Ok, I'm here in LA. While I'm waiting for Ed Catmull to start his talk I thought this would be a good time to post an update. However, I'm writing this in TextEdit because although I'm in a place called the Geek Bar, the internet connection sucks and I don't want my blog to cut me off while I'm writing. Ironic.
What a freakin' mess this has become. The ambient pass on my hippo animation was bad so I had to rerender it, which took until about 6am on Sunday morning. In the meantime, I made changes to my bug ship and rendered that out in After Effects on the laptop. I also put together a short sequence with the potato still while I waited. I had all my resumes printed full bleed on 11x17 so I had to cut those out with an xacto, and I had to do the same for my DVD case inserts. So given that I had all these other things to do, I was ok with the fact that I had a 14 hour render going on the main computer. Except that when things started to go bad, they didn't stop.
First, I sliced my left index finger with the xacto. I mean SLICED. (I have to take the band-aid off to type and unfortunately my spares are in the hotel room so hopefully my finger will hold itself together for a few hours.) Then, knowing that the render would take too long for me to finish my work at home, I had to start loading software onto my laptop. Let me just say that Adobe has really screwed things up royally with their installer and given the amount of information posted on the subject I know I'm not the only one who feels that way. I didn't get CS3 loaded until almost 8 Saturday night. Then I had to load Final Cut Studio so I could make DVDs in my hotel room. That was easy. I decided not to load Maya because 1. I wasn't convinced a second copy would work, 2. I was running out of disk space and 3. I was pretty sure I wouldn't need it at this point. So I put together the bug and the potato in After Effects and went to bed at about 3 on Sunday morning. Then my alarm went off at 7:30 and just as I was trying to get my eyes open enough to get up, I fell asleep again. I had no time for this. My mom was showing up at 8:30, I had to color correct the hippo on the main computer where I had a decent monitor to look at, and then I had to copy all my files over to the laptop and be on my way. At least I had done most of my packing the night before but when I finally opened my eyes again at 8:30 I knew it was going to be a rough day. I just didn't know how rough.
We got out of the house by 9:30 and I got to the airport in plenty of time, so while I waited for the plane I got out the laptop and started compositing my hippo frames. About five minutes before we were to start boarding I realized that I was missing about 60 frames from my ambient pass. CRAP!!! I went over the options in my mind and decided to call Mom (who's at my house cat-sitting) and walk her through editing my render script and running it. Now she has no experience at all on a Mac but she's a smart person and I thought if I explained in enough detail that we might get it to work before I was on the plane and forced to hang up. There was just one obstacle I hadn't taken into account. She had no experience dealing with a small mouse pad and a 23" screen. She couldn't control the mouse pointer. Whenever she would highlight something in a list of files she would lose it and wouldn't know how to get back. And then there's the issue of whenever you click on the desktop, you're no longer in your application. And the menus don't look all that different from each other. By the time it was over I think she even had Maya open but didn't know how she got there or how to get out.
I managed to get her into TextEdit and get the render script open, but the plane was starting to leave the gate and the flight attendent came by and said, "You need to hang up RIGHT NOW." That was that. No productive rendering during my 3-hour flight. After I stopped bitching under my breath I decided to continue working with the frames I did have and then come up with another plan when I got to LA.
Then I realized I wasn't missing 60 frames. I was missing 120. There was no way I could talk Mom through that one, including zipping up all the files and uploading them to my web site. I was screwed.
I stewed for a while (it was a 3-hour flight, I had time) but then decided that since I was going to use just an excerpt anyway, I would check the most interesting shots and see if they were ok. They were. I edited together the last 30 seconds of the animation knowing I would have to get creative with the sound later because the sound of the golf ball hitting the hippo had to be synched, but there was music over it and if you cut it wrong, it would sound like crap. I didn't have the individual sound effects, it was all put together on one sound track. But I would worry about that in LA.
Except for one thing. I hadn't thought to bring headphones, and I couldn't fathom trying to deal with sound editing using laptop speakers. Great. I would have to find headphones when I got to LA, having no car and no idea where I was or what was around me. But hey, even earbuds would work. I'd take anything. I'd find something.
After an hour long tour of the worst parts of LA (or maybe that's all there is), the shuttle finally dropped me off at my hotel at almost 3. Good news, there's a McDonalds across the street and a row of shops. Maybe there are headphones somewhere in there. I take off with my backpack and start walking down Wilshire. And I only go one block and there it is, Radio Shack. Perfect. Even if I run out of DVDs I'm ok.
So after I went to the convention center and back for my registration I finally started working on my reel again at about 5. I had brought DVDs, jewel cases, a label applicator, and all the crap you could ever need to build and assemble. I felt good about my 30-second hippo plan, and I was looking forward to getting it edited in Final Cut so I could start burning. I started to assemble the bug ship animation. And then...
WHERE IS MY SPECULAR MAP????
(Why didn't I load Maya????)
I don't know what happened or where or when, but the original animation years ago had this nice sheen on the ship. This version did not have it. There was nothing I could do. Anyone who wasn't familiar with the animation wouldn't know the difference, but I did and I knew that was the final, crowning touch that made it so freakin' beautiful. I was PISSED. I WAS FURIOUS!!! This is what happens when you go on no sleep for 2 months, everything comes out half-assed, no matter what your intentions.
I had to make peace with this or there wasn't going to be a reel at all. I'm still getting over it, telling myself that I'll fix it and update the site as soon as I get home. But I'm still pissed. I only got one still out of the whole potato project, I lost half of the hippo and probably the best part of the bug ship. For what? Is anything going to come out of this at all? Is it worth all the blank DVDs I brought with me and all the labels I had printed? GRRRRRR...... I know what the quality can be and I know what the quality is, and I'm having a hard time reconciling the two right now. But it is what it is and it's better that I work with something than nothing. So we'll see.
I still haven't had any decent sleep. After the reel was put together last night I still had to update my site, and that put me in bed at about 3 LA time (5 Texas time). I got 4 hours, tonight I'll get more. And maybe things will look better once I do.
I know for the last few days I've owed various people emails and phone calls and you name it, but that final push basically pushed me off the face of the earth. And given how it all went down, I'm not quite ready to reappear yet. But I'm here, the show is cool, and I'm going to make as much out of this opportunity as I can with what I have. And hope people laugh at the potato for all the right reasons, if they see it at all.
What a freakin' mess this has become. The ambient pass on my hippo animation was bad so I had to rerender it, which took until about 6am on Sunday morning. In the meantime, I made changes to my bug ship and rendered that out in After Effects on the laptop. I also put together a short sequence with the potato still while I waited. I had all my resumes printed full bleed on 11x17 so I had to cut those out with an xacto, and I had to do the same for my DVD case inserts. So given that I had all these other things to do, I was ok with the fact that I had a 14 hour render going on the main computer. Except that when things started to go bad, they didn't stop.
First, I sliced my left index finger with the xacto. I mean SLICED. (I have to take the band-aid off to type and unfortunately my spares are in the hotel room so hopefully my finger will hold itself together for a few hours.) Then, knowing that the render would take too long for me to finish my work at home, I had to start loading software onto my laptop. Let me just say that Adobe has really screwed things up royally with their installer and given the amount of information posted on the subject I know I'm not the only one who feels that way. I didn't get CS3 loaded until almost 8 Saturday night. Then I had to load Final Cut Studio so I could make DVDs in my hotel room. That was easy. I decided not to load Maya because 1. I wasn't convinced a second copy would work, 2. I was running out of disk space and 3. I was pretty sure I wouldn't need it at this point. So I put together the bug and the potato in After Effects and went to bed at about 3 on Sunday morning. Then my alarm went off at 7:30 and just as I was trying to get my eyes open enough to get up, I fell asleep again. I had no time for this. My mom was showing up at 8:30, I had to color correct the hippo on the main computer where I had a decent monitor to look at, and then I had to copy all my files over to the laptop and be on my way. At least I had done most of my packing the night before but when I finally opened my eyes again at 8:30 I knew it was going to be a rough day. I just didn't know how rough.
We got out of the house by 9:30 and I got to the airport in plenty of time, so while I waited for the plane I got out the laptop and started compositing my hippo frames. About five minutes before we were to start boarding I realized that I was missing about 60 frames from my ambient pass. CRAP!!! I went over the options in my mind and decided to call Mom (who's at my house cat-sitting) and walk her through editing my render script and running it. Now she has no experience at all on a Mac but she's a smart person and I thought if I explained in enough detail that we might get it to work before I was on the plane and forced to hang up. There was just one obstacle I hadn't taken into account. She had no experience dealing with a small mouse pad and a 23" screen. She couldn't control the mouse pointer. Whenever she would highlight something in a list of files she would lose it and wouldn't know how to get back. And then there's the issue of whenever you click on the desktop, you're no longer in your application. And the menus don't look all that different from each other. By the time it was over I think she even had Maya open but didn't know how she got there or how to get out.
I managed to get her into TextEdit and get the render script open, but the plane was starting to leave the gate and the flight attendent came by and said, "You need to hang up RIGHT NOW." That was that. No productive rendering during my 3-hour flight. After I stopped bitching under my breath I decided to continue working with the frames I did have and then come up with another plan when I got to LA.
Then I realized I wasn't missing 60 frames. I was missing 120. There was no way I could talk Mom through that one, including zipping up all the files and uploading them to my web site. I was screwed.
I stewed for a while (it was a 3-hour flight, I had time) but then decided that since I was going to use just an excerpt anyway, I would check the most interesting shots and see if they were ok. They were. I edited together the last 30 seconds of the animation knowing I would have to get creative with the sound later because the sound of the golf ball hitting the hippo had to be synched, but there was music over it and if you cut it wrong, it would sound like crap. I didn't have the individual sound effects, it was all put together on one sound track. But I would worry about that in LA.
Except for one thing. I hadn't thought to bring headphones, and I couldn't fathom trying to deal with sound editing using laptop speakers. Great. I would have to find headphones when I got to LA, having no car and no idea where I was or what was around me. But hey, even earbuds would work. I'd take anything. I'd find something.
After an hour long tour of the worst parts of LA (or maybe that's all there is), the shuttle finally dropped me off at my hotel at almost 3. Good news, there's a McDonalds across the street and a row of shops. Maybe there are headphones somewhere in there. I take off with my backpack and start walking down Wilshire. And I only go one block and there it is, Radio Shack. Perfect. Even if I run out of DVDs I'm ok.
So after I went to the convention center and back for my registration I finally started working on my reel again at about 5. I had brought DVDs, jewel cases, a label applicator, and all the crap you could ever need to build and assemble. I felt good about my 30-second hippo plan, and I was looking forward to getting it edited in Final Cut so I could start burning. I started to assemble the bug ship animation. And then...
WHERE IS MY SPECULAR MAP????
(Why didn't I load Maya????)
I don't know what happened or where or when, but the original animation years ago had this nice sheen on the ship. This version did not have it. There was nothing I could do. Anyone who wasn't familiar with the animation wouldn't know the difference, but I did and I knew that was the final, crowning touch that made it so freakin' beautiful. I was PISSED. I WAS FURIOUS!!! This is what happens when you go on no sleep for 2 months, everything comes out half-assed, no matter what your intentions.
I had to make peace with this or there wasn't going to be a reel at all. I'm still getting over it, telling myself that I'll fix it and update the site as soon as I get home. But I'm still pissed. I only got one still out of the whole potato project, I lost half of the hippo and probably the best part of the bug ship. For what? Is anything going to come out of this at all? Is it worth all the blank DVDs I brought with me and all the labels I had printed? GRRRRRR...... I know what the quality can be and I know what the quality is, and I'm having a hard time reconciling the two right now. But it is what it is and it's better that I work with something than nothing. So we'll see.
I still haven't had any decent sleep. After the reel was put together last night I still had to update my site, and that put me in bed at about 3 LA time (5 Texas time). I got 4 hours, tonight I'll get more. And maybe things will look better once I do.
I know for the last few days I've owed various people emails and phone calls and you name it, but that final push basically pushed me off the face of the earth. And given how it all went down, I'm not quite ready to reappear yet. But I'm here, the show is cool, and I'm going to make as much out of this opportunity as I can with what I have. And hope people laugh at the potato for all the right reasons, if they see it at all.
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