Heyoh, Another Weekly Comments Blog

Another successful week! You will all be happy to know (well, probably happier to not hear me complain much longer) that I have been sleeping better. Waking up an hour early though because my dad sets loud alarms (That he doesn't wake up to) and is not discreet about walking down the stairs in the morning. Still, it's a lot better than before. :D

• Knowledge skill +3.5

Adobe Illustrator and Flash skill +2
Now that I've had some practice with them I have learned to really enjoy them! Thank you Ms. Licata.
Time management skill +1
I have been doing pretty well when it comes to time management. I either get it done on time or sooner. I feel kind of proud of this.
Sleep skill +.5
Because I had to reiterate the fact. Haha

• I wanna learn (hey, I can't think of a witty line every time)

I never actually realized how little we have done in Physics class. A lot of our days have just been free days. Why aren't we doing labs or physics stuff?

• This irked me

Eh, family stuff. Not getting into it. Sorry.

• I was really happy about all this

I always love using my own tablet in school :D
I am making some great progress with my school work (except physics. I'll admit that I have gotten a little lazy with that).

• Awesomesauce Link O the Week!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJ99hJmuPuo

• This is what I have to say about this

After watching the video on this awesome blog ( http://imparedimpala.blogspot.com/ ) posted by the lovely Ms. Emily Lawton, I wanted to follow suit with a Portal video of my own!
I love the animation and I especially love how the drawings work so well with the dialogue! Great game, great animatic!

• That's all I have to say about that

Jim Henson and Walt Disney: Alike and So Very DIfferent

I will never stop learning!

•  I learned the name of the creator of the Muppits, but I don't think that counts towards this blog haha.
• The two were alike in SO MANY WAYS! It's unbelievable that two men could be that alike. Maybe that's why the ended up as successful movie makers. :D
• Neither of them wanted to be put in a box. That box being a "child's cartoonist". What they saw themselves as was "filmmakers"

You wanna know what I think?

• I have never seen the Muppits. Haha (but I don't think this counts as an opinion)
• It is remarkable just how similar they are to one another.
• They both ran highly successful film series. Their creativity and passion touched the whole world.

You know I gotta ask

• How does one come up with such ideas? Surely these ideas must have come from somewhere.

Dreamworks: Helping you with storyboarding since 9/21/2013

Learning every week (because we get our articles weekly, not daily)

• Grids: They help. Use them
• Depth perception: Don't make your characters claustrophobic. Give them plenty of space to roam free. "Roam free my pets! Your god commands it!"
• Label your characters. You will thank yourself later: If your storyboard is going anywhere, label your characters so you know who is closest and who is farthest and who is in between. Enough said

Judging time

• I think these are all very useful techniques (TECHNIQUE! TECHNIQUE!!)and I will certainly try using them next time. :D
• Drawing multiple characters just might be easier now. Thank you Dreamworks!!
• Le gasp! I have more than two opinions!
• Grids are useful, but they are messy (or at least they are in my opinion). Grids will be something I will have to get used to. One of the many things of course.

You know I gotta ask

• How long do storyboards have to be to clearly convey the message or plot?

I apologize for the brevity of this blog. Everything was pretty much self explanatory in my opinion. Very practical. :D

Chipotle Scarecrow Makes Enemies To Win Customers

+3 to knowledge skill

• Mind games: It's about an emotional response. When you get an emotional response, you get more attention. When you get more attention, more people know of your products. More people who know of your products, the more people will buy them. It's advertising math (that's a thing now haha) and it is very simple math.
• There isn't a need to oversell the brand: Let's be honest. I'm sure none of us actually knew of Chipotle before this article response. And now that we have read the article and watched the video, how many of you will never forget the brand? And how many times did you see the brand name throughout the video? Once. I find it hard to believe that such a small amount of time has burned the brand onto our brains. What sorcery is this? The sorcery of emotional mind games.
• The difference between narrative and advertising: I hardly recognized the difference to be honest. They all look like ads to me. But apparently narratives are supposed to be conversation starters (I assume the message is to be discussed). "Hey, how about that Chipotle?"

Putting in my 2 cents

• I personally thought that the video was a little excessive, but this blog should probably focus on the article rather than the video. The article raised some good points. You're not always going to make friends by showing everyone what they want to see. Sometimes you have to show people what they don't want to see and flush out the haters. Hater's gonna hate.
• Didn't PETA already beat them to the controversial ads (rhetorical question)?

You know I gotta ask

•  Will this love-hate method work forever? Will the controversy ever come back to bite them in the butt or is this a fool-proof plan? If so then it is one hell of a method and should be used with extreme caution.

Another Week Has Come and Gone

Can you believe it? The days are going by so fast! Next thing you know, we'll all be graduating from Animation with a smile on our face and a career on our minds. :D

• Knowledge skill +3

Adobe Illustrator skill +1 (because we learn something new about it every day)
Time Management skill +.5
Pre-Calculus skill +1
English Vocabulary Skill +.5

• Curiosity that has arisen

Still trying to fully figure out Adobe Illustrator (might start calling it Ai). Haven't quite gotten the hang of it yet (getting there :D). I'll probably get it more as I go along. I already know enough to get me through my projects and that's what's important.
Pre-Calculus is starting to throw me off some. A few of the questions bamboozle me, but again, I'll probably learn as I go along.

• This really grinds my gears

Ai bugs me. Probably because I'm not used to it, but it still irks me. I wish that there was another way to fill in the strokes. In every other program I have used, all of the lines automatically connected when they crossed. Not in Ai. It might have something to do with the fact that they are vectors. Eh, I'll suck it up. :P
Still having a hard time sleeping. I either don't fall asleep for a while or wake up at an ungodly hour and don't fall back asleep. Hopefully this doesn't last long. I function just fine. I'm not sleep deprived, but a good night's rest would be nice for a change. I'm tired.
Time: Why is there not enough of you? Two and a half hours is hardly enough time for Animation. Time flies when you're having fun :D

• This made me go "Squee!"

I finally got my drawing into Ai and am currently working on it. This felt like a big accomplishment. I am also getting better with the curved lined! :D
So many friends!
Reading up on some video game tricks used by Gearbox on Borderlands 2. That was especially cool. ^^
More blooogs. :D I didn't think I would like blogging, but I do. It's a new way to express myself. >w<

• Awesomesauce Link O the Week!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piH5_aP0fY8

• My bellybuttons on the link

A really cool little animation :D It's about 7 minutes long. It's about two men who are out fox hunting and wind up in an epic battle (Earth versus Sky) for the hand of a beautiful women. The irony is that they are fighting amongst one another. The fox is a Kitsune from Japanese Folk Lore and it has the ability to change shape to trick people (if I am not mistaken). Needless to say, it made easy work of those two hunters. Haha.
Foxes are the cutest >w<

How Do Film-Makers Manipulate Our Emotions With Music?

Learning every day:

•  It's all about chemistry: Music acts as a positive stimulant in your brain. Essentially it makes you feel like you just ate the best chocolate bar in the world or you just got laid, maybe both.
• Film-Makers are using this funky thing called infrasound to make us scared. They're getting into our heads and making us be afraid of exactly what they want us to. And the worst part of it is that we don't even realize it is happening. The sound is so low that we can't actually hear it. It's probably the closest thing to mind control there is! D:
• Sometimes the score can become the star. Apparently (what's a word you're going to hear a lot out of me) the music can be more powerful than the acting. I have never (another pairing of words that will be used frequently by me) heard of a situation such as this. Hm... Guess I'd better go watch some more movies! I'll go get the pop corn! :D

Bellybutton O'Clock:

• Get out of my head!! Nah, I'm just kidding. We practically pay the theaters to do this to us, so might as well get our money's worth!
• Horror scores are very easy to analyze. A few high pitched notes that simulate a screech or lower than audible bass notes that make us have change our diapers can be more easily picked out than a soothing melody of love. Probably because it is the easiest to explain. Still, I'd rather hear about romance scores.

You Know I Gotta Ask:

• Who is the genius behind musical mind control? Where did it all begin? Why do movies even have music in the first place (not that I wouldn't prefer a dialogue only movie, but for curiosity's sake)?

Recapping the Week

My Week (I'm sure you all want to hear about that)

• Knowledge skill +2:

 Adobe Illustrator skill rose by 1
Flip Book skill +.5
Math skill +.5

• Want to learn

 Animation stuff :D And drawing stuff. I would love to be able to be proud of my artwork and then turn my art into a living thing (well, it would look alive). I also need to learn to chill every now and again. To much stress isn't good for my health and it's keeping me up late at night

• Irked me

 Adobe Illustrator... The paths are extremely similar to GIMP (from what I can tell at the moment) and I strongly dislike it. I think that this type of path tool will be very difficult to work with -_- With that being said, I'll suck it up and learn how to make it work

• Made me happy

 Going to the mall on the weekend and getting my sister a button :D My boyfriend's family and I went to the Eastern Hills Mall and at said mall there is this one shop that I simply ADORE!! It's called Phase ID and I go there all the time. There's a lot of anime and steam punk gear and I am in Nerd Haven whenever I go there. I don't usually have any money though :( But my boyfriend was a real sweetie and loaned me $2 to buy my sister a My Little Pony pin :D

I also liked that we are starting to do some digital work in Animation :D Paper work is kind of boring (But the drawing of my character is fun :D)

• Awesome Link O' The Week

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vhGGy3i6aA

• My bellybutton on the topic

I LOVE My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic! I love love love it! The story line and the art and the music leave me coming back for more (Fluttershy is best pony)! I saw this about a year or so ago and I could never forget it. I learned so much from just this video! I have a feeling that it will come in handy later in the course, so even if you don't like MLP: FIM, I kindly ask that you watch the video anyways just for it's educational value and animation techniques (TECHNIQUE! TECHNIQUE! TECHNIQUE!!)

Sometimes, less (money) is more

The More You (Well, I) Know!

• Woah! I had no idea that forced perspective could work like that! It must take some serious planning and attention to detail (and a pretty low budget) to have something as awe inspiring as that. Who would have guessed? Certainly not me!
• Need a sandy scene? Go to California: Silly me always believed that when a shot of a scene was of an Iraqi desert, it was taken in the Iraqi desert. But I don't always think about that when I'm munching on my popcorn (which is more than half empty or less than half full). I seriously need to pay a bit more attention to detail! Especially if I'm going to be in Animation!
• Money and a good film do not always go hand in hand: Again, not something I think about all the time. A good movie can spend a lot on special effects and still turn out like poop (poor sales) or money can be conserved (or simply not be there) and the results can rake in the dough. Of course, money does help, but imagination is the key ;D

Bellybutton Time (Because opinions are like bellybuttons):

• Those effects are very believable! I can't believe that I was fooled into thinking that those scenes took place in CGI or in reality (no wait... I can. Silly me xD
•  Some scale models are very convincing... I didn't know they came that realistic D:

You Know I Gotta Ask:

• How does one come up with this sort of idea and make it all work? Do they make the actors progressively take a few steps back at a time or is there a mathematical formula to make this all work? If so would someone share it with me? That stuff is cool!

To Many Movies, Not Enough Cash

3 things learned ("Gonna learn today!")

1. There are (to) many animation studios: I'm serious! I never actually paid attention to WHO made the movies I loved so much. I pretty much just ignored everything before the movie started and munched on my overly salty popcorn (When I really wasn't supposed to haha but it was so gooood!).
2. The Animation genre is second in popularity to Action movies (but animation movies can sell more goodies): I never took into consideration other peoples' tastes in movies since I never really went to the movies that much, let alone with friends. I never even thought that there was a more superior genre than animation. Apparently there is. Action. Nothing quite like a fast paced action movie with an attractive actor playing the lead role. Not exactly my cup of tea, but hey, opinions are like belly buttons. We all have them.
3. One bad movie can cause a lot of layoffs: Movie sales have a huge impact on the companies that makes them, but just how big of an impact isn't always known. Taken from the article: DreamWorks took an $87-million write-down on its holiday movie "Rise of the Guardians," which contributed to the first-ever layoffs at DreamWorks this year. Wow, that's pretty scary in a way. One movie caused such a huge write-down? Apparently!

Warning: Opinions Ahead

1. I personally prefer a good animation myself. Some people go to movies to see Johnny Depp or Leonardo DiCaprio play that devilishly handsome or quirky heartthrob that always gets the girl or gets the gold (sometimes both). I'll just stick to that funny animated super villain with the larger than life nose (Gru from Despicable Me) and the unnecessarily large fists (Wreck it Ralph).
2. Quite frankly, there are to many animated movies being cranked out. The main problem is not that they are being mass produced, but that they are becoming to bland and repetitive. The movies are sticking to the same old routine over and over. There's a good guy who maybe isn't that well known/popular, he has greatness or adventure thrust upon him, he must learn to face the challenges that await him with the help of a loyal crew, save the day or learn a valuable lesson about always being yourself or some other cheesy lesson we have heard all our lives (Only My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic can pull that off and get away with that).
3. Turbo never looked like all that interesting of a movie anyways.

You know I've gotta ask:

Why are animation studios pumping out these animated films in rapid succession? Is there a race to see who can make the most films? I can understand that those studios need to make money too, but they aren't making any more money off of rushed and dried out films, are they? Hm...

Today

Today I started my first blog and made my first post. It's pretty intimidating, but it's something I think I can get used to with time. It will come in handy not only with not only with Digital Media class, but also my Physics class where I will have to post blogs as well. Hello new year, my name is Christina Marie Nubelo