Step 1...

Well After Effects and I had a little tiff yesterday. I was in the middle of something and didn't realise that somehow my motion track had disappeared so everything went to pot and had to start again right near the end as it just would not go back to normal. But I am glad to say I have finished it now! I am not happy with it though, I just don't think my idea is good enough and would have loved to change it, but I just don't have the time. My tutor said as long as we covered the skills he taught he didn't mind, and I think I've done that.

So here is a screen shot of each of my stages!

                                                                   My original footage

                                                                       Final Image

I have learnt a lot but it could be so much better.

Oh the pain of being a perfectionist...

Time to open my toolbox...

As you may fully be aware, After Effects and I have a love/hate relationship. But we have been to relationship counselling in the form of Graham my Digital Media lecturer. I used to look at it as a massive obstacle that I had to do all in one go, but I realise that it isn't. He explained that every tiny skill he learnt goes into his 'toolbox' so when he knows how to do something like keyframe the position of something or how to scale something then that's a skill, and you use all of these to do bigger tasks like set extension.

And I just did my first ever After Effects work on video yesterday and today :) even overcoming some of the worst problems ever! I am really pleased with myself, eventhough the piece of work could be better I learnt:
- Sky replacement
- Using masking (auto and by hand)
- Motion tracking
- Null objects
- Chromakeying properly
- How to use curves to add depth
- Change my image to black and white

And that's from a 20 second project!

My toolbox is starting to fill up nicely...

Do you have a weakness?

Wow! I am in week 7 of uni now, I was going to blog more but the documentary has taken up a lot of my time for single camera.

So what has happened the past few weeks, well, I didn't go any further with the Campbells Soup competition (I didn't place in the top 6) and I also haven't got anywhere with the Pepsi competition either. My time has been taken up by the Parkour documentary I am currently working on and digital media has already moved onto the 3rd project! I'm about to start my after effects work to be handed in for thursday.

These past few weeks have also made me realise something, a person is determined on how they deal with weak moments in life. Around week 4/5 I had a time where I thought I couldn't do it anymore, there is too much work and I didn't know how to cope. But I got through it. And the other day my friend went through a few days of turmoil, but he got through it too. It just makes you realise how strong minded you can be if you put effort into it and the weak moments you have can shape the person you are.

Let's stay positive :)

What a weekend!

From wednesday onwards it has been a crazy end of the week/weekend. I shall make a little list of what happened:
- Got on the team for the LAFTA's
- My Campbells Soup viral ad has got the final of the competition
- My camera came and I went straight out to take some photos of Hull Fair
- I finished the temple in Maya after 6 hours! Pictured below:

Phew! Been rather crazy. I'm in Lincoln now, chilling for a few weeks, mainly so I've got time to do my digital media project. 1 week to go and my creature hasn't even been built yet! However, I have made my little model to help me build it in the programme. Here he is:

Bring on week 3 of uni!

I'm expecting!

A Canon 550D that is! Ordered it yesterday and I'm so excited. I'm coming back to Hull on thursday to pick it up, just want it to come asap. To be honest, I have an extremely busy week ahead so it'll fly by! Today alone has been really busy, 3 lectures and then making my model for digital media. We have to create a creature to animate for our mini project, i find it hard to think of drawings as 3D so I'm actually making my model out of childrens modelling clay! Photos are going up tomorrow of all the different stages :)

I also went around to my friend Daves to work out Maya. I'm sort of getting through my temple! It's coming along okay, just taking me a really long time to understand it but I started going through it quicker just before I stopped. Here is the screenshot before I saved it:

I also applied for the LAFTAs, Lincoln unis media awards ceremony :) I have my interview on wednesday afternoon so I'm gonna be preparing myself for that tomorrow.

Busy busy week!!!

Choo chooooo

So my day consisted of seminars, a digital media workshop and running for the train home, which was delayed at one of the stops so i missed my train. Im posting from a hull trains service to, you guessed it, hull. Today i learnt quite a lot, had my first digital media workshop where i learnt Maya (photo attached of my first attempt). Its really hard, and thats a huge understatement. In 3 weeks im expected to have made a creature on there and animated it for use in a film or video game. Imma die. Me and my mate dave may be having editing parties as 2 of us could work out the basics and thats it. My work for the next lesson is to build a temple. Yes my dear readers, a freaking temple!! Bit of a step up from the weird shape on my picture.

This is gonna be interesting...

It's like someone lit a rocket...

Well, how times can change extremely quickly. With the combination of sweets, boredom and being able to organise my brain on my blog, not long after I posted my last update things suddenly changed. By sunday evening I had completely edited and had done the voiceover for one of my films and submitted it 24 hours before the deadline! Remarkable considering that at 3pm on saturday I had like no footage or any clue what I was doing.

I then got myself organised and applied for work experience at my university, setting up their awards ceremony for the media department. Should hear back from that soon but yeah, things just happened.

To be fair, my website is still no further and the next film that needs submitting really quickly has not even been captured onto my hard drive yet.

Meh, it'll all be fine!