Scary Presentations, The Research Emergence, and the Optical Bazooka

The Presentation Scare

I know, I know... presentations. Both them and speeches have never been a fantastically confidence trip, and it is the one academic thing I fail worse at than essays.
And you thought essays were a struggle for me.
In terms of finding information, I found some. Initially, it became quite confusing, where I think a lot of sites end up trying to make themselves sound smarter by using something that doesn't at least adhere to some form of basic explanation. Basically, I knew more about what a digital video container was before I began researching than when I was in the middle of said research, which ended up casting some doubts.
I mean it was relatively simple enough, and then you start questioning it, and beginning to believe that it is far more complicated than it really is.
I guess that is my fault, I tend to do that a lot - if it is something I understand and can grasp, I obviously have it wrong because it isn't "difficult enough" for it to be academic level.
It's something I really have to work on.

It probably didn't help I left most of the images at home (since I did a bunch of looking-up at home, but do not own powerpoint (with the exception of the myriad of powerpoints in which to feed my hungry, hungry machines)), leaving only a single image I could shove unceremoniously into my slideshow.
It also didn't help that classes seemed to be in effect every time I needed to use the relative computers... which further meant I had to finish off my presentation before class (this was in terms of imagery, mainly, and entering references, in which I had to enter manually - I had the amazing idea of typing my references out prior, and sending them via my student email, of which I would access at SIT. And the copy and paste would not work for some reason, of which I have no idea why, meaning I had to type them out manually a second time...) :/
And then the presentations... oh boy. If you know what I am like during presentations, then congrats, you can skip the next part. If not, then let me tell you a tale, my child, and... screw it, you're getting the nutshell version.
I end up on the spot, I freeze up, my brain goes into shut down. Any and all practice I might have done (as I have done with any and ALL speeches and presentations I have ever done since I was 11 years old) goes flying out the window, and my content becomes jumbled and I forget important details.
I begin to heat up rapidly, leading to a potential faint. Which is why it is always a good idea to sit down.
I know I have been told numerous times that after years of practice you get better at it, but I know that is not entirely true. Perhaps for some, but not I.
It's like having a particular car that only has so much power, and you try to drive it up a steep hill, but it never gets to the top, just not enough power. Then saying that after three years of trying, surely the car can make it to the top - nope, because the car has never had that kind of power, and no matter how many times you try to drive it to the top of that hill, it will never make it.
I guess I'll never really be good at being put on the spot and cruising through.
Which is why my grade was not as much of a shock as it was more expected. Okay, I was shocked - shocked after adding up the points to find I was close to getting a C-, which for me is unheard of in terms of such things as presentations.

Since then, we have moved onto colour correction. It's quite neat, and very useful. I did find that the longer I stared at something, my eyes would adjust - even before Patrick mentioned it. I had made it look good, looked away, and when I looked back again it looked a tad bluer than I remembered.
Oh well. What's wrong with being a smurf?


It's Been 3,000 Years...

Or at least, close enough. Points if you get the reference for the heading of this section.
Research has been more difficult than it probably should be. I would think I have something, but it's not good, or good enough, or doesn't make sense, or fragmented... it's not exactly the inspiring thing when you can't seem to grapple how or what you are doing.
By what I mean the direction, not the subject. But it also wasn't very confidence-inspiring to have to ask everyone else for help in understanding several processes and approaches, rather than the figure who one would believe would be able to set you in the right direction, who instead tells you to read, read, read. Read what? If I just read, I could conceivably read things that won't have any relevance, and thus, be a waste of precious time. I tried to reason this, however it is like my words fall on deaf ears, or I am overrun with interruption, and quite worrying, assumption, which then is followed by a kind of argument of sorts, of which never contributes to my advancement.
If it weren't for Sarah, Bex, and Michael, I would still probably be floundering about, not knowing how to understand what kind of processes I need to grapple... so now I actually understand everything much better than I did before, thanks to those guys, and I can actually see the end of the race for once and in which directions I must take to get there.
I am so grateful to them. If not for them, I would be lost, and failing this paper at a spectacular rate.
I have a lot of work to do - of which I have already began picking up. I have found a number of potential leads, some of which have already led me to very promising sources, even one source I wasn't expecting which has a paragraph which explains exactly what I need in my literature review regarding comedy.
There is still a ways to go, but I am building up my additional lists quite nicely.
Sadly however, this new research direction will likely require me to discard a good chunk of the reading I have done thus far this year... however given the situation I was in, and due to needing access to specific content, I had to.
I needed something I felt would be easier, otherwise I simply would not have enough time.


Sleepless Nights and Voodoo Dolls

The 48 Hour Film Festival was on again this year, and while I had planned to take part in it last year, family tragedy prevented me from doing just that.
However, I was determined to make good on last year and compete this year, no exceptions. And having the old gang back together was enough of a drawcard as it was to begin with - god I missed those guys. The second I saw Bex during break from Drawing Class, she didn't even see me coming. I know she doesn't really like being hugged, but I couldn't help it, I was just so happy to see her again, I almost strangled the life out of her.
And seeing Laura again on the night before it started brought similar results - luckily, she was not holding her cake at the time, or there would have been murder and mourning - murder of me, mourning of the cake.
And then James later during the Last Supper (before the 48 began (which really if you think about it could be like an Easter story (if you think about it, we all ate at this supper, then we all went and died with the animation making, and then on 48 Monday, we rose from the dead (not as a miracle though, we're just cursed to have to go to class and do assignments (and thus comes to the end of all these embedding parentheses))))).
For once, it wasn't Race Against the Clock... THANK SWEET CANDYBOO.
James, Lee, and myself got to work on the script, while the others began on the character, who was a female, then a male, then a female again, from what I understand.
During the scriptwriting, various ideas for things were discussed, and I tended to sketch them down, of which was then rushed to the others so they could create them. James and I decided on one ending for the animation, while Lee was insistent on another. After bringing Sarah's opinion to the table, it was a draw, so it meant... actually I can't remember what it meant. It ended up being their ending and not ours, but I just didn't get the ending at first. I had to make Lee tell me what she was thinking in order for me to grasp it.
Maybe I was just tired. It was like 2 or 3 in the morning, but I eventually semi-got it.
So at this point James and I were onto the storyboards, which worked out to relatively half the storyboards each, so... no definitive winner there.
I'll just have to try harder next time. :P
At this point, however, I had to be sent off with Sarah for some sleep. Both she and I were going to stay at her place, since (I believe) we both don't seem to do so well sleep-wise in a room next to a room full of yapping people. Last time I did this competition, I probably got a grand total of 20 minutes quality sleep, rather than say, 2-4 hours sleep.
The next day was full of background painting and props. Jesse had taken my lamppost design and tried to get it right, we almost got it. But then I took the final design into Photoshop and created the pieces as such they could be compiled separately so they could be animated in Toon Boom, which I did myself the following day.
There was a lot of work (and good food!) to be done and had, and I guess after only about 3 hours sleep from that first night, my mind was more of a haze.
I just remember painting backgrounds and a prop or two, and then moving onto animation - landing me with the turn-around shot where I had to draw in some animation manually - this ended up being futile however, since it was about 11pm and I was already crashing.
I was sent for sleep, and not to return until breakfast time, to have a full night sleep so that when I woke I could attack the animation with extreme efficiency - which I did, and thensome. Once the scene was knocked out and rendered, I attacked three other scenes and had them rendered... I believe it was three? It was at least that, anyway.
The last scene had some difficulty, where Photoshop seemed to be doing something weird to the assets, so there was some messing around there. The background for the last shot also needed editing, as it would be impossible to do what the characters needed to do with a Photoshop file constructed in the manner it was, which also took time (and with time running out!)
At this point it was difficult to do what I needed to do... I think I remember NOW how I changed the opacity of objects in Toon Booms, however at the time I was in a mad panic and Harmony was different from the Toon Booms I remembered... however I got the almost-finished scene done and rendered.
At this point we were trying to render the entire thing, and it was like a tease... there was freaking out, there was nail-biting.
I left the room in a moment of insane spaztacticles.
And the rendering finished with a minute left until the deadline, and submitted with literally seconds to spare.
I estimate 5. Others say it was closer to 10.
Oh man did I sleep that night...
...only to find that no one else from animation bothered to show up for Media Culture the next morning.
I could have slept in... ._.