The past few days have been a roller coaster ride when it comes to my mental state. If there was a graph for me to plot my varying stress levels on, i would have probably gone off the page every single time.

I am still making some very very very important directorial decisions on the fly. The very fear of not beign able to complete this animation has taken over in the back of my head and i am subtley reminded of it when i notice how everyone elses production is moving along to completion.

While tackling one of my shots, i realized how my approach to many shots have been influenced greatly by my sensibilities of layout design.

I have a tendency to rely heavily on the edges of my composition. In print design, this is quite easily solved, but it seems rather hard to do with screen space – especially considering restrictions such as action and title safe areas.

For example – i had a shot in the 3rd scene, where the boy reaches towards the lower half region on the screen and attempts to fix his toys. I dint want to show the audience how he was fixing them or what he was doing to them and thought it would be perfect to use the screen edge as a device to conceal his actions. Something however dint seem right here.. i felt like i would lose my audience in the shot. It just seems wrong to conceal something in this fashion from an audience or am i wrong? is there more to this that i am not seeing

A chat with rob later brought up an interesting point of possibly removing the entire shot and implying ‘ the act of fixing ‘ in the shot previous to that. This seemed to be the answer to a lot of my worries. I have now cut to a shot of the drawer where the kid picks up a tube of glue and while we hold on that shot, rattling sounds of toys glue spurting from the tube can be heard in the background briefly as the screen fades to black. A fade up from black reveals the same glue used up lying in the same place as before. The next shot cuts into scene 4 and the story moves on. I think this approach implies fixing and yet concels the objects being fixed until the very end.

Went for the experimenta screening of my animation at the ACMI. It was pretty interesting to see my piece on such a big screen … grooooovie !! but i couldnt help but notice the very very weak spots in the animation, namely the images looked very dirty and fuzzy which might have been because of the noise filter i used above the whole animation or just the underlying paper texture of the bfk paper on which my backgrounds were painted on. Also, if it wasnt for the 30 seconds limit that i had to stick to, i would have probably spaced out the voice from the visuals instead of letting them play simulateously. i suppose it works for a commercial feel, but for a narrative, a little more relaxed pacing would help for sure.

but overall, it was an interesting to watch the others animation on the big screen and not to mention the very very cool documentary on FUTURO – the house of the future.

Terrible Terrible day – and i mean terrible…spent the whole day in the studio trying to figure out a problematic shot where the bird snaps its wings automatically. I soon realized that there was no cause and effect. The birds wing snaps but how ? and why ? Painstakingly, I was able to work out a solution where the wing of the bird snaps because the boy keeps turning up the speed of the toy, which finally causes it to break. it works well and the rough render soothened by tensed nerves slightly (somehow the terrible game of pool with Dzul helped too – no offence Dzul, i played awfully myself)

I regret not putting sound to my last animatic and this makes my efforts seem quite half arse. Considering that the story is rather tricky and losing an audience requires absolutely no effort, i need to resolve some of these issues as soon as they make an appearance on screen, because at the end of it all, i want the audience to walk away empathizing with the boy’s condition fully and not be doubtful about aspects of the story.

Called Rhea earlier today and it seemed she was pleasently surprised to hear my voice – always feels good to put a smile on somebodys face – especially hers.

The fear factor gets more intense day by day. I have now totally lost track of days, weeks and TIME in general. Had a little chat with kate about my production so far and she pointed out that most of my timing was off because of an absence of sound. Whereas i totally realize she is right and i am glad she is knocking me around to put sound in, i just wish she would sit and watch a quicktime movie to the end and then start commenting on it. Oh well, guess I have to be more prepared when i consider making a presentation to her next time.

The sound is something that i am working on at the moment very intensively as the absence of it and Kates comments have raised the F factor to an all time high. Sent an email to Markus discussing list of sounds and the possibilty of being able to get a double bass in the opening tune of the film. i work quite intensively from date as i only have three weeks of animation left before i enter the editing booth and package of the work to markus for sound ( the scary bit )

Amidst all the stress, i was presently surprised by an email from Paul Driessen today morning. I had written to him earlier asking for a possible intern position on his next production, and this is what he had to say in his reply;

Hello Raj,
Thanks for your interest to work with me.
However, all the projects I’m contemplating (I’m not actually working on a
project right now) will be designed and animated by myself, the way I
usually work. This has to do with the fact that I make personal films; I
don’t work at a studio.
I hope you will have more luck with Piet Kroon or Michael Dudok.
Regards,
Paul Driessen.

Oh well! atleast he replied and it was worth the shot eh ? Piet Kroons email would probably be the hardest to find considering that he works for Warner Bros and is directing his own film at the moment too.

Better get to the studio now. Looks like i will be spending the whole day animating the seq where the boy uses the dresser to lift himself fromthe ground.

Over the past few days, i got to experience the best weather in Melbourne ever so far. Its beeen absolutely delightful.Two nights back i walked back home at 1:00 am and by the time i got back home .. i was revitalized and ended up staying awake till 3:00 ( ofcourse the latte i had earlier in the evening had nothing to do with it )

I have had a couple of great days of animation and my first few attempts in injecting life and emotion into my drawings have paid off better than i had expected. After my talk with Jeremy, i came to realize that my production schedule calls for 38 days of production work – that would mean atleast a shot per day and if the math works out right – that would take me to the middle of october. Not very ideal !

Guess that means nooo weekends – whats new !?

Been considering the thought of cleaning up my drawings digitally in flash, because this would save me time on scanning and coloring and at the same time assist my finnicky art direction and issues with character integration to environment.

So far i have been able to walk away with atleast 4 seconds of material on a good day of animation – undoubtedly my best record so far.

While on the topic of flash, Maria has decided to immortalize me by making a cartoon character of me to include on a childrens CD rom.

This is what Maria had to say in her email about her new cow character inspired by me

so, who is “THE RAJ?”

with his catch cry, “dude, i am THE RAJ”, he is one of
the most wanted on the cow squads criminal list.
-Maria

Whats she doing you ppl ????? i dont know – i’ll just let it be and see what it cooks into ! I am sure the troupe back at hmm – dubai will get a laugh out of this.

Started animating now.. i finally realized i was running out of crucial animating time and although my story doesnt seem to be 100% locked down, i dont seem to have a choice but to move on and start animating the scenes that have been confirmed. One of the biggest challenges for me in the production process definitley has to be locking down decisions that can and will not change in the process.

Went for the VIP launch party of the Experimenta ‘House of Tommorow’ Exhibition at the EQ bar ( Melbourne Concert Hall ) on Thursday. My animation from last semester had got selcted to screening int his exhibition – hence the invite.There was an interesting vibe in the air that was probably the result of influential ppl (namely the editor of Road to Pedition ), a lot of alcohol, and great oysters. I am a little out of touch with the shmooozing and spent most of time standing around and looking around me.

Amongst the exhibits the ones that really stood out were Panopticon, Expecting, Church on 5th Avenue and Zizi the Affectionate Couch ( all listed under Exhibitions in the flash movie on experimenta.org ). Met the artists of Expecting and Panopticon the next night at a pub on Lt. Lonsdale St. That night was more relaxed and seemed more shmoozable because most of these ppl were fellow participating artists and as Stewart pointed out ‘ tonight its possible tonight to go up and start a conversation with – So which one did u do ? ‘ – undoubtedly the most popular line of the night.

The week kicked off with Ardessa’s birthday and that seemed to set me off on an alcohol spree and been drinking every night since then. Time to give it a rest now and get back to animating.