three day weekend extravaganza begin!!

The final little revision is done! Whew! But that feels good. It's all done. The video should be online really soon. Hurray!

We ran a job that had a ridiculous amount of shirts ordered for the amount of effort that it took to print. They really need to order more shirts. I taped screens. I sweated my tookus off. Cleaned squeegees and floodbars. Finished The Five Red Herrings. Damn it was hot. The day ended relatively early in terms of immediate tasks, but I stuck around a but and removed the tape and excess ink from the huge stack of screens. They are now waiting for all the ink to removed and then reclaimed! Odds are that will be my Monday.

Three day weekend! Neil Gaiman tomorrow! I'll probably be spending the night in The City, so expect a report from me Saturday night.

Ohhh I'm excited! Should probably leave around 3/4ish. I'll still sleep in. That'll be nice.

Now I'm going to watch some new television and then tuck into bed.

Also got a very nice letter from Serenity. She is so nice.

Annnnd I treated myself to some more Adagio tea blends + a tea brewer thingy as a reward for finishing the video. I should be set on tea for the time being. Mmmm tea. I want more tea in my life, and I shall have it!

I did it whoo yay/visitors from the east

Saturday:

Set my alarm and got up at around 10ish, and then spent the rest of the day in front of the computer animating. Drew more assets. Scanned them. Edited them. I did spend some time talking to Alana and I got some ice cream. Nums. Late in the day, After Effects crashed when I was a bit too enthusiastic with adjusting a position curve whilst zoomed in. So I got a nice little chunk of time to freak out. I crawled into bed at 4, with all the sequences done in large part, with only a few touch ups. It was a long frustrating day, and I hope to not repeat it.

Sunday:

Slugged out of bed at 10ish and had some tea and got to work. There was tweaking to do (the karate chop scene was key) and colored art to insert and other edits. It lasted a few hours but dang I got all the rendered pieces to Carmen in time! We did it! What a ridiculous turn around but it was turned aroooound!

And right when I got them all to her, Kevin and his friend Yue pulled into town. Kevin as in Komatsu Japan Kevin. He is doing a coast brewery tour, and was cruising through town so we met up and went to Santa Cruz Mountain Brewery. Janet has a growler, so we filled that up with their seasonal IPA. A really nice lavender/dandelion smelling beer. We all got food, Kevin and I shared a sampler of the brewskies. It was a nice little victory luncheon. We parted ways as they headed north (Yue was designated driver for the stretch between here and the brewery up above San Francisco, I forget which one). I took a nap with Joey. Then I went and got shampoo and piles of much needed groceries. Had a bit thing of tea. Started watching Bob's Burgers. Feeling really good right now.

I don't know when the video will drop online, but it shall be soon. There might be a bit of tweaking, but I know that it premiered tonight so that is super cool.

Next week I'm just going to take it every kind of easy.

And Friday I am GOING TO SEE NEIL GAIMAN! AHHHH!! IT'S HERE!

time for sleep, though not the sleep of the dead

Ohh my eyes. I can't stay up like I used to. Though this is brain power stay up.

SO CLOSE! But my mind can't take it anymore. I'd really be loathed to disappoint Odd Owl, but damn After Effects is a lot of work. Finessing is work. Building scenes is work. Holy crap how do people do this for a living!

I like my job as is. I show up, there is stuff to do. There is a variety of stuff. There is problem solving, but not "WHY IS ADOBE DOING THIS THING????" problem solving. We ran a discharge job, and a 8 color back. Now that we have spec sheets, rerunning jobs is going to be a lot easier. There is more of a system for keeping things and people in the loop.

Worked a nice 38 hours this week, which is exactly what I wanted to do while also doing a music video. Can you point out the sarcasm? Still, hours are good. I remember when I started work, there were a couple long vacations that happened, so that lost me some hours right at the start. Now after many months of solid work and that raise, I'm getting nicely ahead in a way that was hard to do for many months.

Next Friday is Neil Gaiman! AHHH!

At home I worked. It's stupid how little movements can take SO MUCH work.

Bleerrghhhble.

seeing the end, almost maybe

I feel like I'm in a pretty good place with the animation, but I don't want to sleep just yet. Have some more tweaking to do, but I got a few more scenes done. Saving the big one though...I still have a few more assets to draw. I always realize a few after I've done a big batch.

My Adagio teas came and I had a cup of both blends. One was a chestnutty smelling tasty cup, the other was Earl Grey fantastic. Mmm. I'm very happy with my blend choices! I also bought some candy to see me through the night.

Work was work. Jimbo P. picked up some shirts at the studio, that was cool.

Let it be know: those re-useable bags made from recycled plastic bags are a PAIN to print on. Lots of specific heat settings (the material will shrink if it gets too hot, and you have to put additives in the ink to make it cure at a lower temp). We did it, but it took a lot of time to do it.

So yeah. At home I had tea and candy and worked on the animation. I swear, editing the pieces takes longer than it does to animate them.

Took a little break from blogging to do more animating. Just touching up the different scenes, replacing different parts of footage.

Still got the big stump scene to animate, but I still have tomorrah. It's coming together!! Waaah! Jeeze.

waaaaah crunch time

It's 2:37am. I'm going to get a few more animations in, nothing final but just a touch of something so that it is there.

I'm REALLY happy with how the ladder and clouds are looking. Less so with the walks. But with all of them touched on today, I can spend tomorrow drawing the rest of the assets, trying some more walks, and just working on tweaks. Only four more...ahg no, I'm going to sleep after this. My eyes are bugging.

Okay. I've rendered all the scenes as they are. Thats good. I think. Tomorrow is already Thursday! So okay goal will be to have all the assets drawn. Then I can start finalizing. I really need a better looking quail. Hmm.

I really wish work would let me out earlier, but it's been a full week. Today I cut and weeded vinyl, burned and taped, caught a bit, did a banner. It went by pretty fast, though damn does it ever take up a lot of time.

And I can't exactly pull an all nighter to work on this project. Work is important!

Carmen's backgrounds look so good.

you're a turkey lance

1am and still working. But that is good. Things are looking good. Sorta. I'm at a point where I'm wondering what the best option is to take OH that is a better option. Erm. Yeah. Anyway.

Work was hectic and all over the place. Catching towels! Cleaning squeegees for the discharge job! Oh now I'm burning and then cleaning and reclaiming, but oh I have to clean the screens from the discharge job because we can't leave the ink in the screen, and omg why are there so many screens???? By the end I was quite waterlogged and cross eyed.

I had a very nice shower when I got off work. Had so much risidual ink. Straight into jammies! And then straight to work.

Wheeee. Okay blogging break over.

contact munchies

Opted to sleep in. And everything was hunky dory on the computer for most of the day. Got the animatic resorted with some notes and I started setting up the different scenes. 23 in all. Well 23 different animated segments. A few use the same background and many have limited movement. So! Time to get cracking.

I did my usual grocery run. Lovely day.

My neighborhood smells like herb, if ya know what I mean. Went outside to gt my laundry and WHEW could I smell it.

When Alana came home she asked to see my animatic, so that was really nice.

Happy Papas Day!

secondary concerns

It took me all day to do something that should have just taken till the afternoon, at the latest. Those installs take time. Damn you Adobe. But it worked. It managed to edit and render.

I got up early even! Good thing, because it wasn't set to go till later. I worked a bit. Then I took a break to get a nice pot for my jade plant, and some proper soil to repot it in. I spoil my plant, I really do.

Headed down to Pro Build which had an awesome plant center. Well it had lots of plants, everything smelled nice, the pots were really good, and everyone was friendly. So that was awesome in my books. Maybe it didn't have the immense variety that some of the Pacific Northwest nurserys have, but it was still nice. There was a $34.99 pot that was beautiful but I just couldn't justify buying, so I went with an orange one. Most of my decor is in primary colors, but a green plant should be in an orange pot. It's just common sense...and I can a smaller red pot for a cutting. So there is still some primary. It was a lovely warm day, so I'm glad I got outside for at least a little bit.

Back at home I got to work and I worked worked worked and it went really well. Got all the bits where they needed to be and ... well I had to do one more reinstall. So I did that, ate dinner, got some candy for my efforts. I just need to make sure that the reinstalls, when they happen, happen during times when I can afford to take a break. Next week will be crazy busy, gotta get a lot of bits done. Thankfully Carmen is doing the coloring.

Speaking of which, her colors look GREAT thus far. Like holy cow. Love it. This video will look great, I'm sure.

Got the animatic all done, and the schedule says that I am to wrap up the animatic on Saturday, so hey. On schedule, that is good!

Tomorrow I will figure out how exactly to attack the next part of the game. The end game. The final animation. Though lots of the shots are short, and some just have a couple bits of animations. Either way. Waaaahhh!!!