Done 01-11-08

Wow it's been a few weeks since the last post. Any way I'm done, the thesis passed and I'm done with school. Know it's time to get a job and get some money for what I been training to do, need to pay those loans back. I'm going to be setting a and Animation mentor site for myself in a day or so and going to be doing a web site for all of my work. Going to be busy. well thats it for now do another update in a few.
-later Tom

Journal enrty #28 12-10-2007

Thats all folks, the thesis is done!!!
Few last things to finish up tommoor and I'm done. The playable DVD's are burn and the data DVD will be burnt Tuseday. I need to go to school for a few hours tommoro to test the dvd's on the schools equpment to make sur they work, They worked on eveything here so in theory they should work there. Only thing is that I will most likyl be using black marker for my name. I could not get the light scribe to work on my Lap-top, says it's there but who knows. The biggest pain today I think was getting the transtitions to work. God they are a pain some times, and thats all is is is timing but they are done. S goes that it's all done. I'm going to hie the sack for a few hours and get back up to print our this journal for my book and finish a few other thing up and thats it. Man I tell you my but it beat, I need some serious sleep in the next few days. So thats it for tonight I'll post somtime tommore on how my dvd's went and this journal gets printed to the book and thats what you call a wrap. I'll keep this site up because I'm doing animation mentor so it will switch over to a mentor site so talk to you all later-
-wooped ass Tom

spelling

My spelling really suks!!!!!!!

Journal enrty #27 12-09-2007

Me again,
Lets quick update tonight, waiting for AFX to do a render. Ok the animation was finished of late last night, Took a little longer then I wanted. I went back and rerendered the intro up scene with rowdy, I rendered it as a j-peg first and it was not sharp as I wanted. It's now a tiff sequnce and looks much better. So everything is now composited in afx, all line up with tratitins and blends and all that fun stuff. I had to take it fro AFX 5.5 to AFX cs3 to do the tv smpt-c color standard. Was not that bad doing the HLS corredtion, my stuff was not that far off, more lighting then anything. I'm doing a test render now to see what it all looks like, if it's good then into premerie we go for final composite and editing. Onlt one thing bugging me at this moment, looking at rowdies hat it is very pixelated, somthing seems off there need to figure it out, not much I can do now render wise. On a different note I found a couple of mistake in the animation so I went on line and found some that pixar has down and put then toghther in my book, sort of protecting my ass so to speak, heck if pixar does mistakes I'm aload a few. So tonight is witing to see how the render turns out and into premeire to get the look, I added a few more sfx to the edit, some fun background sounds. I'm almost there at this point, if I can get that darn dvd burnrt i'm headed for home plate at that point. Well I'm going to go now getting late and the renderis almost done. I'll post again tommoro night see ya then...
-good night Tom..
p.s. HOW BOUT THEM COWBOYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 12-1 super bowl bound!!!!!

Journal enrty #26 12-08-2007

ANIMATION IS DONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yes it's true the animation is completed, I'm finishing up the last render as I write, it's the intro to rowdy which was render as a j-peg. I wanted to re-render it as a tiff to get t sharper. But anyway it's all done an put togther in afx. I need to wait for the last render to finish overnight to tweak the renders, but their pretty good right now. Yesterday I finished doing all the sound design, I added so horses in the background doing some winning, kind of neat. Today was just button up the animation and buttoning up the book. I finished doing the post thesis crit of myself, and some othe r[ages on the rowdy model and etc... The rest of tonight I'm going to finish the storyboard prints and then print them for the book and hit the sack. I'm getting to the point of beat and burn out!!
Sunday will be an all date compositing and editing day, I'm going to try to finish up tomorrow, might be a late night thats why I want to finish early tonight. The sounds are all lined up all I have to do is drop in the quick time and do so readusting and a few things with the sound track and thats it. I just need to go to school on Monday and burn the I-DVD and thats it. The thesis book needs the journals printed and the content page and the bibliography and appendices. And it's finshec, I mean everthing is done. I'll have the rest of Tueday to go over stuff to double check and make sure everything is good. Well it's down to a little under four dats now until D-day. well I need to get back to work...
-best Tom...

Journal enrty #25 12-06-2007

six days left!!!!!!
Yes sir, were done to the last giddy-up. As I rightI'm lets see, writing my next to last blog journal befor I copy them to my thesis book, backing up my compositing for EL Toro, since it decided to crap out the other night, and I'm doing seven renders over for one thing or the other. At this juction in time my thesis books are 75 percent done, and both of my pre-vis books are printed and ready to go. Know for the animation part of the journal, I'm redoing some renders after a few tweaks once again because I added a few frames and animation on to the extreme flip land, Patricia wanted some breathing room on the end when the cowboy whips back up. I ahn to fix the speed on the gate fall in the slap, that will be rendered over night, I added the bull licking his nose in the El Toro spots Rowdy shot, some sutle character stuff. I took out the dust, it looked like crap and I wanted this to be nice but from a consistancy stand point it did not flow with the rest of the piece. I wanted very much to have dust dancing up from around the feet of both characters but the crap-ass yellow stuff just did not cut it. I would have to render and re-render to get it right and I don't want to get grilled in the defense about dust that looks bad and all the time I spent trying to make it look good while in the mean time I could have been making the animation look better, directors choose I guess you call it. what else, Yes the schedule for the rest of the week looks like this, the rest of tonight , Thursday and tommoro, Friday will be just sily for animation fixing!!. Saturday morning will be a wrap on the animation, may be a little into the afternoon, will see. By at least 2 or 3 pm I want to be into the editing and composting deeply. I have been doing composting the who;e time I render, do a render, start a new shot, then composit the last shot into after effects and so on. Yesterday, Mike Cushny informed us that we must color-correct for the DVD out put for the monitor, so know for the icing on this cake, I must color correct every shot in AFX, inorder for it to be scene on the monitor, yes. So Saturday night I will be doing the color correction and the final composite inAFX then back into premerie for the final edit and sound check and then burn the movie. Well know that that sounds so much fun, heres the real kicker AFX 6.5 which I use at home does not have the "smpte-c" tv color correction support, ye ha. I had tp ask a friend of mine at school if he had the newer version of the software on him, lucky he had the newest version of adobe cs3 master collection, "thanks John" So be it to speak I came home last night and stayed up to 4:30 installing the newest software up dates so I can do color correction Sat and Sun. My schedule for next week in to be at school first thing Monday morning to burn the DVD in I DVD and do the test to make sure it works on the monitor in our defense room and that will be that. Tuesday I can then finish the book, do all the last printing writing and last of the juornal updates, and what ever else that comes up between know and then. Thats about it for tonights update, I now have to work on my post thesis crit on myself , sort of a work in progess so to speak, and set a few renders to do over night and get to bed arounf 12, I'm tired last night I was up all night, and I want to be fresh for fridays animation work. Well talk to you guys in a day or so with the next update.
-Ta ta Tom...
p.s. no pics will be posted this round, sorry need to fit all this in my thesis book

Journal enrty #24 12-02-2007

Ho, ho ho, it's December,
Ten days left and counting down fast, I'm at a good place with the days left. I'm on my second pass at renders, doing fixes on stuff that I don't like or goofs, like forgetting to turn on the bulls nose ring, or renders a pass out as j-pegs, dumb stuff like that. Today I finished up the credits, sort of took a different approach to them, instead of the roll up a did 7 still with the info and a character poseing on each slate, looks more professional plus I just could not get that roll to work right. I'll post some of the pose's on this journal. With the book I need to finish that this week,I would say I'm half way there. I want to get the animation done by this thursday then have the week end to finish the book and all that fun stuff. With the date DVD, I have all the info in one folder right know, I took all the folders I had and copied and put them into a master date folder to sort through, right know there;s about 4 gigs worth of work in there that should keep the panel bush for a few weeks looking through there. Last week end a spent a couple of hours trying to figure out how to author the dvd for the panel, I think I can do it from home. The last time I did one in class, on the mac's it did not work. I have a form around here from Mike cushny's Dpp class on how thats done, need to look for it , maybe tonight, I calling it in early tonight, before 2am. As for the animation, I'm really happy where I'm at what the look is, There's a few shots I considering rerendering, because of the background sky diifers partly due to that I used two dirrent surface shaders. Minor stuff of constity. The animation looks good, I had to add ashot and redo some others becoase of the hat being on in the last shot and me not showing how it got on his head. The reactionshot needs to be fixed, the hat is floating when falling out of the clown barrel. most of the other shots are good, tomorro, morning i'm going to spend and hour or so going through most of the shots for some more tweaking, every time I do this I find somthing else wrong to fix, I guess I could doo this for the next month. Thats it for tonights update, I'll post in the next day or so with the news about the next pass of renders and that will be about it. I'll have to copry all these journals for printing to the book. I copied most of them over on Friday, just the last few need to be added, there was somthing like 20 pages of juornals, 58 entries, should keep everybody reading for a day or so. take care and don't slip on the ice out side it's sleeting like a bitch out.
-Best Tom
p.s. look at the renders!!!

Journal enrty #23 11-25-2007

Well I'm back,
Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving. It was pretty good here, had some turkey worked on the project all day, and watched the Cowboys kick some ass!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Well good news out of the EL Toro camp all the animation is done as of today. Right now is all about the rendering, as I right I'm rendering out a 215 frame seqenance, somthing likea 8 hour render, thats ends about 4am Sunday morning. What I have planned for the next couple of days is to render out everything and put it into a rendered animatic. From there I can look at it and see what works and does"nt and have two weeks to fix it. During the renders I'll be working on finishing the book and doing the editing. I'm happy with the animation, the lighting seems to be working, It's not the greatest but it gets done what is needed. I went out last week and bought and extra hard drive to do renders at school if needed, I'v been banging out renders over night, the next few are shorter so hopefully I can get a few of them done in a day. This will cut down on me having to go to NYU to do renders. I need to work on the credits Sunday, get them done and out of the way, they look like crap when I run them, I mught not do a roll but just a still, somthing simple to get them done, maybe add some art into each still. next week will most likly be the last of the blogs journals, I need to print them out for the book. I have somthing like 50 entries to print out, thats a whole book in itself. So this is it for tonight, the new Battlestar Galactica "Razor" is on tonight. can't miss it been waiting all summer and fall. Talk to ya all again next week.
-Best Tom
PS> some renders from the animation