Brain Fog Central

I'm going insane again As I write this I'm fixing some last-minute shit with the spaceship. My computer is currently crashing while trying to combine about 36,000 vertices into one object because I messed up the materials at some point. I don't even know anymore I'm just tired. This all happened because I wanted to add a little thruster trail behind the thingamabob and realized the solar panels were transparent. I don't know what happened or why but I solved it to the best of my ability, which is saying very little. If this fixes it I'm going to re-add the trail; if that ruins it again then I will say [ F-WORD ] the trail and leave it out. And then I will begin to sob profusely. I hate this project. I want to graduate. Now. I fixed it. The solar panel texture is stretched out for some reason but I don't give a shit about that. I have many, many words that describe how I feel about Blender, but I will keep them to myself. On the bright side it only takes four...

The Devil works hard. I don't. I've been Blender-ing my ass off recently. First thing I did was fix the animation for the black hole; when I DM'ed the creator he mentioned adding a copy rotation modifier to the accretion disc, which was something I did when following the tutorial. At least, I thought I did. Turns out I didn't see the Apply  button so it never actually went into affect. Whatever, though. It's fixed now. After I finished that, I tried using  this tutorial  to add a realistic star background to the animation. I didn't think it'd be possible, though, because the black hole itself uses a shitload of math to bend the light within Blender. Unfortunately my guess was correct; since the stars are all different light sources, the ones around the perimeter of the black hole bend weirdly. It's not super easy to see in the photo, but if you look closely it's noticeable. If anything I'll add a background in post if it's not too much of a h...

The Political and Economic State of the World Right Now I have not edited jack SHIT these past two days. In my defense, I'm burnt out from literally everything and I need a break. Also in my defense, editing does not take that long. I can knock out a line edit and soundscape in one night, and it's not that hard to add VFX, seeing as I'm literally just following tutorials. Coloring might take a while if I choose to take my time with it, but also I'm lazy and want to finish this shit already. The hardest part is going to be the spaceship. I watched the tutorial fully, and while it's possible to follow along, it relies on you to eyeball the modeling, whereas the black hole was just copying the numbers I saw on-screen. Speaking of the black hole, I DM'ed the original creator, Alaskan FX, to ask how he animated it. I have no damn clue what this means but. Okay. Better than nothing It's Tuesday I'm in New Orleans. Hooray. I also haven't done any editing. Y...

thank you kyrie irving Today was filming day. It went alright. I think I've made it very clear by now how much I dislike filming. This shoot was definitely one of my better ones, though that's not to say it went perfectly. I asked Santi and Mateo to come at 3PM, and we'd hopefully wrap at 6PM. The filming location was my mom's house, but I'm at my dad's until my birthday, so I sped on over to my mom's practically as soon as I got up. That gave me a couple of hours to prepare both the equipment and the set. I decided last-second to add a bunch of sticky notes with "book notes" to the desk to increase the sense of freneticism. By last-second I mean I decided yesterday and procrastinated actually adding them. Oops? Another thing I decided to do yesterday was print out a picture of some white dude winning an award, then cover his face with sticky notes to imply that it was Noah who won the award. Little sprinkle of worldbuilding for ya there. The quali...

STOPPPPPPPPPP So yesterday I went to pick up equipment from BECON. I say this with all the love and respect in my heart for Jim Guarasci, but if The Purge was real and all crime was legal for a day I'd be raiding their camera supplies. I don't know the exact model names for everything I got, but; RGB COB Light, Softbox, RGB Cam Light, 2 light stands, omnidirectional mount for light, headphones, Sennheiser boom mic, XLR cable, XLR adapter, boom pole, slider, Sony A7III, 28-70mm zoom lens, F1.8 50mm lens, ND filter, and probably some other stuff I'm forgetting. It's a lot of equipment, but thankfully I've had experience using all these different types  of equipment, though I generally haven't used any of these specific items. I have two days until the shoot, so I'm going to just mess around with everything until I fully understand it all. I asked two people to help me out for the shoot. I wanted to shoot it solo at first, because I get some weird feeling when...

I think the worst part about my last posts being terrible isn't that it dropped my grade; it's that my blog looks ugly as hell now. I'm gonna have to go back in and edit these things to make it pretty again. Interstellar During the plane ride to Long Beach I watched Interstellar  with Zach. The reason I look like a complete psychopath in this photo is because I was bawling my eyes out at the ending because I’m a real man.  I had never seen the movie before, but the black hole in it, Gargantua, was the inspiration behind the black hole tutorial I used, so in a way it inspired my film opening. I think my favorite part of it was the looming threat of relativity. Every moment was an eternity, and it was so gut-wrenching as a viewer to see all the time lost. In terms of the opening I don’t think there’s much to draw from it (excluding the visual aspect), but if I were to outline the overall story I would want the characters of Noah’s book to experience that, and as he continues ...

Get my ass back home STN is over. I got 4th for my PSA and my team got 1st for Short Film. But the real win was the friends we made along the way. I have nothing to say. In the coming days I will be able to actually dedicate time towards this project; for now I want to burn a cigarette onto my brain. I have had to accept reality and give up on getting a good grade this quarter. I want to go home.

I hate STN My favorite part of competing at STN is the nonstop schedule, AKA having no time for schoolwork, AKA failing my last semester. The most I’ve done so far for my film openingis watch Interstellar on the plane with Zach. Movie was alright. Not like I bawled my [ F-WORD ]ing eyes out or anything. I’m sure I’ll want to discuss it more in a future post but I have been up like 20 hours and want to be sedated/euthanized. Another fun little tidbit about my blog opening is that I don’t have the typewriter. So I gotta try and figure that shit out. At this point I’m too wiped to do anything like search for a typewriter or secure equipment.

This is an HD render of the black hole. Pros: It looks pretty. Cons: It took about an hour to render this single frame.  I think I'll do one of two things; either render a half-second clip (24 FPS) for each angle of the black hole I want to use and loop it, or instead just take single-frame renders and animate a glow effect. The first one is obviously preferable, my only concern is how well I can loop it. If it looks like the light's moving too fast I might be like ughhhhh and choose option two, but we'll see. My current idea is to layer the clip over itself at different points in time and overlay them. In theory, it'll cover up the loop; might not look good, though. CCRs (Crusty, Crazy Rabbits) After sitting through a lecture about the CCRs, I came to the conclusion that I have done jack shit in terms of research. My target audience? Who [ F-WORD ]ing knows. I have an idea for the video, though. I’m probably gonna have it be an interview for  Weefle, Beefle, Shnoop! Th...

Image of the Day God bless Michelle Yeoh It's been a busy week. I definitely bombed my blog schedule, and in approximately 203,526,000,000,000 nanoseconds (at the time of Googling how many seconds until I leave) I'll be on a plane to compete at STN. Whoopty-[ F-WORD ]ing doo. Due to the hectic nature of the rest of this week for me, my blog posts will be far more brief, mainly just updating you (my beautiful, wonderful readers) on any progress I've made. First off, I finished the storyboard. You can view every image in their glorious splendor here . But more importantly, I finished rendering the black hole. TA-DA Ain't she a 'beaut? Shits and gigs aside, I did actually complete it. I'm not exactly sure what went wrong the last time I made it; my running theory is that I was in the wrong view mode. But this time I watched the tutorial like a hawk, making sure I did every step exactly as he did. The "texture" of the light looks a lot grainier than the tu...

I am busy. I am tired. I am doing my best to stay afloat in my other classes, and unfortunately that means I will have to tank a few blog posts. I have not made tremendous progress since Sunday, but I have made some . Two(-ish) pages of the storyboard are done, I have started on an outline of the overarching story, though that's more of a personal project, and I have found tutorials for all but one of the effects I want to do. I understand that I have less than a month left, but I need to knock other shit out of the way before I can zero in on this project.  Peace out and whatnot.

This image encapsulates my new perspective on this project. Eat your heart out, Maurice I've been looking at a lot of stuff to help me make this project actually feasible. For example, I found a Blender tutorial for a black hole. This is a screenshot from fairly early on in the process. One thing I love about Blender is that it is absolutely incredible and mind-numbingly confusing. I don't even bother trying to understand what the hell this guy is talking about, I just sit my ass down and listen. Major props to him for comprehending this shit. I want to add, just as a silly little side note, that I have a genuine disdain for space in every capacity. It scared the living [ F-WORD ] out of me as a kid, and at this point I've learned to tolerate it but I like to pretend that space isn't real. To reiterate, I am not saying I am a Flat Earther or whatever, I just hate space .  My best friend wants to be an astrophysicist. He's not allowed near my kids. Anyhow, this is a...