Journal

For my school project, I had to create a brief animated sequence of more than fifteen seconds. I made a short film, but not in the way I expected. This blog is about how I got there and what I learned from this experience.

            My class was introduced to two animation programs, DAZ Studio and Anime Studio 9. DAZ was given more focus than Anime Studio, with the former becoming our default animation software for the class. I found myself not liking DAZ. I couldn’t wrap my head over animating in three dimensions, trying to move the character in an organic way that came off as doll-like instead, and accidently turning my character’s ankle into a conch shell after a failed attempt at restoring it. The software came with preset animation, but I wasn’t sure if it was allowed for the purpose of the assignment. The class were later reassured that my instructor, Dr. Williams, wasn’t looking for professionalism just understanding of the medium but I didn’t listen, too wrapped up trying to be a good animator.

            After a few weeks of looking at DAZ, I approached my instructor and asked if I could try animating with different software. At first my instructor welcomed the idea, until I proposed to try animating with Adobe After Effects. Dr. Williams' cheerfulness diminished, and looked completely unsure at the feasibility of this task, both from his inexperience with the software and my own. I assured him that I hoped to learn how and accomplish it, and he agreed to let me try, albeit with hesitation.

            In class I watched and researched tutorials on how to create an animated feature through After Effects. The web show How It Should Have Ended was initially influenced my decision to try the software as it looked like I could animate my own terms, 2D and simple character structure design. Also the school had After Effects and other Adobe software as well as I; I thought it would be easier to complete at home without relying on the school. I had an idea for a simple skit involving the boy finding a red ball and juggling it. When the boy flies out of frame, in reappears, still in straight trajectory. The rest of the skit would have feature gags ala Portal where he throws the ball forward and comes back hitting him in the back of the head. Then the floor loses its integrity and he starts falling only to grab onto a ledge and prevent his infinite fall.

             However, even when I made my decision in late March, I didn’t get started on my character rig once I became bombarded with more assignments, projects and obligations. Weekends were usually the time I spent to make my comic strips for the school newspaper and sometimes other assignments I could make up. My spare was spent reading material for my lit class or the Illusion of Life: Disney Animation to fuel my blogs for this class. I didn’t start designing my character until two weeks later, and even that took a while because the large file size caused it save slowly when I finished coloring it in class, causing me to give up and do it later after it was making me late for another class.

            It was the last week of the semester, I had just finished my major assignments and I was a day away from having to present my sequence in class. I was stressed, but I wasn’t scared. One animator said on her tutorial that she got a basic walk style for a giraffe in two hours. I import my file on After Effects and I was scared. What I got looked nothing like my original rig; It was huge, the color files were exposed and the line art disappeared. What I got was a bunch of Photoshop layer gobbledygook.

             In desperation, I downloaded DAZ studios, the software being free after all. I was nervous but finding out that when I input the key frames to my rig, the character transitions to that frame smoothly like it was animated, as opposed to original idea that it would appear stilted like 2D. When I tried to render it, hopefully in time to submit it for the presentation, everything went downhill. Rendering took hours, the process was faster when my computer was on but doesn’t do anything when it’s in sleep mode, and I didn’t get the chance to turn my sequence in and present it. After twelve hours, render was completed but the program said it couldn’t save it. After having no sleep that night, I was rightly irate, I screamed at the monitor.

            I tried rendering again at different settings, because I unknowingly picked four, the highest quality render and that factor into the delay, the program, however, would not respond when I tried the different settings, just a constant hourglass symbol. I had to reboot my computer several times when I came to the realization that only four will work and it did. Rendering was shorter, took over three hours while I kept my computer on and hot. I then edited the short through iMovie and added ominous sound effects. I wanted to add crunching sounds to make it appear my character’s bones are breaking and that he’s possessed but iMovie didn’t have it. Oh well.

            On my thoughts of the whole experience: I’ve come to the conclusion that I despise DAZ. After having a terrible experience with the software and that my computer became glitch-y once I downloaded it. The glitches went away when I deleted all traces of the software, and that’s saying something. Another lesson I could take is not biting more than I could chew. I attempted to do something that I had no training or experience and it backfired. However, my classmates experienced technical issues on their projects. “Animation has the potential to blow up in your face,” said Dr. Williams. I agree with him, but I also think it should be rephrased, “It’s less about the animation, and more about the technology that’s supposed to help you, not working.”