not end up using at all). Let's have it stand at 15 hours right now. Yesterday was a marathon session of about 4-5 hours, in which time I managed to create a whole 2 seconds of footage because I had to manually mask (in PS) just about every frame. These two seconds will eventually be layered on some other stuff, so it's not like I'm finished with it, or anything. The only benefit of this is that those frames are much cleaner than the originals, thanks to my removal of certain artifacting problems in PS. Why the heck didn't I just mask them out? Well, I have this *problem* with creating and using alpha channel masks, that's why, though I wish I didn't! Also, that footage was more quickly fixed frame by frame in PS than masked out with keyframes.
So:
Pre-editing: 90
Editing: 15
Total: 105 -
*twiddles thumbs*
2006-01-12 15:59:43
I'd like to know if "twiddle" is actually a verb. How silly!
Total hours: 97
Yeah...so...I am all bouncy because I (think) I've got a fairly good grasp on rotoscoping now, a must-have skill for "Addict." The only thing holding me back is going to be my own understanding of its many, many uses. But I know how to convincingly composite a (real flying, twitching) butterfly, now, and anime is a lot more forgiving. ^_^
I discovered that I'm looking forward to AB a lot more now that the pressure is off to complete my AMV in time to enter the competition. Now I've just got to keep plugging away at "Addict" without my better half cracking a whip, which could be a problem in a few weeks when I'm swamped with school.
Ha, yeah. Apparently they expect me to spend four hours, twice a week, working on various design projects. I can't wait to ask if I absolutely HAVE to spend four hours on these projects if I can finish them in less - they're apparently logging my hours because I'LL be logging onto the school's network whilst I work. Not very fair, I don't think. Yes, I remember how tedious graphic design is when you're starting out, so I completely understand why the four hour thing is there, but I'm pretty comfortable with these programs and will not be laboring away at learning basic keyboard shortcuts (or worse, not using them at all). *sigh*
I keep having to rein in my own cockiness about thewhole matter, since I AM going there to learn from people who know a lot more than I do, after all. grr... be humble, damnit! It's a good thing I love learning new stuff. -
Sick
2006-01-09 16:47:26
Tack six-eight hours onto my total hours. That's time spent fruitlessly, I might add. I cannot for the life of me get alpha channel masks to work. And I really, REALLY, need them to work.
Gathering my manga, attempting to ignore soul-splitting sinus headache, plugging away at my project, box of tissues close at hand...I imported all my clips into Premier and have them nicely organized. There are a lot fewer than I thought there'd be. Still, 18 GB of clips is pretty hefty, I'd say, considering most are barely a few seconds long.
Hmm, made a new sig, not overly pleased with the result, but it'll do, for now. You can't really read the "Coming <blank> 2006" part, though. May have to fix this, maybe turn it into a dreaded GIF.
Headache...so bad...I can't see out of my left eye. @_- <--- me
~Drift, signing out. -
Yah, so there was this guy who walked into this bar...
2006-01-07 11:51:50
Total hours: 91
It's a bad joke on me if what I think is happening is happening. Things look ok in VDM, ok in WMP, OK in everything BUT Premiere and AE. eeeeeee! Is my footage corrupted? Has it turned against me at last?!
I've unconsciously decided not to rush and attempt to finish this AMV in time to enter in AB's competition. It's not going to happen and I want this thing to be the best it can be (duh). If it DOES happen, well, that will be a minor miracle and I'm not a godly person. Erm, something else...oh yes, had a few epiphanies during my latest brainstorming session, things seem to be coming together in terms of making the AMV a coherent, nicely wrapped-up bundle of weirdness. The use of manga will, most likely, be used exclusively for a few, select effects. Gotta get those fangirls screaming right from the start.
This morning was spent fiddling with mattes in AE. I learned how to (better) use that damned pen tool, why roto beziers are not necessarily my friend and how liberal the original Saiyuki animators were with shortcuts. These shortcuts are going to make things hell for me, because many of them involve layering two or more foreground frames (motion frames) over one another at 50% against a 100 opaque background. This means that I cannot matte out areas consistently, because inevitably parts of the background show through.
The solution? Rather simple, I'll either delete that nasty 50% opaque frame and pretend it didn't exist OR do a lot of exporting to Photoshop to create a false frame of the two+ composite layers and insert this layer over the troublesome area. This shortcut of their's is, unfortunately, intended to make the original animation appear much smoother, which is why ripping it out will badly affect things in the long run.
I've also learned that messing with mattes in AE (at least with this series) might be better not done at all when things are fairly static, and instead be handled by simply importing mattes from PS. This is the next thing I'll try.
I'll probably make a new sig banner soon that more accurately reflects my project. I've got actual footage, now, so I can take whatever images I need from there. It will not be an animated GIF. (that's JIF, not ggggIF!)
In other news...that guy at the bar? He's no one I know, but if he's the butt of that joke then maybe it's better off that way.
JOURNAL: DriftRoot (Lauren C.)
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