Weekly comments 4/12

It's always difficult coming back from spring break. This week was a work week so we had to work on our latest projects.

I want to learn how to be motivated to do my work on time, also lately I can't come up with any good ideas. they used to come to me really easily.

Something that frustrated me is my computer at home is ridiculous and can't run premiere or after effects very well.

Something that made me happy was this week being really short so the weekend came faster. I'm also going to toronto and I just like being in this city.

Cool link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/06/wes-anderson-movie_n_4225333.html

I did my research paper on Wes Anderson and I learned a lot of cool things about this film maker. I used this article as a reference, it has a bunch of things that show up in his films all of the time.

Neurocinema :~0

The term neurocinema is the study of how the brain and your emotions are affected by a film. We've all experienced suspense or paranoia from watching a film, but they say there's more to just that. In the video it talks about an experiment where subjects watched clips of a movie while in MRI machines so they can monitor their brain activity. They found that each of the subjects had similar brain activity watching the film and had similar eye movements as well. Their brains also increased activity and decreased activity at the same time while watching certain clips. It also talked about how films were used to control people during WWII with propaganda films. Films can be very powerful, and it talks about how films in the future could become interactive.

This article could probably explain why when we leave the movie theatre we feel like we've just come out of a trance. Its easy to manipulate someones emotions when you have the right sounds and music to go along with the film. It's kind of scary to think that films could control us in a bad way. But movies also make us think differently and can inspire us, so there's also a good part. Documentaries about certain issues can also affect our emotions. Art in general inspires us and controls our emotions but films are definitely one of the most powerful in affecting our brains.

a career, not a job in animation

This article talks about an animator who has worked in the industry for 36 years. He talks about the same ambition that we've all had before we start out as an animator, we want to work at Disney or Dreamworks. Some big company and we expect to be doing that the rest of our career. The author explains its not that easy to achieve and there are things that could constantly get in your way. He is basically saying that animation isn't a job because you have to find or keeping creating work yourself. Which is what he's done for his whole life, he's worked on several different projects and has had different roles in animation production. Like helping design Sebastian on the little mermaid or being a supervising animator for cogsworth on beauty and the beast & Aladdin. In between these projects he'd work as a freelance. He says that we should never take a job for granted and each of those jobs are part of career and help shape it.

This article isn't to scare away future animators and people who want to go into the industry, like myself, its to tell us what its going to be like as a career. Work isn't always going to come to you, you may have to find it yourself. Which is why you have to be really passionate about this kind of thing. Most of the events he talked about in this article happened 10 or 20 years ago, the industry is probably a lot different now and there may be more demand for jobs from animators too. I'm not sure what it's really like now. But despite the job outlook, he is right about animation being a career. Rather than a job.

How filming everyday can help you :{D

This article explains many ways that shooting everyday with a camera is beneficial. Practicing shots all the time, you become better and better each time at certain shots. And shooting everyday can help you see what your strengths and weaknesses are so you can improve on them. While shooting, you may be inspired to experiment with different kinds of shots and angles. Also you'll become inspired to shoot different things. And from using your camera everyday, you'll get used to using it and you'll understand your camera more from using it all the time.

I never thought about how shooting everyday can help you and i never considered doing it either. But I can understand how it helps. I will try it someday though because there has been times where I'm outside and without my phone and I wish I could take a video or picture of something really pretty. I do agree that practicing everyday will help you improve because one of the reasons I don't like shooting much is because I'm not that good at it. But that just means I need to do it more.

animation and music

Animation becomes more appealing when you add music to it. Music also adds a lot more emotion to the animation and it makes it easier for the audience to connect to it. The music can be added to make things seem more fast or slow. Like the tempo of a song can be played fast or slow when the speed of a characters movement changes. Shows like the looney toons can still be entertaining without much dialogue. One of the videos in the article had Baton Bunny which had no dialogue at all. But with all the movements and orchestra music it was still funny and had you watching the entire video. The music often goes along with characters movement and gives it more emphasis and importance.

I think this article was cool because I did have ambitions to write and create music but I never learned how. I still really do but I want to apply it to animations like this article explained. I really hope to make animated music videos someday. Sometimes it's a lot easier to animate with music than with just dialogue and sound effects. It would be really cool if music went a long with our actions in real life wouldnt it?

Weekly comments 12/12

There was shadowing for most of this week and at the end I was so sick of it, only cause I'm not used to having to talk so much. I learned I can only talk for so long until my voice starts to go away and that it gets tiring to keep repeating the same things over and over.  But I do like that these kids want to be in this class bc its a cool class

I'd like to get this project done and move onto making explosions :----)

Something nice this week was getting a 94 on my research paper bc I've never once made a well written research paper before..........& this week I'm trying to apply to a college in canada since it'll save me money so i'm stressing all over again since i need to find a place to live and whatnot

http://bryankonietzko.tumblr.com/post/54495619739/this-past-friday-i-published-this-post-which

this post is from the co-creator of the legend of korra and avatar: the last airbender and he talks about a really huge subject in 2D animation. It's about color correction and how colors in 2D animations are affected by SO MANY THINGS. Its kind of a long read but he talks about the process they go through each episode fixing colors of the characters skin.

CGI and practical effects should just be friends

movies using practical effects, like jurassic park, are all designed by hand and controlled by the filmmakers. Animatronics, puppets, and stop motion was used to animate creatures in older films. Now CGI is used more than practical effects and people argue which is better. Another argument is that CGI is putting  practical effects out of business. Tom Woodruff and Alec Gillis from amalgamated dynamics says that the both make a good team though, CGI and practical effects. 2 of the best practical effects artists, Rick Baker and Tom Savini aren't against CGI at all either. Baker says CGI is only as great as the artist behind it. But great CGI doesn't make a great movie. Savini says he likes is because you can pretty much make anything you want to in the script. So there is a place for both CGI and practical effects, they're both great in their own ways.

I prefer practical effects to CGI but I do like them both. I just like the work that goes into practical effects, everything you made yourself. They probably felt really satisfied after making a giant walking dinosaur look real and making the little kids question if they really were extinct. And they don't all look terrible, in the past they used whatever they had to make fictional creatures and gruesome makeup. So they put a lot of effort into those things and thats what I really admire.