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2004 YEAR END REVIEW 04
(scroll down to see the previous posts
Car troubles continued in October as I had to replace lights on my almost ten year old Metro. I got that sorted out and got down to some storyboarding. This time on a promotional scene that was to be part of a video raise awareness of my Daniel: Visions and Dreams project. I started doing my boards all paperless. To finalize this process I bought a laser printer so that I could still have them at my side as I worked.
It was long before images from the sequence I boarded starting moving across the screen. The actual production of this sequence wouldn't take as long as one might expect due to the one greatest advantage of my method of working. I wrote this:
The build up of reusable assets is essential to this work. Thanks to J4A, I had some assets which allowed me to make short work of one of the scenes I needed to get done today. This is why I am able to sit here posting before I get ready to run off to class.
The class in question was a Bible class being held nightly at my church. I was the "Quiz Man" who quized the attendees on the subject studied the previous night. Because of the long drive to the location and the hours spent wrapping up after each class, this took a lot of time from the production of the sequence. I was opreparing to put together a large battle scene.
That same month, one of my favorite actors, Christopher Reeve passed away. I also resigned my favorite hat, the one I wear in the LChaos interviews, to the trash bin. I even started getting into healthy cooking.
By the middle of the month I realized why you don't see epic battle sequences appearing in TV anime. this one scene was taking me forever it seemed. I could have written around it, I suppose, but I wanted to meet the challenge and conquer. While I normall do two scenes per day, this one scene took over a week to do. The animation for that sequence was now complete, but the last two weeks of October saw little work being done after that.
November saw me firing up Cakewalk Music Creator to score the promotional scene. Rather than go right into doing voiceover for it, though, I went on to begin putting together the larger promotional video of which this scene was to be only a small part. The plan was to record vocals for the entire thing when finished.
I finally received my actual boxed copy of modo and later in the week I completed cutting the promotional video to temp music, using some of my favorite soundtracks. The next step would be to write original music to replace that. I think it was around this time that I saw the film Van Helsing and when into a rant about bad CGI in film these days and that older movies used CGI only where something couldn't be done another way. I wrote:
This mode of thought has been done away with in recent FX work. Now everything has be CGI simply because "it can". As a result, CGI continues to get worse and worse such that even old Sinbad films boast better effects than modern fare simply they worked within their means.
By the middle of the month, after some email problems, I had the promotional scene done. I was getting excited about this project and wrote:
What is great about this method is that my first completed piece now contains a bit of everything necessary to realize the entire first episode. I have done a bit of everything. Now I only need do more of the same to complete the first episode. The first episode will then be a piece of what is needed to do the entire series. See how that motivation works?
I was planning to change this website to focus on the Daniel project. I didn't post for about two weeks, but came back with the entire 25 minute promotional video complete. I claimed to be at the point where production could begin. That month ended with me doing an interview for CG Focus.
I showed the completed video to some friends and church members and the very postive comments got me even more excited about the future of this show. Everyone saw great potential. Then it happened...
I was broke. Being so caught up int he completion of the project I neglected the cares of life. My accounts were in the red. I even went a week without food. I do not post anything except the above image for the first two weeks of December.
I began to search for work. I started checking all the job postings and sending out reels and resumes. The question was, Am I already to late? Good possibilities quickly popped up, but they always seemd to fall down. At this point I didn't much care where the gig was I was going to go for it. This was much worse than when a similar thing happened in July of 2002.
At the end of production on Shadowskin I went completely broke as well. My accounts were very negative and it was time to break out the ramen noodles. In that time, though, I had little reason to worry. I just finished a major DVD at it was to be released in a matter of days. When I got my boxes of Shadowskin DVD's and put them up for sale on my website, I made about $3000 in the first week or so. Everything was solved and Shadowskin continued to sell well for a time after that. I had no such hand to play this time. Many things went to Ebay as a result.
Eventually things turned around and I was back in action. I didn't have a concrete plan though. I started posting information about how I did past works on the site at the request of many readers. I got as far as posting about a couple of the backgrounds done in Understanding Chaos, then I came to do this review.
THE CONCLUSION
I believe that, on the whole, this year turned out better than 2003. The issue, as far as why it was not as great as it could have been, is focus. As someone wrote in and mentioned, sometimes we have to do the paying gigs and put the indie stuff aside. I would add to that that such gigs must be chosen wisely, lest they totally eliminate time for the indie work. The indie artist must also protect themselves from burnout. This leads to many hours in front of the TV or PS2 rather than being productive. Better to work just a tiny amount per day over a long period than cram 16 hours a day for two weeks and then die.
I believe the solution is something I may have written about before. Remember what I wrote in 2003? It is the way of Chaos! That project was done on nights and weekends, but what it amounts to was sustaining work on a project, a little bit at a time, an average of two shots per day, until it was in the can. Even if more free time is available, it doesn't mean you have to use it. That would be like sprinting to try and finish a marathon faster. Bad idea. The key is to set a pace and get it done! What better pace to set than that of Chaos? That's a project that is proven!
THE PLAN
I am going back to work. I believe it is a necessary part of the way of Chaos and essential to doing a long term project. Remember, in 2003 I wrote:
I can tell you of a certainty that next year will see the creation of my first one-man feature Occult Salvation. It may not get finished next year. It will be a true feature at the best possible quality, thus taking time to do right, but it will get past a simple trailer!
I believe that doing it as Chaos was done, even if it takes two years, is the only way to see the kind of high impact project I really want to create come to life. Of course, Chaos tells me it won't take two years, but the method is more important than the schedule.
On January 3rd I will return to sending reels and resumes to all corners of the globe and go whereever my broad skillset takes me. I do have my preferences, but I am not holding out for anything. I want to get started on a solid plan. I will continue to post production information on how I did Understanding Chaos, Shaodwskin, J4A and Hartz until that plan is a reality. When I know where, if anywhere, I am going and what the plan is for my anime, you will see ti here first!
See you next year!
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2004 YEAR END REVIEW 03
(scroll down to see previous posts)
July was not off to a serious start. I continued to takes days off, but I wrote this:
I've been thinking about a lot of things over the last few days. My direction being one of them, but chiefly thinking about rushing. Am I in a hurry to get somewhere? Pulling of Understanding Chaos in about a month was quite an accomplishment. I often find myself thinking, If I were doing something full time, how much more could be done? Really, though, how much faster do I need to be?
I think this line of thinking led me to create impossible schedules which leads to impossible goals. What's the rush? It's not like World War III is about to happen and the world is going to end right? :)
Seriously, I think its time to think about settling down, slowing down, and pounding out something long term.
Remember that theme I kept saying would pop up during the course of this year? One would think I should realize the error of my ways and stat following my own advice right? Well, instead I spent the next two weeks watching about 90 episodes of Naruto. This was quickly followed by Fullmetal Alchemist and maybe some other shows before I came to my senses.
Around July 20th, I posted the Daniel trailer. I claimed that I would be doing an new anime demo reel and that even my services page would be returning. Those two tings never happened. The were no more posts for that month.
August began with a post about Kimi ga Nozomu Eien, so I was clearly still "studying" anime. That show was not science fiction or anything out of the ordinary. What it did was make me realize just how much I missed Japan. At this point, it was just over two years since I had been there. My life had changed incredibly since I went. I still lived in Vegas back then. Everything was just different. I guess it was just part of that desire to "go back" in more ways than one. That desire has not entirely left me. At this time I was really focusing on doing a project for Japan.
I did a short review at that time because I was unsatisifed with my progress. I wrote:
Honestly, I think I should have had a project done by now. Even a big project. It's time to find out why that is not the case.
I happened upon Makoto Shinkai's web page after nothaving visited in ages. His latest project had balooned from what was a 50 mintue direct to DVD project, last time I checked, to a full blown feature that was getting limited theatrical release in Japan! Here was a guy who was sitting around thinking about doing stuff. He was doing stuff.
After watching several entire anime series, such as Wolf's Rain, E's Otherwise, Gilgamesh, Peacemaker Kurogane, Tsukihime and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, not to mention six seasons of Buffy, season five of Highlander, Season five of Stargate and all the Superman movies, I hit the books to start researching for my projects, one of which was called "truth Explorers.
That month ended with the release of the Canon XL2, a true 16x9 24P DV camera. The world of indie film was about to be forever changed!
September began with me fixing up one of my characters for Truth Explorers. While Madhouse was gettign set to do an anime Highlander film, I was going Tablet PC crazy again! I wrote this:
I just read on the Mirage forums of how an artist worked on a 2D animated, theatrically released commercial using Mirage and a tablet PC. That is amazing news. My dreams of sitting in a five star hotel in China, drawing manga or anime on my tablet while hooked wirelessly to the supplied DSL in the room are not just a vain fantasy. It could actually happen! What a world we live in!
Tablet PC models weren't the only thing. The very tablet was using at the time, the WACOM Intuos 2 tablet was being used by my favorite studio, Prodcution I.G., ona brand new series. This show, though I have not actually seen it, has impacted me greatly from what I have seen on the net in different galleries. There's a lot to learn here, but more on that next year.
I completed sketching the characters for Truth Explorers and began storyboarding a "proof of concept" trailer. I was also thinking a lot about people wanting to get their projects made, but following what I feel is the old studio path. I wrote this:
Of course you know the chances of success on this path are slim. The chances that the large studios will invest the kind of money and rescources needed to get a major anime project off the ground into a total unknown is next to nothing. This biz just like any other aspect of showbiz, even Hollywood is all about who you know. Even then nothing is sure. That last thing you want to do is spend years of your life shopping scripts around and pitching ideas to exectuives who wouldn't know a good anime if it ran over them in Jaguar! I know people who have done this.
As I began to feel some fo the projects I was doing were too big for me, I started writing a new schedule to try and fit everything in. Coupled with my thoughts on the previous issue, I wrote this:
Remember this images that I posted about. This guy went out with his friends on weekends for over a year to get his movie made. He got it done. He went on to do the popular film Memento. It goes to show where a little perseverance will get you. Even if just an hour per day...
Around that time, the Luxology modelling packge modo was released and I was finally able to talk about the tool I was using for most of the work on Daniel: Visions and Dreams.
In the last post of that month, a tire blew out on my car, and I was left stranded on the side of the road.
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2004 YEAR END REVIEW 02
(scroll down for previous posts)
The decision I made in March, to do this children's video was mainly financielly motivated. Rather try and sustain myself through a long feature process, I thought it better to do something short. A children's show can be 30 mintues on a DVD and still sell well. I figured getting some project out quickly and maybe starting a series would make other plans possible. I am not sure I really wanted to do this show. That is probably why only one sequence, of about two mintues, got done.
In April, I wrote this:
New things pop up on occasion and sometimes things change considerably. I have been doing a wide variety of side gigs for some time. I did J4A, which turned out to be a fiasco where it may never find its way to air. I did an anime style pilot, for which I was paid, but have yet to hear from those for whom I did it. I have done some sound FX editing work and a few other things.
With my plans for much larger scale publishing on future projects, comes the need for much larger scale gigs. Those gigs are becoming increasingly easy to find, probably because of the DVD released through TOKYOPOP. More people are calling, not that I'm complaining. The time is here to build up the means and methods to do the future release right!
The month of April took me to ZOIC Studios, best known for their work on the Joss Whedon television properties such as Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Angel and Firefly. I actually saw Joss Whdeon there! I wasn't on one of his shows though.
I worked on John Woo's remake of lost in Space. You can see some of the work I did on it in my 2004 reel by clicking here. Of course, that took up all my time and little else got done. On the plus side, I got a lot of money. I also learned Combustion 3, which is a top notch compositor.
Working on the last leg of s huge studio project pretty much takes up all hours of the day. Needless to say, very little got done on my own projects. By then end of the month, TOKYOPOP told me they were holding actual copies of World of Hartz in hand, and TechTV Japan called to get script information to translate Understanding Chaos for showing in Japan. Not a bad month if I do say so myself.
In May I was in a bit of a slump. This means I probably spent most of my time watching anime. I also decided to restructure how I work based on the new things I learned at the studio. World of Hartz hit the shelves, and I wrote a new schedule to better manage my time and get more work done. J4A won a videographers award, but there was still no word on if it would ver hit TV.
I started doing models for Daniel, tested new software and worked a bit on a freelance video game gig. I realized that it had been two months since the mind animation tests and yet I hadn't taken it anywhere. I had a lot of money from the studio gig though, so I was probably buying lots of DVD's. That same month, SOny announce the release of a 3 CCD HDV camera to counter JVC's earlier release of a single chip model. The HDV wars had begun and I raved about this on the net in many places. On the whole it seemed to be a month of passive observation.
In June J4A won a Telly award and I finally put mind animation to the test on the opening sequence of Daniel: Visions and Dreams. This was my first foray into full high definition work, outside of a major studio anyway. I used much of what I learned on my last studio gig to make the transition.
I didn't post for the first two weeks of that month. Near the end of the month, my computer died and I did a full system restore:
I began to revisit the issue of cloth simulation. As I have written many times, my goal has never been to do a full 3D CGI movie. I want to do anime as it has always been. I see no reason to think I can or should improve upon it. Anime cloth and hair don't move like realistic cloth and hair and so I decided the days of full cloth simulation in anime were over. By the end of the month, I installed my music software to prepare to score the trailer. This was clearly a slow time.
More to come...
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2004 YEAR END REVIEW 01
The end of 2003 seemed to show great promise going into 2004. I got a new LCD monitor and computer equipment, an all digital orchestral library and other sound equipment, and I even created a new skeleton rig for my Lightwave 3D characters. I also wrote this:
I can tell you of a certainty that next year will see the creation of my first one-man feature Occult Salvation. It may not get finished next year. It will be a true feature at the best possible quality, thus taking time to do right, but it will get past a simple trailer!
Needless to say, not even a trailer has been done on this project.
It gets better though. Because of the demise of Westwood Studios, I wrote this:
If I hadn't made a concrete decision never too return to working at studios before this, the decision was made then. I still stand by that decision to this day. I will never, under any circumstances, return to working in that environment.
Well, I didn't stand by that long. I did go back into that environment and there found myself working on this project:
Yet another remake of Lost in Space, this time directed by the famous John Woo. Of course, like so many other major Hollywood projects I get involved with, this show, according to this site right here, has been entirely scrapped. More on that later.
I will break this review into four sections each covering three months of 2004. This time I will even bring out some details that may not have surfaced during the original posts. You'll notice a certain theme coming up during this, even based on what I wrote at the end of 2003. Something I continually wrote that I should do, but have not done. That will be the focus of these reviews.
Let's get to the actual review:
This year began with the creation of this character. Immediately after, I found myself in Marina Del Rey at what was called a "workers meeting" with many pastors from my church. Now I had never been even remotely religious up until very recently; however, the more I studied pyramids, archaeology, ancient civilizations and symbols, history and prophecy, everything changed. So here I was in a meeting in a beautiful hotel as we talked about what could be accomplished in ministry over the next year. My focus was on using new media technologies in the effort. I wrote this:
Man this reminds me of the time spent in China, on high floors, looking out over incredible views. Granted, back then it was the beautiful city of Shanghai with that great harbor. This time it's the ocean. If I was at my computer I would check to see if I wrote something on Q's old blog about the hotels there. (*whispers* I hate to say it, but this hotel, nice as it is, is not quite up to the level of those I stayed in over there.)
Because of some of the great imagery seen there, including a beautiful moon over the ocean with seemingly painted clouds, I wished I had a digital camera, something I have yet to purchase to this day. After that short stay in Marina Del Rey, I created another character, and then I wrote this:
I will soon be wrapping up the old, starting with the World of Hartz manga. I have one final chapter to do for the book. Now if I was a Japanese artist like Masashi Kishimoto of Naruto fame, this would be a week's task. I may not do it that fast, but I don't expect to spend all month on it either. I will do the "name" for this new chapter tomorrow and Friday. All of it. Over the next week I will finalize the pages and call this book in the can. I mean, a whole year to do one manga. Let's be realistic. Still, I will not get into that. That was last year. I will wrap it up.
Yes, I was still finishing up Hartz. So something was getting done, but I also wrote this:
I don't yet have solid production schedules for my new projects. I don't know how long they will take, but they will be pursued diligently and you will see constant updates of new characters, images and trailers as great changes overtake this site in the coming months.
As you know, that didn't quite happen.
As the evil Disney closed their Florida studio and offshoots sprung up, Sony's Playstation II gained a 66% market share and I was diligently thinking about not repeating the mistakes of 2003 and getting Occult Salvation into a booming DVD market. I wondered what would happen if an indie artist found a way to make a feature in six months. January ended with Pixar quitting talks with Disney over renewing thir contract for distribution.
February began with me planning to finally wrap up Hartz. While Disney had more troubles with Pixar, I decided to upgrade my music equipment to the 21st century and go USB on everything. I also took notice of what Shoji Kawamori was doing with Macross Zero!
By the middle of the month I finally saw the trailer for the all cel shaded CGI movie Appleseed. While it impressed on one level, I wrote this:
Now I will let it be known up front. I prefer traditional. Even though I use 3D techniques, and even that has lessened due to Mirage and a WACOM tablet, I do not want it to ever look 3D or seem to have any aspect of 3D to it. Still, this looks to be a very interesting project.
I handed in the final pages of Hartz and then, borrowing someone's digital camera, I started taking pictures. I began to realize how digital photos could be integrated into my work for use as 3D textures and matte painting elements to vastly improve quality and speed of doing higher quality movies. I wanted to get a professional camera of my own as this was a "point and shoot" model. The month ended with me doing more research on ancient Mesopotamia.
In March, I redesigned this webpage and inplemented the famous (or is it infamous?) contact form which spared me from the over 100 SPAm mails I received daily. It is around that time I began to totally lose interest in any single software package being "the best" and thought to look at all tools for whatever was their worth in getting the job done. March also saw the beginning of Mind Animation!
In reference to how it made doing anime like digital music, I wrote:
In doing anime, my keyboard is using Lightwave 3D models. My tracks are the multiple layers in Mirage for compositing. I could conceivably have room to experiment, calling nothing final until I deem every layer to be what I want. If have models, and even they don't have to be final if you think about it, I can start animating something right now, this instant. I am talking about right from my head, where this is the storyboard or animatic. I can then refine, even replacing entire layers with something better until a scene is complete.
I think this will make the process truly fun again. I think this will enable me to dive right into something and just be creative. Having something to tweak and fix is much better than sitting around thinking continually.
These experiments led me to totally refine and update my 3D character models for high definition. This was probably some of the best progress I had made. One one expect that with this new found freedom I would go right into production on that feaure I talked about at the end of 2003. That was not the case though. I did do a single shot on a feature project, but I then moved on to something else.
The idea was to protect from burnout by doing two vastly different projects at the same time. I would learn later that was not the best road to getting a serious project done.
More to come...
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Well, it's none other than time for the 2004 year end review! I want to, same as last year, have a look at what I accomplished over the course of this year and see what I can do to improve the quality of my work as well as productivity going into 2005.
I suspect that this time around I will be quite a bit more please with the results than in 2003, which I thought was somewhat wasted. Still, it remains to be seen so let's have a look at what took place in 2004.
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WIRING
Here is a screen capture of the set which was discussed in the previous post. The model is really not all that complex, but is enough to get the point across with some help from lighting and texturing. Yes, this set is fully textured.
One thing I do not do is cel shade my backgrounds. Anime simply doesn't look like that. Some of my favorite anime had backgrounds that approach photo realism. This is not always the case and it depends very much on the mood of the show. The backgrounds that work for Blood: The Last Vampire just wouldn't fit in an anime like FLCL.
As you can see here, once the background is rendered and run through a few filters it creates a look that fits for what this show was. In some cases I may want a more painted look, or a more realistic look. Another thing you do not see in my backgrounds is ink outlines. A few shows do this, but most anime has backgrounds as complete paintings. In the best shows, the backgrounds could stand alone.
As I mentioned before, because this environment shows up so much in the film, it was worth it to build the set completely. This has an upfront cost in labor, but afterwards it can be shot from any angle and used as much as needed, just like a film set. This is one of the many advantages that makes a single artist doing a project like Chaos possible.
This idea is not lost on the anime world in general. In the popular show Witch Hunter Robin they completely built many of the main sets in 3D so that they gained the same benefit. This is but one way of working though. Many shows are planned such that this is not necessary. In the Production I.G. television series Otogizoushi, backgrounds are so simple as to eliminate the need. Still because of great lighting and shot planning, the show looks amazing. I may try something like tat in future mind animation experiments.
Some things I will discuss next are the 2D/3D combo background (my favorite), totally painted work, compositing and even working in digital photography to achieve the final image.
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Return to the Mind
I have been giving quite a bit of thought to what I once called Mind Animation. Those not familiar with what that is can check the archives of March 2004. In thinking about this, though, I concluded that it may be time for more experimentation in this area. Did you know that the entire sequence seen in the Daniel: Visions and Dreams trailer was done via mind animation?
That's not what this post is about though. It's about technique! Many have requested that I post more on techniques used in my backgrounds and I often get requests on cel shading tips as well. So now I will start doing just that.
I will eventually get into what went into creating this background, done via mind animation, and the methods used when I did it, but I think it is best to understand what led me here. I want to first begin by saying that I do not now, and I have never set out to make a 3D film. If I did, it certainly wouldn't be cel shaded. That is not my interest. My interest is and has always been making anime. SO please don't assume that there will be a multitude of 3D tutorials found here or techniques to create full CGI films or even 3D anime like Appleseed. No such thing will be found here. What you will find is the methods I used to create the films which are past, and those I will use from this point on. I will begin expounding on what was, eventually covering what is, and then I will post on things which have not yet come to pass. We must always keep up with the latest developments and be ready at all times to change with our software, embrace new tools and roll with the tide which takes us to better and faster production.
If I had the understanding that I have today when I did Understanding Chaos, it would be a very different work. It's still my favorite, but I think I was something of slave to 3D in that day. This scene, however, is one where it was rightly used. Interestingly, I just read an article on starwars.com about building miniatures for Episode III. The guy interviewed said that if an environment is in 20 shots or more, then it becomes cost effective to build a miniature. The same basic idea applies here. The last half of Chaos takes place in this set, so it was more than a good idea to totally build it in 3D. That sped up the process of creating sequences in this room immensely.
I basically built the entire set in Lightwave 3D and even placed the lens flares in the set in 3D, something I would never do today. Still this was great for speed. I basically brought the finished renders of this set into Aura and ran filters on them to create something of a painted look. For those using Aura, the filters used were under Median Blur, and I generally ran an edge double with a value of 4 and then a light mark or dark mark with a value of 2. I chose based on how light or dark the background needed to be. These processes will be explained in greater detail as these posts go on. Look for a breakdown of this in the next technique post!
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OK... so nothing happened.
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