Journal 4/1/2006

Time really flew while I was doing the animatic; it was a lot of fun. I did the typing effect and the opacity masks for the monsters in After Effects, rendered them out as quicktime movies, and brought them into Final Cut for editing. Unfortunately, the quicktime movies from After Effects had to be rendered in Final Cut, so I must have rendered them with the wrong settings in After Effects. Also, I had a couple problems with crossfades. For some reasons, the crossfades didn't work when I put them between an image file (psd) and a video file (mov). It only worked correctly between two mov files, or two psd files. When I put it between a psd and a mov file, the crossfade would only last a single frame, and Final Cut refused to let me change the duration of the crossfade. Plus, I had to rerender all the keyed effects (crossfades, scales, center points), so that slowed me down a bit. Even still, it was fun to start work on the project.

In terms of the direction of my project, my major discovery was that everything is moving way too fast to be considered a project about writer's block. But interestingly, the timing fits very well as a project about the writing process. The initial stumbling block is still there (depending too much on cliches), but is quickly eliminated with a little thought and a little planning. By the end, the writer has a nice completed first draft of a short story, and there's just enough time left over for the monstrous finale.

Before I start working on the imagery, I want to do another style frame, because I think that is the last obstacle I have before I can start filming and working on animating the monsters. And since the style frame is going to be mostly abstract, part of the image may actually make it into the final piece. I'll see how it goes.