Well, I got a nice break this afternoon. A couple hours of freak thunderstorms allowed me to step away from the computer and do some much needed house work. Mark and I unplugged all electronics just in case. The last thing we needed was another surge.
But I went back to work this evening and managed to animate the ending to my film. I still need to animate the zebra's mouth biting the caveman's hand better. But I am happy that I was able to animate this so quickly. I am definitely becoming more comfortable with flash.
Oh, cool little trick...I bought a bendable wood figure to help me draw and position my caveman. Here's a frame grab and the clip:
For all my test animations and test stop motions...I have been using the chroma keyer in Final Cut Pro. I use my video camera to shoot my toys in front of a green screen, then I use software I dial out the green. But, I think I can get a better key if I shoot with my still camera, then delete the green background using photoshop. It's easy to get rid of the green using the magic wand. Then you have an image with a transparent background. The trick is keeping that background transparent once you save it. The only way I knew how to do this was to make animated GIFs. These take a lot of processing power, and I gave up on that a long time ago. But I remembered something about alpha channels that might work. I am going to write it down here so I can come back if I forget. I feel like I re-invent the wheel every couple of years when it comes to some of the obscure tricks in photoshop.
The way you maintain a transparent background in Photoshop using alpha channels: 1. double click on your layer in the layer palette to unlock it 2. click the "channels" tab next to the layer tab 3. click on the "new channel" button at the bottom (this adds the alpha channel) 4. turn the eyeball on all the channel layers 5. do a "save as" and make sure the "alpha channels" button is checked 6. import into Final Cut Pro
It seems like there should be a more intuitive way to do this. I would love to hear if anyone has a simpler method.
Here's a frame grab of my alpha channel test. There is still a lot of green around the pigs, but I did not light this correctly. Once I shoot everything in the studio, there shouldn't be any green outline.
I also taught myself how to export flash movies with transparent backgrounds. To do this using Flash: 1. Have an animation ready and select "export" then "export movie" 2. Choose the save as a QuickTime format 3. Click Save 4. make sure the "Ignore stage color (generate alpha channel)" is checked 5. Click export 6. Import file into Final Cut Pro
Yeah! One of my instructors really likes my rough cut. (I haven't heard back from the other three). The one I heard from said I was on the right path and only needed to finesse the script and do the real animations. That's the best news I have heard in a long time. He even mentioned he would like to use my film on TerraPod and that I could be paid.
If two of the three other faculty like my film well enough to join my committee, I am on my way to finishing up my masters. Fingers crossed!
I bought another character pack from cartoonsolutions. It's for my final scene where I talk about how someone forgot to include the sugar when the zebra was made. I did actually do the drawings for the salt, sugar, and bowl. The bowl and sugar need work. But I am happy with the salt. Eventually I will animate the mom putting salt into the bowl instead of sugar.
Well, here I am...in my own bed, with my cat curled in my arm. It's nice to be home. Had a great vacation seeing my folks and friends. I showed my rough cut to everybody. It definitely needs a lot of script work. Everyone liked the ideas and animation. But I need to work on the structure so the 7 domesticity traits are clearer. Hopefully that will give the end more oomph. I sent 4 copies to professors in Montana. We'll see if I hear anything back. I may have to fly up there to remind people I am still alive.
During our 12-day, Oklahoma extravaganza, we went to Tahlequah to float the river, went to Grand Lake to go houseboating, fishing, and seadooing, went to Tulsa to take the godkids swimming, bowling, and to the drive-in, and then we went to Lake Tenkiller, El Reno, and the OKC Zoo/Omniplex. We were never bored. It was nice to get to spend a few days with everyone this time. I especially had fun shooting pictures with both my photographer parents. I even had time to teach my step-mom the joys of uploading and emailing photos. On the plane ride home, I read an inspiring book called "Rebel Without a Crew" about a student filmmaker that made a feature film by himself over a summer and only spent $7000. Then he turned around a sold it for gobs of money and became a big player Hollywood. Not exactly what I want to do, but I am making a low/no budget kid's film, and I know that if I can only coax this film out of my head the way I am envisioning it, it could take the festivals and kids by storm.
With the inspiration from the book, I had hoped to come home and delve immediately back into the film. But it turns out Mark and I didn't have a very fun home-coming. Half the power was out when we got home. We had to trash all the food in the fridge. It reminded me of the many times the power went out when I lived in an old garage apartment. I can't count the times the food went bad and had to throw everything out.
Anyway, back to today...it also turns out several of our new "smart" strip surge protectors blew. And now our TV is fried. I am bummed. We bought it for my last birthday. Now we are back to squinting at my old TV. But at least we had the sense to unplug my G5. I don't think I could handle loosing my thesis film files again.
Hopefully I can get back on track once I get an electrician in tomorrow. Until then, I am afraid to plug the G5 in.
I just finished making a bunch of DVDs to send to my professors in Montana. Feels good to have that off my back. Now I can head home for my vacation without that worry. We'll see if we can cope with an Oklahoma summer.
Here's a screen grab of the DVD menu. I did two compressions exactly the same way. For some reason the nested version that had the timecode generator filter... did wacky/terrible things to the resolution. Anyone know why? I didn't have time to figure out why, so I came up with a work around. I am giving my professors two versions. One at good quality for their viewing enjoyment, and one with burned in timecode that looks like I filmed everything with a single-chip camera. My professors only need the timecode to tell me at what time in the show they have suggestions, revisions, and unsolicited praise (I hope).
Here's the official rough cut intro. Very exciting! As of the end of day tomorrow, I will be sending the whole 8 and half minute rough cut to my advisors in Montana.
Please keep in mind all the music, narration, animation, green screening, and rotoscoping are place holders. I will be re-doing everything with a fine tooth comb once I have the some feedback from those that be in Montana.
