November goals

October flew by so fast, it feels like it was never really here… not that that’s bad, because the sooner we get to the point of me becoming a professional animator, the better!

At the beginning of the year, I posted “Goals for 2010” … I want to do something similar, and have “Goals for the month.”

I’ve been focusing on Animation Mentor work, which is good, and it’s going well, but I think it could be going better. As always.

First, a review…

Review of 2010 Goals

1) Get a full-time job – not going to happen, but I enrolled in Animation Mentor, which sort of counts, as it is a road toward getting a full-time job. At least, that’s the hope.

2) Keep Hannifin World updated daily for the entire year. – I already failed this one, but I think it will keep going as a “seasonal” thing. Maybe every spring and fall or something…

3) Finish writing a novel – Not going to happen, but I do have a novel planned out that I need to continue working on. I don’t have time to do something like NaNoWriMo this year, and won’t next year with Animation Mentor, but I still have that desire to write fiction in me. “Work on novel” might become a goal.

4) Continue practicing sketching – I’m sort of doing this every now and then, but I’m not being very disciplined about it. This should continue to be a goal, though it’s more of a “background” goal.

5) Finish writing a screenplay – Done! Woohoo! But I haven’t been trying to market it or anything; it’s just collecting dust. I need to either write another screenplay and try marketing both of them, or going ahead and trying to market this one. Actually, this needs some good editing first, so that could be a goal, “edit screenplay.”

6) Get started on animating a short film – Again, not going to happen, but enrolling in Animation Mentor sort of counts, methinks.

7) Finish album – Done! Woohoo!

8) Listen to all of Mozart’s work – not going to happen… too busy.

9) Make some sort of progress on a machine creativity program – eh, I made a little progress, but nothing serious. And I’m too busy to pursue this right now, though it’s definitely an interest. Maybe next year.

10) Become a millionaire! – Done! Oops, I gave it all away… maybe next time.

So, in review, it looks like I’ve either given up on some goals (due to being busy, not changing interests) or they’ve become part of my Animation Mentor studies. My main interests, in semi-order of priority, are: Animation Mentor, cartoon, novel, music composition, screenwriting, programming. My monthly goals should not include all those things, that would be spreading myself too thin, methinks.

Goals for November 2010 (in 2nd person!)

1) Do good work for Animation Mentor – this is the priority. It’s work you’re interested in and has the greatest chance of leading to a job. It’s also expensive! Ignore the other goals if you have to. This should be the main focus.

2) Write basic plot outlines for all episodes of your cartoon – you will still have to go through and write the complete scripts before storyboarding, but you should have an idea of the overall arcs and the main scenes for each episode (the current plan is for 13 episodes, and we already have the “theme” for each one).

3) Complete character designs for cartoon – draw them from different angles, color them in, scan them. Make sure you can get comfortable drawing them, as best you can with your stinky drawing skills.

4) Continue novel plotting – there are 45 chapters. You’ve outlined 7 of them. Keep going.

OK, there we go. As I often say, it’s kinda lame to list goals because that itself doesn’t get anything done, nor does it make me any more disciplined with my free time, but I think it’s still good to write them down just to make sure they’re at the forefront of consciousness instead of some vague ideas being saved for “someday.”

Cartoon project

I started planning out my cartoon. I don’t know if I should blog about it much, because in all likelihood it will never come to fruition, with my track record of fruitioning things. But I started working on the character design.

It’s very interesting to work on character design when you can’t draw well. But I’ve been trying to follow two main principles: simplicity and contrast.

Simplicity – the characters are based on very simple shapes: circles, squares, ovals, rectangles. And their clothing and hair is mostly textured right on the shape, just for ease of drawing. They’re nothing like Disney, with nice flowing clothing and such. If you can’t draw very well, you gotta keep it simple. Especially since the idea is to animate them.

Contrast – to make the characters easily distinguishable from another, I’m trying to make them each have very contrasting sizes, colors, and shapes. (And hopefully voices and personalities, when/if I get to that.) This is probably an obvious point. I just don’t have much else to blog about.

I would post pictures of my character designs, but I signed a non-disclosure agreement, so I can’t. But I will say there will be five characters. And a sixth character who only pops his head in every now and then. I am currently aiming to be finished by the Summer 2012, before the end of the world. That’s my daydream at least. If I can’t get this to be a cartoon, I could at least turn it into a podcast.

I’m guessing I will blog my progress, though I won’t show any examples until I actually have a product, or until I’ve given up. It’s called “Blather” after all, so I have to blather about something…

Oh, I’m probably also really shooting myself in the foot with this project. The wise old man in me tells me that I should instead focus any spare energy on creating a really amazing short film that could land me a job somewhere, rather than spreading out my time and energy over something episodic. But for now, the episodic idea excites me more.

Popular websites by the alphabet

With Google giving results instantly while you type, it is easy to find the most popular website for a given first letter… and since this blog lacks originality, quality, and readership, why not blog those results? Some of this depends on my location, so you might get different results… what fun!

A – Amazon
B – Bank of America
C – craigslist
D – Dictionary.com
E – eBay
F – Facebook
G – Gmail
H – Hotmail
I – Ikea
J – JetBlue
K – Kohl’s
L – Lowe’s
M – MapQuest
N – Netflix
O – Orbitz
P – Pandora
Q – BrainyQuote
R – Washington Redskins
S – Southwest Airlines
T – Target
U – United States Postal Service
V – Verizon
W – Weather.com
X – Xbox
Y – Yahoo!
Z – Zappos
1 – Nineteenth Amendment on Wikipedia
2 – Year 2010 calendar
3 – 30 Rock Comedy TV Show
4 – 4 (number) on Wikipedia [what a lame result!]
5 – 500 Days of Summer
6 – 60 Minutes
7 – 7-zip
8 – 84 Lumber
9 – 9:30 Club

More animated shorts…

Here are some more animated shorts I thought were cool… by the way, you should push these up to the highest quality and full screen them if you can… don’t want all that other stuff on your computer to distract you!

First, simple black and white with minimal character design and wonderful comedic timing. If you go to their YouTube channel, all their animated shorts are great.

I love the color, atmosphere, and cinematography in this one. Also it’s a great blend of 3D with 2D; almost like a video game at times. The music is a bit wonky though…

This short is just a really fun idea, seeing what the character sees…

And finally another short one with great use of color (dark borders, bright centers) and a great atmosphere to it, kind a sci-fi-ish but warm and welcoming.

Playing with light – Mon ami le robot from Cube Creative on Vimeo.

Fun stuff!

Accomplishing much?

Here’s a fun website: Things Other People Accomplished When They Were Your Age

It’s a great way to depress yourself by comparing yourself to other people! Perhaps not good for your mental health, but maybe you can stop being so self-conscious and find it funny… and be sure to also look back at what other people accomplished before they were your age, just to rub it in.

It looks like the site’s author is also accepting achievement submissions from the common man, so sprinkled in with the famous accomplishments of famous people are some accomplishments you probably don’t care about. I’m not sure what the point of that is; perhaps it’s an effort to pull you out of depression?

And you’ll see on that page there’s a link to Help for the Attitudinally Challenged, which might help if you now feel miserable.

How to Train Your Dragon

How to Train Your Dragon came out on blu-ray yesterday. I missed seeing it in theaters, looks like it would’ve been fun to see in 3D. Anyway, I had heard great things about it from other animation students and it didn’t disappoint; it’s a really fun film with some great flying dragon epicness. It also has the best film score I’ve heard this year, as you can hear by this sample (if it hasn’t been removed for copyright violation yet), music by John Powell:

And here’s just a little talk with some animators from the film who graduated from the animation school I’m currently attending, Animation Mentor:

Finally, here’s a podcast interview with the directors of the film. Fun stuff!

Beauty and the Beast also recently came out on blu-ray, and it looks fantastic; blu-ray is truly the way all 2D animated films should be seen. The clarity of the drawings are just awesome. You can really see the pencil markyness like never before. And the backgrounds also look especially vivid.

Google TV and the future of television

Google TV is coming out soon. I’ve been watching it for a while and I think it’s pretty exciting. The technology for the Internet and TV to merge has been with us for a while, but I think most content providers (TV channels, DirecTV and Dish, ISPs, etc.) are not willing themselves to fully initiate this merger. After all, it will force them to make huge changes to their business models. I’m sure they know they’re going to have to eventually (many TV channels do now put shows online for a limited time), so it’s only a matter of resisting it as best they can for as long as they can.

Two things about Google TV: First, it’s only a first step. Or maybe a fourth or fifth step, since things like Apple TV are already available. But Google TV is a significant step because it allows users almost complete access to the Internet, and it offers apps that are designed to be used on the TV. (And, just as popular sites have “mobile” versions, many will eventually have “TV” versions as well.)

But it’s not a final step. That will probably not come for another decade or two (or three). The separation between computer and TV is still a strong one, as is the separation between TV content providers and ISPs. Unfortunately I’ve read that Hulu.com is blocking access from Google TV. This may seem like a bummer for us excited about Google TV, but it’s actually rather revealing just how important that control over your TV screen is to the networks. Very revealing indeed. And, to me, makes Google TV seem more exciting. Because Hulu’s weary of it.

The other thing: yes, I know, we can all already hook up our computers to the TV (and watch Hulu on our TV). Geeks have been able to do it for a while. But I still think hooking a computer up to a TV is too inconvenient even for most geeks; they only do it when they need to, and it’s still hard to get comfortable using your computer from a couch without a desk in front of you.

TV is extremely easy to watch; users just have to know how to turn it on and change the channels. Computers and the Internet and Internet connections can be more of a hassle. Maybe not for us geeks, but for the rest of the population. It’s easy to underestimate how many people out there either don’t have the Internet, or don’t really understand how to use it effectively. Google TV won’t give people an Internet connection, but it will make TV Internet browsing significantly easier for non-geeks. I think that’s what a lot of geeks might not realize. And that’s why it has the potential to be pretty powerful. (Especially since Google TV’s OS, Google’s open-source Android, allows anyone to develop apps for it, which is more freedom than Apple likes giving to developers.)

Nobody knows what anybody wants.

Consumers do not know what they want until it’s actually available to them or until they try using it. (Like how Facebook is now mostly pretty much a private fancy Twitter with comments, likes, and apps. Users didn’t want it or ask for it, but now many users use it almost every day. If it were up to the users, Facebook would probably still be plain old profiles with wall-writing. And it would probably be as unpopular as MySpace.)

Similarly, producers and content creators don’t know what people want. They don’t know if their products will be successful until they’re actually out there, until people actually have a chance to see and play around with the products.

This is why it always annoys me when companies say they will evolve based on customer feedback. That’s great, but you can’t rely on that. You have to be constantly thinking of ways to improve and change and experiment on your own as well. Just listening to customers won’t make you successful.

The future, eventually

Eventually, the TV networks like ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, will simply have to give up their control of showing shows when and only when they want. VCRs first started giving viewers more control when to watch TV content, then DVRs, then cable companies offering certain on-demand options, then sites like Hulu. Eventually, when our connection to TV and the Internet are combined, sold as a package, and come into the home via one connection, most content will be on-demand. It’s probably still decades away, but I think it will be a good future. (And us geeks may get there sooner, yes.)

Also, there are a few things that will really change how TV content is watched, but they are unpredictable… I predict some unpredictable things will happen.

Hey, I thought Google Wave was really exciting, and I don’t think Google ever really let it do what it was supposed to do, and it became an epic flop. I also thought the iPhone was a dumb idea, and now tons of people love it. So who really knows what the heck is going to happen…

What type of cartoon to make?

As I continue to plan out the cartoon I’ll probably never make because I’m too busy and lazy and untalented, I’m having trouble deciding what kind of cartoon it should be. Should it be one of those continuous story cartoons, in which there’s an entire “season” that has an overarching story? With those, you can really build up the story, but viewers have to watch the shows in order to completely understand what’s going on. Or should each episode be a self-contained story?

What kind of cartoon should I make?

  • Bunch of self-contained episodes (67%, 4 Votes)
  • Season with overarching story (17%, 1 Votes)
  • You'll have make two cartoons, one of each (17%, 1 Votes)

Total Voters: 6

Loading ... Loading ...

(Poll expires at the end of October 2010.)