Wielding Limitations
/When I started this site I gave myself an unofficial schedule: one blog post (at least) a week. For most people this would probably be a laughably simple goal to achieve. Now I'm not going to give you a list of excuses as to why a weekly blog is so difficult for me to maintain in order to gain sympathy. That said, here comes a list of excuses.
Long ago I had a short-term freelance gig at IGN. I was immeasurably grateful for the opportunity, so upon receiving my first check I totally flaked. Besides working a full-time job as an assistant manager at EB Games and taking a full course-load at VCU I simply had a really hard time coming up with ideas for new articles. My eight pieces were submitted during the Summer of 2005; right before the Xbox 360 came out. I was to write editorials speculating on what the next generation of consoles would be able to do and how their increased rendering and processing capabilities would affect new games. It was a subject I was, perhaps overly, interested in; so the first few thousand words flowed easily from mind to screen. After writing rundowns of the Nintendo Wii, Sony Playstation 3, and Xbox 360 (the only system I had actually played at the time) I got stuck.
A very patient editor (Brennan Ieyoub) chatted with me online for a bit and suggested doing a piece about a new GameBoy. The Nintendo DS was already out and all signs pointed to that device being the only handheld the company would be making for quite some time. I knew this, but I was desperate and wrote 1500 words of unfettered madness about a theoretical chimera of screens and buttons that no thinking person could have taken seriously. I had fun with the idea, but it seemed way too early for me to be grasping at straws for content.
This time Brennan saw me coming and suggested writing articles that were genre-specific (RPGs, Shooters, Racing, etc.). That worked for the next few submissions, but my schedule and life in general merged with the feeling that I was veering away from my area of expertise resulting in missed deadlines and the fear that I was actively burning the one bridge I had wanted to cross since middle school. See, I had gotten this dream gig with IGN based on a series of game reviews I had written for GamePlasma.com and analyzing games I played was (and sometimes still is) a passion of mine; but speculation is a different beast. I learned then that I really needed a lot of direction when writing something that wasn't a research paper or my own original fiction.
Still with me?
Now it's nearly eleven years later and I'm trying something new. Though I'm working on several pieces of fiction, those aren't ready to be posted online yet. I wanted to do something to show potential clients/employers that I can stick to a rough schedule for submissions, I just wasn't sure what to write about. I tried doing game reviews again a couple years ago thanks to a push from Wilbur Johnson (TheStrongestThereIs.com) and really enjoyed it; but when I have to procure the software myself and beat every game I review on the standard difficulty, the time and money required really add up. I'd love to do reviews again, but without a paycheck I can't justify the time required to do them the way I want to.
Writing a blog had never appealed to me, but I always saw the merit in trying to write regularly. So I decided last month that I would create content and write brief pieces (this one excepted) about the process. It's a way for me to try new things, hopefully learn some new skills, and hone the abilities I already maybe possess.
Preamble concluded.
A few weeks ago I had an idea for a basic animation I could create without having to do any 3d modeling. I did a quick sketch before going to bed and spent the next few days thinking about what I would need to learn in order to create this thing.
The original idea was to draw a series of two-dimensional images that could be stacked in order to create something like an animated CT scan. Later I decided using cubes made from six copies of the same flat image would take less time, but I had to figure out how to get my hand in the shot with my fingers obscuring the animated buttons I would create.
Around this time I was talking to Wil (that's Wilbur Johnson people) about what I was thinking. He listened patiently while I outlined my plans to individually erase the pixels around each frame of my hand in a video I would shoot. Then he suggested I use a green screen. Certainly this is something I should have figured out on my own, but I had no idea my software would allow this. You see when Wil pushed me to do game reviews three years back he suggested that I learn to use Final Cut Pro and Motion and, while I learned a lot working on those videos, I never knew about the alpha keyer and how powerful it could be. Wil had saved me hours of work and I made up my mind to make a miniature green screen to experiment with.
It should be said that the content I make each week (unless it's for a paying client) is created very quickly and with a tiny budget, so I used construction paper.
At some point I'll construct something more sturdy out of a smoother material, but this worked for my purposes. The texture of the paper made isolating my hand a little difficult, so I had to make several adjustments to the alpha key, but I'm pleased with how fast the whole process was.
Animating the cubes was as easy as getting the images in the right positions, creating a group composed of six flat planes, and rotating said group. I turned the opacity of each cube down, added some lighting effects, and adjusted the focus to give the illusion of depth. Viewing my first test gave me no small thrill.
The final video (posted below) was completed in one night. Thanks to Wil's suggestion the part I had thought would take the most time was completed swiftly. Adjusting keyframes and filter settings proved to be more demanding than expected, however.
Once the video was done I decided it needed a backing track, so I did the best I could in my exhausted state. I recorded six simplistic tracks with a minimalist chord structure (Bb Maj [x2] F Maj Bb Maj) and tossed the recording on top of the footage. Below is an alternate version of the song where the full loops can be more clearly heard.
After getting some rest I set to work making a quick video demonstrating some of the weaknesses inherent in using a construction paper green screen. Enjoy.