One last time.

There's a difference between the what you want to say, and how you say it. Blogging for both my marks and your pleasure, I must admit that it is the how, not the what, that makes all the difference. At the same time, our video attempted to personify this statement, by not concentrating on content but on the way we wanted to show it to you. People want to enjoy knowledge more than they would like to actually have it.

You lot have watched my life through the disdainful and sarcastic melodies I have spun out of glyphs and symbols through this blog, which I hope was an entertaining view into a person most of you have come to believe possesses only three emotions: anger, moodiness or complete disregard for you and yours. In the same vein, I have learnt a lot about the people each of you are, from the people I hate to the people I love.

One of my friends has always had this inherent belief that everyone has some sort of redeeming quality, and has on occasion urged me to look for this quality in others. Like the pessimist that I am I was always convinced that she must somehow be at least gravely mistaken, if not completely mentally retarded, but these past two months may have actually convinced me otherwise. You see, while I've always thought that everyone around me must have been some kind of idiot, the truth of the matter is that you lot are actually pretty handy to have around, if not for actual technical work, than at least sheer comic relief.

(Editor's note: Take the above as Bryan's way of telling you he likes your company. And now for the part where you can quote him for next year's sucker- I mean, Freshies.)

Anyway, it goes without saying that it was enjoyable and enlightening experience, in which I learnt lots of different things, grew closer to all my brethren in the course and generally feel very happy to be where I am. I feel that this project is something everyone should at least have the chance to go through once in their lives and I really enjoyed myself.

So goodday to each and every one of you buggers.

It's been an interesting ride.

Now give me my darn marks.

Peace out,
Bryan

i'm just a sexy boy

(P.S. I might actually start writing blogs just for fun now.)

End of MOI P1

Well it's really been a long way, i can't say i'm completely overjoyed by our end result but i think we've gave it a pretty good shot. Win Lose or Draw, this is probably the biggest project i've been though so far, and i'm pretty sure the same goes for my other group mates too.

Screening will be later in the noon, and everything you see here as well as our video will be chunked into a CD for submission.

Looking at the groups around, i somehow feel shadow for most of them have loads of special effects, stopmotion and even greenscreen. But i somehow feel glad we choose to take a different path, that of going outdoors and braving the elements to get real footage.

Alphie also made me feel a whole lot better after telling me the marking criteria, which i think most groups oversaw due to the craze on special effects.

But as a whole, this has been quite an experience for me
Not as in Moi P1, but the entire first year, because if you realized, this IS after all, our last day of school.
When the next day of school arrives, we'l be seeing each other as year 2s.

So well,
Cheers to all the Freshies
Cheers to all the Lecturers
and Thanks for everything this year.

8D

Brian Low

3 and a half hours later

Well hellooo again, with only 30 minutes left before the deadline, things are starting to get really chaotic for some people. Corrupted files, rendering errors, you name it.

I on the other hand have my own share of madness, i am currently waiting in the Mac lab on the 6 floor for Bryan to pop by so we can start on our VIdeo fund editing, which we have almost no idea how because we never touched Final Cut Pro and nothing had been taught to us on it.

Wonderful isn't it. Shooting with a camera you hardly know how to use in one day, and editing with a program you never used also in a day. The whole of Julian's class is probably in a mad rush about completing P1 and Vid Fund.

Lots of things are happening and more stuff is going to happen later today, so well, time for me to look for Bryan, SHEESH

Brian L

4 hours to go.

Ah well yeah, with just a little more then 4 hours left on the clock before the submission deadline, i am honestly pretty surprise to still see some groups editing their videos here in the lab.

Anyway, with reguards to what Bryan and a few chaps said yesterday about our cover looking rather "pirated" i spend the entire night re-designing it. Lets just say it looks alot more "original" now. But it send me spending a big long time at the print shop as the fat bloke in front of me was awefully slow printing a few hundred copies of A3 size coloured stuff.

So well, it looks like everything's ready for today's submission, all that is left is for me to get tomorrows envolope ready with the contents, 12 hours of undisturbed sleep and an extra huge quadrippled patty cheese burger perhaps from Botak Jones or Carls JR.

BANZAI!
See you chaps tomorrow at the big screening.

Brian L

Fully baked.

So. Damn. Warm.

Humid. Stuffy. It's 11:40PM. There should be a law against having to breathe the thick, almost solid air in the animation room. Room's filled with people either doing their work or doing their best trying not to die of a heatstroke while waiting for their videos to render. Glad my group's more or less done.

Our goddamned cover makes our CD and its casing look pirated.

People are mostly packing up now. Submission is in about 15 hours. 8 of those hours will be spent in transit and sleep. I should be worried about the poor quality of our video and audio, the jumpy aspect ratio and our message overall, but there's nothing much that I can do to solve it now.

For the moment, I am hungry. I've been craving four meals a day lately, for some reason. Stuck to only eating three, or two, depending on how late I wake up.

Expect a final post tomorrow, the day before the screening.

Peace out,
Bryan

with a tear in his eye he said "son that's the question"

what this title is

so shall its post be.

ok don't try to make sense of the above nonsense.

urgh, i just have no idea for the title.

so neways, it's been awhile `,^) (attempt to make 'The Rock''s expression)

sorry for not updating.. this goes to not just other teams but lecturers and my group as well.

had been busy with the critter animation and exercises from VidFun.

unlike bryan, evidently, in my posts i don't really care the way i butcher my puncuation nor seem to realise that the lack of capital letters in the times appropriate anything a mistake dire.

let alone correcting my grammar.

haha. ok, but i do still strive to be understood.

anyway, with REGARDS to P1, uhh, i had been assigned the task to draw a 'critter' which was supposed to be animated using Flash for a bunch of seconds. and outta the 5 cute creatures the two

[brahy-uh n]s had to like the same character (#3), which was the hardest to animate:

after improvising and figuring out its 3d form, sketch of the moving sequence. which is basically waving and doing stupid actions:

yea. there you go. i have no idea what this creature is. a bunny with hair as ears that stands on its small hind legs which are miraculously capable of supporting its body weight.

the following are which i got my inspiration/ idea from:

-the pokemon Pikachu
-Stewie Griffin from Family Guy

-my memory of the rabbit in the animation Amanda showed us of a senior's work

-humain hair(which i've always been observing)

-my own personal soft toy:

the hardest part is yet to come.

whilst in Flash, a program i'm still not too familar with, i realised i don't know how to make symbols so i did everything frame by frame. in the process, many a-times i'm confused with my own animation and blurred with numbers because of the many frames.

but finally i got it done by thursday morning. though i think i really did a poopy job. :(

urh, i will end this post now.

but before i go, i didnt think that brian enslaved me like as said in his post.

haha, in fact i thought the real workers have been the both [brahy-uh n]s.

posting for 21st march, saturday

LASZLONEWELL, this might be farewell.

Spy? Sapping MY project?

Team Fortress 2 title reference today, in case you happen to be a girl or DOTA player.

We're about 90% completed, the remaining 10 integers comprised mostly of slapping pretty sparkly stickers onto our work and generally wondering exactly how badly we did. It's not that I dislike my work; I feel that our work reflects exactly how much effort we put into it. What I am concerned about is the wisdom of letting anyone else see it until the deadline.

There's been a bit of buzzing about copied ideas lately, which I think everyone should have seen coming, especially after the whole course tried jumping on the storyline/greenscreen/stopmotion bandwagon together. It's a fact that our seniors specifically refrained from such technology, with the exception of one or two videos, and even those videos either failed or kept such techniques to a minimum. Whether they did so out of laziness or wisdom is relevant, the fact remains that they mostly kept to a straightfoward video doing exactly what the brief asked them to.

Anyway, my point is, you're all pretty much bumming ideas of each other, fools. Even my group bums ideas off the best of last year's work. I suppose that since we're all designers, I should call it inspiration, although the term has to be stetched a bit.

Perhaps you lecturers, the ones marking my post and eagerly dropping marks for having the sheer audacity (by the way, please, please, PLEASE put that program into the labs again) to address you directly without first kissing your lovely bottoms should think of making us all patent and completely copyright every single bit of work we intend to do. It might even help us in the industry, if you think about it. Our seniors are constantly getting their lawsuits handed to them by the lovely people at thepiratebay.org.

But it is ironic when people using a cracked application on a laptop accuses the person next to them of stealing intellectual property. We bitch (pardon my slang) about stealing, then start listening to music that most certainly hasn't been cleared to go on Youtube. I'm sure you lecturers could afford to appreciate the situation.

Peace out,
Bryan

you always find the words to say to keep me right here waiting

PowerPack JigaJack

Most of you guys probably noticed by now, theres been a lack of posts throughout the last few day. No Bryan, no Newell, not even Me for 4 days straight. Just incase the lecturers are starting to think we're slacking on our butts i'm let you know that all the non blogging is for one very simple reason. We have simply no time for it.

Why? Well what else?

At this point of time, my group mates would probably think i'm getting a little of a slave driver pushing them to work non stop while do just about nothing in school.....i'm sure you guys seen me walking around alot. And even worst, happily prancing out of the school as early as 2 while my comrades drown themselves in work till it's about 8 or more.

So what exactly have i been doing for the last few days? Well let's just say, the earlier you see me on my jolly way out of school means i'm off to work just like you guys. All my equipment is at home and i'd rather work with no obstructions for more efficiency.

NO this is NOT for myself, but for the group's sake, it's a group video after all.
So well, how far have we gone into editing??

Just before blogging this, i was doing a little audio clean up of the final part of the video, soon after this it will be my breakfast and off to polyland to collect the completed versions of Bryan's Motion Graphics and Newell's Animation, and all's left is to junk it into the main video, do some tweaking around and we'r ready to rock with packaging...............yes, we have not started on it, which is also why i wanted to get the full complete video out by today or tomorrow at the most.

It's a hell lot of work, it's been a hell lot of work, but it's all good because once we'r done with all the editing work, packaging is the last thing left on our checklist. My only worry not will be what Julian has installed for us for the last week of video fund.

So well expect 1 or 2 more posts before this all ends and see you at the final presentation in a week's time.


Brian L

The sound of Nature

IS NOT SOMETHING YOU WANT IN YOUR VIDEO.
Being cooped up in my bedroom doing nothing but video/audio editting for the past few days made me come to one simple conclusion.

Video Editing, eeeeasy~
Audio Editing, AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The only form of audio editting knowledge i've got is what's being taught during DMfun. and i swear what we learnt is hardly enough to take care of the sounds of Nature. Suuuure we've picked up a little on noise removal but forget Audacity, even a program as fancy as Adobe Soundbooth has it's limits when it comes to removing certain "noises"

And just to let you know, the audio of our voices overlap these unwanted noises which is making editing a whole lot more complicated.

It's pretty darn silly if you think of it, i'm spending 4/5 of the many hours working editing the Audio when the whole process is called "Video Editing"

Now that i'm pretty clear about all the extra unwanted hassle, it really makes me wonder how many lucky groups have gotten their footage in a nice controlled environment under the TP rooftop.

No offense, the Jealous Vibe is just getting onto me.

Anyway, Editing work should be about 50% done once the weekdays kicks in but it still seems that without the complete package of the 2D animation and the motion graphic sequence, the end product is not going to be out anytime soon.

Let's just hope i don't get one of those "sleep paralysis" that Ryan(group ilike) experienced, i had it once before and it's pretty darn freaky.

So well, i'm off to work again see ya in a few days.

Brian L

Rewind the bloody tape, then, stupid.

I'm working on the final after effects animation, which is sheer torture to say the least. At least it's simpler than its counterpart, which was the product of weeks of guesswork. Post-production has become really draining on me mentally. Joseph caught me just stoning outside the animation lab, doing absolutely nothing at all besides trying to stare a hole through the wall.

"we love joyce!!"
-Joyce

As you can see, I'm typing in an incredibly crowded room, the likes of which are staring to remind me of Auschwitz. We're just packed in here, some of us busy, others just really, really tired. The mental boredom is driving people like the above to stare at my screen as I blog, reaching over to type a comment in. If you need proof that I did not type that, consider this: I never, ever butcher my punctuation that way, at least not willingly. The lack of a capital letter is also a dire mistake. Obviously a person with such draconian views like myself would never commit a crime against the language like that.

To sum up my current thoughts: Animating is a pain, and I'll leave it at that.

Peace out,
Bryan

another day of putting things aside/as if we'll come back to them sometime

Yes the tape really reached it's end.

Well it's Brian again and some may be wondering why in the name of greyskull am i posting today.
Well see this would mark the 27th post and having over 2 weeks to go, we should more or less hit the 30th mark by say.....the end of this week?? So from here and on, things about the blog post will be changing a little. It's now a free for all, anytime, anyday schedule for anyone to post.

Anyway, i'm pretty glad to say that we're completely done with shooting and recording, so we should be moving on to post production right around now. It's all about balance really, i personally feel that groups should give a steady amount of time for post production and take into consideration of getting your resources for your work.

The logic is simple really, if you shoot more, you have less time to edit, likewise. So keep your ideas simple, or simple enough to be able to pull off a decent piece of work before the deadlines.

Looking at the big picture again, now it seems that the real problem would be if we had enough computers to work. See Mr Ronald just leashed out a new rule that the first years could only use the computers at the 3d Lab.....and we're talking about ALL the first years. Being completely base on first come first serve basis, i predict that things will start to get really messy once majority of the other groups are moving to post production.

It's abit funny to put it this way but there will soon be a war, which is one of the reasons why im pushing as much post production as possible before the pitch forks and torches come into play. That way we would have more time to focus on correcting mistakes or packaging while some of the scary guys get into some sort of royal rumble.

This is the way the industry is, everyone is fighting. But if fighting is sure to result in victory, THEN WE MUST FIGHT!

The tape has reached it's end.

Things with the shooting are going pretty smoothly last week, we had enough sun to get us a good number of shots before the weekend kicked in. Infact, we'r almost done with it. What i'm worried however is just as Bryan pointed out, the music. It seems like the tracks i have happen to sound either too grand or too cheap, not to mention finding something stylish and casino like is really hard if you don't know who does them, i am however thinking of exploring some old disco......of course without the lyrics.

The next sunny weekday should be where all the shooting ends, we've got the time lapse down and i nearly crashed my computer trying to squeeze 13G worth of video down to 10 seconds, it looks decent though. Not too fantastic like those you see on the hit reality gameshow "Survivor" but not too plain either. The scene with 2 Newells however probably needs some working on. The colour and brightness of the 2 videos varies, it will take a while to mask the fella out frame by frame but at least it's something do-able.

Anyway, it seems like most of the other groups are having a "to-do" list on their blogs,
it will be good if we have ours too, keeps us on track.

So well, these are the stuff we will be aiming to complete by Sunday.

1.All filming
2.Voice recording
3.Animation
4.Finding Music

Things that should be working on full swing by sunday:

1.Graphic Motion
2.Video Editing/sound editing

Kinda Cramp really, considering how much time we have left for this module,
I'm planning to get everything more or less done by 2 weeks and leave the last one for
extra ideas or backup time.

So then, see ya around.
Brian L

English, Newell! Do you speak it!?

Putting aside the fact that only a small minority on our fragile earth can possibly begin to comprehend the previous post, I have a new problem.

I do not know if this is a software or hardware fault, but the After Effects on this computer keeps returning OpenGL error messages to me, which is extremely vexing. I can't switch computers, we're packed in like office workers here, though less than ten of us seem to actually be doing work. I would assume, then, that it is a blessing in disguise that I will have to leave to shoot a scene in a location I have never seen for myself before.

At the same time, I'm wondering if I'll have to pull off the editing of the video together with Brian, just so I can have a say in how things look. We've got it a lot easier than most teams though, we have little scenes to shoot and very little can go terribly wrong at this moment. Here, have a short list of things I am worried about.

Short List of Things Bryan is Worried About:

1)Music
It's becoming increasingly difficult for us to find music that suits the mood of our video. We might have to really rack our brains for this.

2)Editing
Simple enough, actually. We can edit, I'm just concerned about the quality of the edited material. In either case, I should press for more than one cut.

3)Cinematics
The opening sequence is 75% done, the last 25% being polish and syncing to the previous and later segments. The end sequence is still in concept, which I had tried to solve today, except After Effects decided to deny me.

Peace out,
Bryan Koh

the things that you do to fulfill your addictions

indu da 4rest!

We Team Powah went to shoot our location scene today at Chicken Island. Even though inside there it was less accessible than weeks ago due to the rain, with our amazing physicality the sticky mud, quicksands, and earthquakes didn't stand a chance.

Flower after flower is specked on the depths of green. The petals are harlequins. Stalks rise from the black hollows underneath. The flowers swim like fish made of light upon the dark green waters. The roots go down to the depths of the world, through earth dry with brick, and damp earth, through veins of lad and silver.

I will go to the beech wood alone...I will take my anguish and lay it upon the roots under the beech trees. I will examine it and take it between my fingers. I shall eat nuts and peer for eggs through the brambles and I shall sleep under hedges and drink water from ditches and die there.

Oh...I shouldn't have let school policies exist!

posting for wednesday, march 4th
LASZLONEWELL, said-a I'd buy the flowers myself.

Amanda is missing??

Thats right, i was just checking my mail before blogging this, it seems from tomorrow till the 16th, Amanda will be missing somewhere and the groups in her our class are assigned to different lecturers. We got Yoke Ee, i've heard good stuff about her and i think i know which one is her, but then again having to swap lecturers around like that is abit hectic. Why? Simply because Yoke Ee would have completely no idea what we'r doing, what our theme was, and we would have to explain the whole concept to her all over again like we did for the other presentations. And also, there may be a chance that different lecturers have different views and what satisfy one may not similarly be the case likewise. So to keep things simple, i'l try to keep things simple and follow what Amanda told us during interim 1 so by the time she comes back, it should still be the way she's ok with.

Anyway, it seems like majority of the groups had started shooting and we'r one of the few still stuck with computer work. It's a real shame the weather isn't really on our side lately, the during the location scouting it was sunny and all but it seems that for the past week it simply poured. Considering that 3 of our 4 location shoots are outdoors, not to mention we have to spend SOMETIME shooting out time lapse, we could be in serious jeopardy if Zeus decides to extend his Asia vacation.

My only plan left is to completely change the locations if we don't get a single sunny day this week, which will be really bad since our script is somewhat based on the location.

Come'on Murphy, leave us abit of slack.

Anyway, we'r still pushing with the cinematics and i should get started with the ending credits soon so lets
hope the sun sears the land for the rest of the week.

See ya
Brian L

It goes without saying...

I find myself at a loss.

On one hand, there is relief, the breath taken after nearly drowning, the first rays of the morning reaching over the horizon. It would seem that the propecies of doom I fortold not a week ago have not come to manifest, and that we are indeed proceeding on the right track.

On the other hand, a constant nagging fear of something I do not yet know will happen. They saw that the only time you feel confident is when something has escaped your notice, and this is what currently fuels my brooding. While our lecturer has assured us that we are not in fact akin to the likes of Goldar, Rita and Zedd, one cannot help but notice the less-than-optimal expressions on the faces of our classmates. One of them made a valient attempt to inform me of exactly what she thought was wrong with our concept, but aside from a vague remark about content, no useful information managed to journey their way out of her throat, which strangely found itself constricted even though I had not managed to wrap my fingers about it yet.

Do not mistake my murderous intentions for a person who cannot bear to hear even the slightest ill about his creations. I merely wished to encourage, abeit more forcefully than hindsight would have permitted, her to speak her mind with more zest. As it stands, today's presentations were a limp, flaccid thing compared to the first presentations. I cannot further improve my works without critique that does not happen to be some kind of varient of 'Well, technically, it could work...'

To this end I would like to invite all of you to go on and slander me and my work in the hopes of allowing me to actually find out what it is I can do to make this worry go away.

In other news, we'll officially be starting Production tomorrow. More on that after the weather.

Peace out,
Bryan

it stung like a violent wind that our memories depend on a faulty camera in our minds

gonna be okay

i'm blogging this on a monday morning because i apparently have poor sense of timing, and i can't sleep now. it's 0320.

a post, for friday. friday it is. what happened on that day?

right we were suppose to have a consultation with Amanda at the animation lab, but that just didn't happen for a reason we shan't be granted knowledge of by the god who designed the MOI course for us film dreamers to be contained in and not be running around wild in singapore. prolly they scared of us be recording what.

What?!

anyways, pennies for my thoughts is an amount far too low and cheap for a quid pro quo initiate won't you agree? so no pennies accept I. therefore no confessions for your that sincerity of yours.

back to friday,
at that time, i was assigned to do my part for the ppt first which is the moodboard. bryan the technical master or whachamacallit was doing after effects effects for the video, faithfully making sure everything will meet the goal of perfection we set. brian, he's doing photoshopping for his storyboard diligently while yawning due to his lack of sleep. while i went to eat to get motivated to work.
you must believe i was dealing with the problem. yawn.

they say i show little mercy in expressing.
and i think i'm a messy person trying to be an artist.

oh well, the great thing is at least i am capable of abstract thinking, things up there are much clearer to identify than things i try to replicate of in this world. a world inhabited by a people ever so conforming.


posting for friday's events, on monday 2nd mar, 0420h.
LASZLONEWELL, when did it all happened.