Monday Nov. 10th – In the morning we had the first session of our ACP After Effects course. In honesty I thought this would be a professional level exam, however we covered the barebones basics of After Effects. I think the tutor wasn’t aware that the majority of us were Animation students and I myself, have already extensively used AE. When he began to explain frame rates, or said that we ‘probably didn’t know what the 12 principles of animation were’, I was a bit taken aback. However I do acknowledghe that these exams tend to be hyperspecific and they look for exact ways of doing things, so I will be studying the Gmetrix lessons he provided for us. Essentially, we covered how to open an AE document, make a composition, animate properties, add effects and pre-composing. I’d rather not go into detail because sitting through it was already mind-numbing. nI do want to point out that I do know that not everyone there was an animator or has used AE, but I was just under the impression that this was a professional exam for some reason. It can’t hurt to have the certificate anyway though.
In the Evening I then had a 1-2-1 tutorial with Isobel. Before the meeting I quickly sketched out some alternate roughs as the first one wasn’t working proportinately. The left vanishing point was too close to the canvas and it was warping the whole image when I tried to add in more details on the left and I widened it up. I’ve settled on the bottom composition pictured below.
She gave me some general advice to fill out some of the space and draw the eye toewards the desk area as seen in my notes below.
Immediately afterwards, my roommates and I went to go see ‘Be More Chill’ in concert. It was incredible and so funny and my 13 year old self would have had been so jealous.
Tuesday Nov. 11th – I attended a course rep session in the morning. The other DPS rep wasn’t there when we had to discuss the feed back we got but we didn’t have much to say anyway. Below is an image of the debrief I sent the rest of the cohort.
Afterwards I went to digital space at LCC to finish off the video for the ECR project. Because my process is very effects heavy it took a while to finish the edits because playback was quite slow. When it came to rendering I started at the digital space, but it took too long (3 hours) so I had to stop it and restart at home. My GPU is worse than those at uni so I had to leave it rendering overnight, but it finished fine and I was able to send it off in the morning.
https://www.instagram.com/p/DRMqw6OjZPC/?img_index=2
Wednesday Nov. 12th – In the morning we had a short meeting about our SIPs where we got to pitch them to Maliha and the rest of the group. I talked about my studio idea and it seemed quite well recieved. I would like to come up with a short mission statement and send it out to the DPS group and see if any one would like to produce their projects under the Sawtooth name. This would give me an opportunity to gather members as well as begin a portfolio of work.
In the afternoon I worked on studying for the After Effects exam on GMetrix.
Thursday Nov. 13th – During the day I worked through more of the GMetrix After Effects course. I didn’t manage to finish the last domain but I felt confident enough that I could pass on Friday. Later, in the evening my roommates and I went down to Brixton to see my brother’s show, with the animation I did projected. He performed very well and I was proud. My mom even came over from Switzerland and got to see him playing on stage with my work there as well. Lot’s of people in the crowd as well as from his label complimented both of us on the work and performance. While I’d love to work in TV animation, I also enjoy doing visuals for music and would enjoy this type of work as well.
Friday Nov. 14th – In the morning I took the After Effects test. It was a little harder than I expected but I still passed with a 94%. It seems like the majority of the class did not pass so I think my extensive experience in AE definitely put me at an advantage. I spent the rest of the day with my mom and had dinner with my cousins.
Saturday Nov. 15th – I was at work.
Sunday Nov. 16th – I was at work.