Ryjak's Animation Blog

I bet you thought I would never post in this again after that mass of posts I did in the final hours before class in early december. Well Mrs. Hastings and the rest of you out there, James is back. Ive got some news to report too now.
First. Advise your students NOT TO CHANGE THE CLOCK when using after effects on their computer. It tripped a safety system that canceled the free trial period, and now I cant update my commercial anymore! And worst of all, I've found those skills to be more in demand than ever! Just look at this article about my good friend Kevin Miner, of Mitchell College fame (my old college) http://www.nbc30.com/politics/4015221/detail.html He would like for me to make a commercial for his political campaign to air on Television! Sure its Pro Bono work, but it'll look killer in a resume! If only I could reinstall the software or somthing... Anyways, I've been busy toying around with this new computer, and I was just about to install my new see through vertical scanner I got for Xmas. Whoa, it even comes with a negatives scanner... I'll have to take out the old photos... anyways, watching new japanese animation I recently acquired. And speaking of Japan, I'm headed there in a week and 2 days to stay for about 2 weeks (12 days actually, 11 if you dont count the airport time). I have no idea what I am going to be doing there however, so I need to talk to my friend about that... hmmm its now 4:00 am the next morning... no wonder I never got any of these done... took me almost 8 hours to complete this single one... well I guess I better get to sleep so I can be up by noon. G'night y'all.

I was surfing through the Trollback archives, when I came across some footage of an opener for a Discovery Times Risk Factor TV show. I used to work for the discovery channel store, so I decided to take a peek at this one, maybe catch the show sometime if I could. This video was full of energy, and lots of Illustrator images which had been dumped into after effects along with several layers of footage, peiced together with a few zoom and blur effects to give the impression that the viewer was not stationary, and the TV was. Something I noticed about this skipping around view was that there were text labels all over the place, from
* MILITARY TRIBUNAL to
* AFGHANISTAN REBUILDS and
* COVERT OPERATIONS
It was all done with the same text effect, over and over again, with some animations among some of the other symbols as well (the map, the beacons etc). I give this 5 out of 5 splats, because I have no idea how to recreate this.

I was surfing on the Quiet Earth Design site when I came across Come Touch The Spirit, was a Video I think I might be able to recreate someday. Lots of fades, video footage with variable opacity, and text moving around in intricate paterns which were obvioously some kind of text effect. The Commercial is for Crystal Cruises, that is selling cruises to South America and the caribbean. There were fades and squiggly lines racing across the screen, sliding to the next clip or just there to grab your attention. One of the more interesting transitions I think was one where a glass window seems to break, and hundreds of triangles made of the last scene are falling down all around the new scene. There were some fading still images as well, placed there to get a more humanistic element into the frame, showing what great memories you and your children might have. I didn't like this one too much, and I give it only 3 out of 5 splats for being recreatable.

I'm still not sure how this company did it. I was looking at this Verb site, and I came across a commercial for United Technologies. Now, I've always had a special place in my heart for this industrial giant, partly because many of my family members have been employed by them in one way or another over the years, and partly because Pratt and Whitney has been a major influence over the economics of my hometown. Now, when I clicked on this link, I wasnt expecting it to be done quite so fast, so when I looked away for a second, it was already done by the time I looked back. The design was simple. Blue bars, dashing across the screen, revealing company names. Then there was a twirling set of bars which became the company logo, and the logo itself, with subscript. No real "cuts" to speak of, but just a series of bars and a perspective change. no music either, so it made me wonder a few times if it was playing properly. Simply done so it seems, but I can't figure out how they did the rotating bars, unless it was generated in some other program, and brought into after effects for tweaking. There was a similar affter effects project on the united technologoes website when I went there to add this link.

You know, there was this one animation I had saved under the IDD folder I had in my IE, that I had really wanted to blog about. It was one called Typo Lennon, and I had absolutely no idea how it had been created at the time. Now that I have 3 animations under my belt, I think I have a little better idea as to how it was done. Actionscript. Maybe someday I'll figure that out. But what is important about this animation to me, is that it was the impetus behind my "Water Cycle" animation, in which I used nothing but text to animate my subject. This does something like that on a much grander scale.
Two Colors
Pink
White
The text in white, never fully completes the picture of John Lennon, but it does get around the entirety of it after a time, and you can tell who it was meant to be. The text just continues to cycle around the picture, creating it, itself being nothing more than the subject's name, john. The song cycles along with the text, never really stoping, just spinning into infinity.
And I think I like it that way, never really ending or begining, just there. Kind of peaceful, and with the music selection, "Dear Prudence" it should be. I give this animation 5 out of 5 flowers for being really far out man.

The One Ring To Rule Them All part 2 is one of my favorite flash animations of all time for one simple reason. It makes me laugh. This is the key it seems in the world of flash animation to gain a large fan base. If a person is genuinely humored by your animation, and likes what they see, they will pass it on to their friends, and post about it on chatrooms, and message boards, eventually becoming a cult hit. The one ring to rule them all is a Lord of the Rings parody with topical, physical, repetition, incompetance, and pop culture gags in it, along with many many others. In the first scene, it begins very dramaticly, with Sauron explaining to the audience about how he forged the one ring, THE ONE RING, TO RULE THEM ALL! and then there is a cool red eye trailing effect to make you go WOW! along with the comedy of him talking about his one ring. Then the title appears, the credits role, and the movie starts. First gag - use of Law and Order style time and place credits. Sauron announces his plans to his ... one minion, then orders him to fetch his seeing stone. Sauron starts thinking about evil and talking to himself, and becomes so preoccupied he doesnt notice when wayne (his minion) returns. Hence he is still talking to himself, kind of embarassing for him, but hilarious for us! Wayne plugs it in (of course they have plugs here in the middle of a mountain lit by torches!), and we cut to a hill with the tower over it. A sign pops out and the sound of a record scratching, saying "Wrong Hill!". Well thats enough of an explaination for now, you should go see it for yourself! It is hilarious! It gets 5 out of 5 splats for pure comedic genius!

Dr. Shroud is an animation series about a vampire hunter, done in noir style. This movie has a primitive frame by frame animation base, that makes it look choppy, along with some film grain effects which make the animation seem like an earlier work of animation. There are no words, only text frames and a musical score. On the score, it is one of the most awful I have ever heard, and completely destroys the feel of film, jumping from creepiness to near jubilence, without missing a proverbial beat. This wrecked the film for me, even though the style was amazing, with its false grain and frame jumps, it lost me with its utter lack of knowlege about mood and music. I rate this movie 2 out of 5 splats, for story line and style, but taking away for movie and poor animation quality.

I couldn't believe that this was this authors first crack at flash, so I tried to see if I could distinguish all the different techniques he used making it. One of the first scenes two movie objects, one on top of the other with a little opacity to give the effect of a boy floating to the bottom of the ocean. Most of the spectacular animation was done with shape tweening in movie objects, and some scant frame by frame animations. Sparkles on water were created with liberal use of looping of some small trinagles. sparkles trace up and down his keyblade in a small rotating/ fading group of stars, copied over and over again, until the next scene. A series of purple lines gives the illusion of fast movement in another scene, and then some wonderful frame by frame animation, with a perspective change. It ends with a fade out from the original animated image.

This little piece of animation was one of the sent to me by Jaclyn (thanks!) with the suggestion that I watch it. I was amazed at first by the quality of the animation. Then I realized these were all just photoshop images with lots of layering and an added transparent alpha layer. Then I took a closer look, I was amazed. Again. I saw little creatures everywhere, branches that seemed to come right out of the photoshop images, and waves around. They were obviously photoshop images, some so tiny you could barely see them. Fades were the most used transition. Subtlety is key with this animation. The audience is more surprised at how much they missed than with how much they saw.

This animation is carried along not by storyline, but by sound and style. Salad fingers is a series of horribly disturbing cartoons, in which the main character, salad fingers, plays out his delusions in an imaginary world, through his decayed and decrepit surroundings. It is this decay that makes the style of salad fingers so intriguing, including a color palate which runs the gamat from rotten meat to spoiled lettuce, with tones of grey and brown making up most of the backgrounds. The mouth of salad finger is perhaps the most disgusting thing in the entire film, as it moves more than any other object, thus drawing your attention. The rotted teeth with green plaque and a tounge that makes an awful smacking sound, make one want to retch when they look at it. Thankfully, the animator has hand drawn a 2 frame repeating animation of the words he speaks so we don't have to watch the mouth the entire time, but also adding to the feeling that something is not right here. The sound is also key in this animation, as the ambiance adds to the creepiness of the whole package. The soft plink of piano keys, and a heavy at times echo effect, along with the smacking lips of mr. fingers, leaves your skin crawling by the end of this film. I give it 4 out of 5 "splats" for almost pure creepiness.

I have watched many animations in the last 2 months since I last wrote in here. But ive just pulled 5 all nighters in a row and I dont give a dang about any of this right now. So Pattie, this again falls to the bottom of the barrel. On the bright side I did get the Storyboard and my Exam finished tonight, so thats something I've got going for me. I don't expect to sleep much for the next two weeks, and will probably end up with some form of dimentia by the end of all this, resulting in the need for trauma treatment. Things do not look good right now

In other news I watched some fun animations. I dont remember what they were right now, my brain hurts too much. I think one was "One Ring to Rule Them All 3" and the other... something to do with the entire plot of "back to the future" being condensed into a single flash animation under 5 megabytes. I thought it was done very effectively for the space he had to work with, incorporating just the basic message of so many different scenes into a single animation.

anyways, gotta pass out now... I'll blog tonight, this is just too thinking intensive for my brain right now.