"Talent is Bulls***": An Article Review

"Talent is Bulls***."

An Article Review from nofilmschool.com

According to comic artist Ty Templeton, no one is "talented".

The people we attribute that word to have no innate knack for anything, but their high level of skill is the result of hard work, dedication and LOTS of practice.

In the nofilmschool.com article "Talent is Bulls***", Templeton shares opinions about eliminating the myth of having a "gift" for storytelling, as well as his thoughts on how to tell better stories.

He starts the video by claiming that every workshop he teaches begins by sharing his "Talent is Bulls***" philosophy, and he mentions in the video how Mozart is always brought up by a student when talent is dismissed. Mozart, they reason, must have had innate musical talent since he composed music when he was 5.

"Now, I've played Mozart's 5 year-old symphony," he said.

"It's sh*t. It sounds like it was written by a five year-old."

After hearing this I decided to see for myself what Mozart's early pieces sounded like.

Here's a video of his first works.

Keep in mind that he was five when he wrote this.

I feel like it's still an impressive feat for anyone to write ANY music at such a young age, but I can definitely see why Templeton thought these pieces didn't demonstrate outstanding brilliance or "talent". Taken in the context of the time, they sound like a million other Classical period compositions. His first pieces are sub-par and boring. There is nothing special about them other than the fact that they were made by a kindergartener.

As a matter of fact, Mozart may not be the genius modern listeners have made him out to be, as many symphonies that were thought to have been written by him were either copied or misattributed entirely.

But Mozart aside, the question still stands - 

Does talent exist?

I personally agree with Templeton's statement that "talented" people are only considered talented because of their hard work, but I believe innate ability is still present in some people. People choose to go into the entertainment industry not only because they have an interest in the craft, but also because they recognize that they possess the abilities and potential to be successful in it.

Someone that is fascinated with entertainment but is horrible at making films will probably not choose to be in the entertainment industry.
However, that isn't to say that hard work and commitment can't remedy that and result in a successful film career if they decide to pursue one.

In this case, practice really can make perfect.

Later in the video, he offers advice to writers wanting to increase their level of storytelling "talent":

"Tell a story your audience thinks they know how it will turn out, and then don't let it turn out that way." 

His logic is that a predictable story makes for a boring story. 

Always keep the audience guessing, and always have them be surprised.

The success of The Sixth Sense relies solely on this concept, as well as just about any Twilight Zone episode.

Now I'm a sucker for twist endings, and I'm fairly certain that most people are. The best stories are the ones that keep you guessing, and a story that causes such intrigue is a story that will draw the audience in. This, of course is one of the primary goals of storytelling: make the audience care.

One of my favorite twist endings comes from an episode of the Twilight Zone where a daring, bombastic and fast-talking employee desperate for cash bets his multi-millionaire employer $500,000 that he can stay silent for a full year. Being annoyed at the man's quick tongue and confident that he will fail, the employer agrees. Thus it's arranged that the man will stay in an observation cell where it's made sure that he won't say a word.

SPOILER ALERT

After the year passes, the man demands his $500,000 to the employers dismay. It's then revealed that the employer never had the money to give him in the first place, and that he is completely bankrupt. The employer congratulates the man, stating that he is the more honest man. He urges the man to talk, but the man writes on a slip of paper that on the day before the bet he had his larynyx removed, and thus cannot speak.

Here is the full vid.

This kind of twist ending is just the kind of thing to keep audiences guessing and interested, and is an amazing device that makes your work stand out. By choosing the road less travelled and ending it in a different way from what audiences would expect, the film will become far more satisfying to audiences who want to be challenged and see something new and exciting.

Later in the interview Templeton states that writing to show off your writing abilities does nothing to better the story you're telling. Everything needs to service the plot, and extra embellishments may massage the ego, but ultimately, the audience is there to be engrossed in your story, and anything that detracts from that will result in an unenthused audience.

Now we may differ in some nuanced viewpoints about talent, but I wholeheartedly agree with Templeton's thoughts about how to tell a successful story.

People may come to be entertained, but they stay to get sucked into the world of the story.

I concur with his claim that good writing always immerses the audience in the story being told, and that any kind of ego stroke through the use of unnecessary artistic elements will completely distract from the main point of the film.

In all, I believe that Ty Templeton has some very interesting viewpoints, but the overall takeaway from the article and attached interview was this: the story is the most important aspect of any creative project, and anything that distracts from that - including showing off your "talent" - will result in an uninteresting film for audiences.

Here's the Original Article

Animation Final: B-Movie

ANIMATION FINAL:

"ATTACK OF THE 100 FT. DUDE"

By Drew McCall

Well, this is it. The project. 

The BIG project.

It's the final animation of the school year.

I'm not happy that it's the last one, I love this class and am sad that I'm leaving. But I thought I should end the school year with a bang. That's right. A special effects kind of bang.

Our prompt for the final was to create a video that includes 3D animation, special effects and green screen elements. My group, which includes myself, Graham Petter and Valhalla Cartwright, decided to create a film in the style of a 1950's Sci-Fi B-movie. 1950's Science fiction movies are renowned for their horrible quality special effects, poor acting, and low budgets, all of which we had plenty of. We thought it only natural for this to be our final project. Eventually, we settled on creating a film about a man that drinks a growth serum created by a mad scientist and then becomes 100 feet tall. This is a parody of ALL B-Movies from the 1950's, but we also stole the title from "Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman". We called ours, "Attack of the 100 ft. Dude".

This project was LOADS of fun to make from start to finish. However, it was not without its fair share of difficulty. One of the harder things that we encountered when making this project was designing it to be as close to an actual 1950's B-Movie as possible. To do this visually, we made all of the clips black and white, added a grainy effect to them in After Effects, and added the hum of a projector in the background.

The good thing about making a B-Movie like ours is that you can make it as terrible as you want it to be, since its poor quality is specific to the genre. We purposefully tried to make it as cheesy and bad as possible (which, I'm not gonna lie, helped us out due to time constraints). Our storyline was very rough and had many plots holes but we did this on purpose to make as awful as we possibly could. We still put in a lot of work in despite our film's bad quality; we had to plan out what shots we wanted and still had tell a story, even though it was all a parody. Graham helped a lot in the creation of our story and pre-production, and he also served as the star of our film. We put a lot of time and energy into making this whole film. We worked especially hard on the opening sequence, which included several detail-oriented tasks.

The title sequence is made up of several different parts: first we made the MGM studio title, then we had a film countdown, then we finally had the actual title sequence. The MGM studio title was created as a joke since I played the lion in our school's production of "The Wizard of Oz", so I made myself the "MGM" lion. I began in Photoshop by taking the original MGM logo and adding a black and white effect and erasing the original Lion and making the inside of the circle transparent. I then changed "Metro Goldwyn Mayer" to "Valtro Grahamwyn Maycall", as a parody of MGM using the names of everyone in our group. I then imported the footage of me as the lion and layered it beneath the now, "VGM" layer in After effects. Ta-da! Instant studio title card.


We then created the actual title sequence in photoshop and After Effects. The background of the title sequence was stock footage of a skyscraper that we found online, but everything else was made by us in photoshop and animated in After effects. We tried to make this title card as close to a 1950's title card as well, complete with a roman numeral date at the bottom of the screen alongside various other notes and disclaimers and a little E-Comm title and logo. These details really helped make the beginning pop.

We spent a couple days filming all of the footage we needed for the various scenes like the lab, Graham as a giant, and the tank/ missile. We really had to plan out what shots we needed to get, and had to keep in mind what we would have to do in post-production to get the intended effect as well. The lab scene was fairly straightforward, but the scenes we filmed on a green screen had to be really thought out. We captured a lot of footage but ended up using only a little bit of it to create the final product. To make Graham appear to be as tall as a skyscraper, we had to film him against the green screen pretending to ravage the city. Then, we pulled the footage into after effects and used the "Keylight 1.2" tool to key out the green parts and make the background transparent. We added a black and white effect to the footage of Graham and layered the background footage into our composition. The final product made it appear as though Graham was towering over the school building.

Val created the tank and the missile in Maya, and we pulled the rendered footage from Maya into After effects. We then added the black and white effect (again) and made it look like a tank fired a missile at Graham to shrink him down to a normal size.

When we were editing it all together in After effects, we really had to search for music and sound effects. A simple search in youtube for "1950's B-Movie Soundtrack" sufficed, and after a short period of searching I found everything I needed. We did the same with sound effects, and we even included Godzilla's roar and the "Wilhelm Scream" in parts of the film.

In all, this project was all about the details. Even though the quality decreases as the film goes on, the details that really make a good parody were the priority overall. The one thing that I would do differently in this project is I would apply one filter for the black and white/ grain effects to overlay across the entire project instead of adding these effects to each clip one at a time. I really loved this project, though, and I think we did a pretty good job capturing the whole idea of a B-Movie. I want to add some changes to the original file to make the audio better towards the end, but like most animations, it's never truly complete. It can always be changed to be made better.

I learned a lot though this project and experienced first-hand one of the most important aspects of animation as mentioned earlier: the details are important. Never be afraid to look for something that seems off in an animation, no matter how small, and go about fixing it. It will make the final product far better, and your perfectionism will be rewarded. I'd like to take a moment to thank everyone that helped me with this project and to you, the reader, for appreciating all my hard work over the year(s). Thank you for everything, it's been an amazing ride.

Now, without further ado, here's Grahamzilla destroying the city.

RIVERBANK: A Tale of Sophomore Video Tragedy

VIDEO FINAL:

"RIVERBANK"

By Drew McCall

A tale of tragedy, wallets, time constraints, improvised acting 
and a whole lot of beef jerky.

The Beginning:

There once was a sophomore video final...

It didn't seem like much to my group, the assignment seemed like any other project we were assigned. The idea was simple: create a short film using what we've learned in this class. Write the script, plan it out, film it using the six shot sequence, and edit it together into one nice package. To Tanner Daniels, Diego Astorga, Bryce Prichard and myself, this was just another project, just another group. The only things that set this project apart for us were these requirements:

1). You must include a water bottle.

2). You must include a hat.

3). You must include a purposeful source of light.

4). You must include the words, "Lights Out".

So around these requirements we formulated our story about a group of guys that go camping in the woods. The guys find a book packed away in one of their bags, which tells the story of a camping trip (much like their own) that takes place in the woods.

The group in the book disappears one by one until one person is left: the killer.

Everything that happens in the book begins happening to the real camping group, and the guys begin to turn on one another in fear of who is the killer. 

In the end, the killer is the one that put the book into the hands of the group: a creepy sociopathic teen that was bullied by the members of the group.

It seems so simple, right?

We wrote the script, blissfully ignorant of what was to come. 

What seemed so simple turned out to be as tragic and surprising as the story we set out to create.

The Middle:

Our troubles began early on, when we were still writing the script. Due to the busy schedules of everyone in our group paired with the length of our script we lost precious time to pre-production. We ended up being one of the last groups to start filming. The final script, after several attempts to shorten it to fit our 3-5 minute time constraint ended up being 11 pages. This was our first mistake.

MISTAKE #1:

Script was too long.

Unaware of how ambitious we were being with our storyline, we set out to film the first few shots with our actors. We wanted to film with actual theatre people, so I called up my friends in the theatre department and improv troupe (take note of this, it will become important later on), and we decided to start filming on a simple Tuesday night. 

With the element of hindsight, we should've stopped while we were ahead.

When talking to Will, the captain of our school improv team and E-Comm video nerd, he said that we needed to get some high quality audio equipment, otherwise we wouldn't be able to hear the actors. Since our script relied almost solely on dialogue, he reasoned that high quality audio was essential. This leads us to mistake number 2.

MISTAKE #2:

Our script required us to utilize equipment

we didn't know how to work.

Here's where the real mistakes begin.

So after buying some beef jerky for our actors to make it look like a camping trip (which later became the only thing that kept our morale up as this video went to crap), we gathered our four actors together and began discussing schedules...

MISTAKE #3:

We used actors that had busy schedules before we 

realized it or cared to ask them about their time commitments.

We found a date that would work and asked them to meet at a wooded area outside of Bryce's house....

MISTAKE #4:

We wrote the entire film to take place outdoors just days

before a low pressure system would cause it to rain during our

time that we planned on filming.

We asked our actors to film from 5-8....

MISTAKE #5:

We wrote the script to take place at dusk so we only had a

few hours each day to film.

We also asked them to film in a park down the road to film a few more scenes in a few days...

MISTAKE #6:

We planned on filming in two separate locations.

The list could go on, but I like to stop at 6 because it's the number of the devil, and it felt like he was trying to sabotage it from the beginning.

So here's how the dominoes fell.

We didn't film all the shots since the script was too long.

We lost time on location since we were operating a boom pole to capture audio.

When we were able to film all our actors had schedule conflicts.

When everyone was able to film it rained outside.

When we actually filmed we only got a few minutes of footage since we only had a few hours to film.

And finally, we didn't even get to filming in the second location.

The End:

By the time we started filming at the second location, we had 1 minute of film to show for our 2 weeks of work. And the project itself was due in 2 days.

So what did we due? Well, after EVEN MORE complications that drove everyone to the edge (I'm just going to skip over this part so that I don't suffer more PTSD), we ditched it. Threw it out. There was nothing left to do. With little more than a few hours, half as many actors as we needed and tired and hungry people all around, we were expected to make the cinematic masterpiece that we had formulated in the writers room, the same one that seemed so simple just a few weeks ago.

Needless to say, we had to do something else.

Here is where our actors come to the rescue.

Since my theatre friends that we cast were all in improv club, they were experienced with making stories up on the fly. We threw some ideas around, and settled on what may be the roughest outline of a story ever:

2 guys in the woods find a dead body with a wallet full of money.

Conflict ensues.

On this super SUPER SUPER SKETCHY plot outline, we began filming. 

What you are about to watch is the result.

We made it all up.

In an hour and a half, we made our video final.

Am I proud of this? Yes, in a way. I was shocked at how well it looked despite the fact that we made it all up on the fly.

I learned loads in this project about teamwork, filmmaking, scheduling, friendship, and so on and so forth. But if I were to sum it up in just a sentence, it would have to be this:

DON'T BITE OFF MORE THAN YOU CAN CHEW.

That's it.

I'm done.

Please enjoy.

Thanks for a great sophomore year.

Here's to bigger and better films that will be made in the future.

This one, however, will be seen only in record books.

THE END

JOURNALISM: Brooke Biasella on Weightlifting

Full Interview: Brooke Biasella

By Drew McCall

JOURNALISM: Anton Owens on Family Traditions

"Paper Christmas Games: A Holiday Tradition"

By Drew McCall

Maya Modeling: 3-D Animation Projects

3-D Animation Projects

By Drew McCall

Howdy!

Ya miss me? It's been a while, but I've kept busy since my last post.

In fact, I've learned a lot since I've started working with Maya. Some of my previous posts are included in here, but there are plenty of new ones with the tools used described here.

HAMMERS

CUT FACE/ EXTRUDE/ BEVEL

Cool hammers, amiright?
I liked making this, but making the tongs was pretty hard. In order to make them, we had to use the cut faces tool to cut the back of the hammer in half and separate the halves by shifting the vertices. The extrude was used make the head of the hammer, and again the vertices were also shifted to make the handle. The nail was made by adding subdivisions and scaling them. This was a fun project to do, and now I know how to make a hammer. So, yeah.

BOWL/ GLASS

NURBS/ CURVE/ REVOLVE

Although "NURBS" may sound like an insult, it is in fact a tool used to create original shapes other than polygons. In order to create these vessels, I had to create a NURBS curve - kind of like a profile of the shape - and use the revolve tool to create the final product. Then I added a transparent texture to make the wineglass and added a clay texture to make the terra cotta pot. I rendered the image using Mental Ray, which adds a reflection in the phong and blinn textures.

POLY..........THING

LIGHT

It's a thing!

I seriously have no idea what it is, but it's well lit, right?

I made this by creating some polygons (as in spheres)  and using the difference tool which carved out the original sphere into the shape shown. But most importantly, I lit the scene using a three-point lighting scheme. I used directional lights mostly, and adjusted the light strength and the shadows.

SHAKER

CUVES-CIRCLE/ LOFTING

I'm sorry. I didn't animate any pizza to go along with this.

I think that this is one of my better 3D animation projects since the mental ray that I used turned out so well, and a lot of care also went into creating the lights. Originally we were told by our teacher to make salt and pepper shakers, but I wanted to give myself a bit of a challenge and create parmesan and red pepper shakers, which have a distinct curved shape. In order to create the original shape of the shakers I used the circle NURBS curves tool (LOL it rhymes) which creates a skeleton with which I later used the lofting tool to create the final shape. After altering the vertices to make the curve look natural, I began working on the lid. The lid is in fact a sphere that I scaled down and "differenced" to make the holes. I added some textures and lighting, and I rendered out the image via mental ray and badda-boom badda-bing: you've got yourself some high quality pizzeria shakers!

BOUNCE

KEYFRAMES/ GRAPH EDITOR

Ever seen a bowling ball bounce?

I have.

And you're about to see one bounce if you press the play button.

This was the first project that I actually animated using keyframes and the graph editor. The actual create of the balls was simple: They're just spheres that have been textured. The hard part came in when we had to time out the keyframes to make the bouncing appear realistic. We edited the height in the graph editor, and imported the rendered images into After Effects. 

ICE CREAM

BUMP MAPS, LOOPING MOVIE

I scream, you scream, we all scream. 

MINIMART: An After Effects Character Animation

"MiniMart"

It's 3 AM in the inner city. 

For sleepy old Greg Ormansen, this is his 9-5. 

For Markis Ricardo, this is chance to pay back his loan shark.

By Drew McCall

It's been a while since my last blog post because my E-Comm teachers (whom require that I turn in my assignments on this blog) have changed what they want in the posts as far as content goes. The posts will likely be way more "in depth" now and go "into the details" of the project, whatever that means.

Anyway, let's talk about white gangsters that drive astro vans.

The purpose of this project was to exercise our abilities using After Effects for 2D animation. We had to draw the characters, scan them, color them in photoshop, rig them in after effects, and animate them.
What's that?
Sounds easy, you say?
Obviously you've never used after effects before.

Like all films (good and bad), I started by outlining the story.
Most ideas for my work either come from exploring a concept that I find interesting (as is the case with Carl, a script I came up with after thinking about imaginary friends; the film itself is about an imaginary friend coming to terms with the fact that he doesn't exist), or out of necessity. In the writer's room it's important to accept ideas even if they aren't good, because they can sometimes lead you to a fantastic idea. I actually created this project several months ago when I didn't exercise this technique as much, but since I'm just now updating my blog post I thought I should include it.

If you don't mind, here's a quick tangent about storytelling:

 itcame up with the idea after thinking about making a movie about a robbery. After considering options for the story, I decided to make it about mistaken identity, where the robber is mistaken for a person applying for a job. I was unsure how  to tell the story without them talking, but after some research, I found a program that was capable of animating mouth movements called papagayo. I used it to animate the mouths only, everything else was made in after effects. I recorded my brother's voice for the character's voices and edited in iMovie. It took a very long time to make, hence the reason why I am late on posting this.

Next time, I would definitely take the time to draw out all of the backgrounds, because I used pictures off of the internet for the backgrounds inside of the minimart. I did, however, like using the software to animate the mouths. If I ever need to quickly animate mouths, I will definitely use that software again. I really liked this project and am happy with the final product. Plus, I think it's pretty funny, too.

JOURNALISM: Blood Drives, Legos, and Run & Gun Documentation of Events

JOURNALISM

By Drew McCall

Maya: 3-D (MC) Hammer Model

Hammer

By Drew McCall

These are hammers.

Why Hammers, you may ask?

Well, as it turns out, hammers can be very difficult when modeling in maya. Modeling hammers actually helps a lot when you are learning to model in a 3D modeling software.

The point of the project was to learn about making an object look realistic by altering the shape of polygon primitives. In order to make these hammers we had to form polygon primitives and shape the vertices and faces to make the shape of the tongs, then the hammer head, then the handle. Next, we had to color and texture the hammer, then finally, we had to light the scene with a 3-point lighting rig. After we were all finished modeling the scene, we had to render out several different views of it.

If I were to do this again I would probably put more time into setting up the lights, because the key light is a little too bright and casts too dark of a shadow. I think that my hammer is realistic, though, and that's the important part.

"I Want You Back" J-5 Music Video Post

JACKSON 5 MUSIC VIDEO BLOG

By Drew McCall

Keeping with the theme of the new blogpost requirements, I am reposting the last video project I posted and I will go far more in-depth about the inception of the project and how we carried it out. 

So here goes.

The purpose of the project was to create a music video using the 6-shot sequence, and we could choose any song we liked and tell any story we thought fit. My group spent some time trying to figure out what song we should do, but eventually settled on the Jackson 5's "I Want You Back" (partly because we liked the music but also because the song itself already gave us a hint as to the story we should tell). So based on the lyrics, we began to formulate an idea of this high-school student that had some history with this girl that he loved madly, but try as he may, cannot win her heart back. That is until she reads his love letter to her that proves he really does have feelings for her. In the end, they become a happy couple again.

This was not a very difficult project in pre-production compared to post-production. While filming was a fairly long but easy process, we ended up filming too much video to include it all in the video the way we would have liked to. The part in the video where our protagonist tries to buy his girl's love was far to long. For my longer version, I tried to keep all of the shots in the video by adding transitions to make the shots fit the length of the song. While this technique worked, it made it look a little too weird and confusing. After showing it to a peer, she said the transitions made sense, but gave her a headache when she watched it. For my second, shorter video, however, I cut all of the extra shots completely, leaving only a scene where he tries to give her a rose which she throws away. I think this was good, but I still would have liked to have included all of the original shots. 

In all, I liked this project but I definitely will remember to go lighter when I'm shooting the footage and only film the necessary shots. I will also be sure to make sure that I will be able to tell the entire story that I want to tell with the given time constraints of the song. This project was an exercise in editing creativity, and I think I passed... But just barely!

"I Want You Back" Music Video REDUX

Music Video 

REDUX

By Drew McCall

This is the shortened version of the original music video that I made. I liked the other longer video better because it included most of our shots, and it makes a little more sense than this one! In the last version I tried to make the video line up with the music, so several of the scenes were shortened already. With this one I decided to cut all of the scenes except for the rose scene so that it lined up with the music better. I definitely prefer the longer version, but I think that I did a fairly good job getting the basic idea of the story in here.

"I Want You Back" Music Video

"I Want You Back" Music Video

By Drew McCall

For my group's music video we chose the song "I Want You Back" by the Jackson 5. Our idea for the video came from the lyrics, where a teenage highschooler loses his girlfriend and 'wants her back'. He tries buying presents to win her over, but in the end it's his heartfelt letter to his ex that proves his true love for her.

I learned a lot about how to make a music video from this project. For instance, when you're making a music video, it's very important to make sure that all of your shots will be able to fit given the time constraints of the song. You may have a fantastic video planned, but if your video is longer than the song, then your video will not look good. The same goes for a video that is too short. I had to shorten a lot of the shots because we simply didn't have enough time to fit all of them in at their original runtime. Second, a music video can be enhanced by making the shots line up with the music in the music video. This is true for the music in any video, it really gives the video a professional touch. Lastly, it is important to make sure that you always check white balance in all of the shots. I had to color correct a few shots that were shot in the same location but at different times; some of the shots looked great, but other shots looked slightly tinted with red. It was a pain to go back through and have to change all of the bad shots to match the good shots, and in the end it all could have been prevented if we remembered to use white balance! I really enjoyed this project and I am happy with the final result.

The Plausible Impossible: Animation Theory

THE PLAUSIBLE IMPOSSIBLE

By Drew McCall

In this project, we had to choose 5 moments from one of the supplied cartoons and list a series of "plausible impossibles". Plausible Impossibles are instances where something is impossible under the circumstances, but is made to appear possible to the audience. Below are some examples from a Disney "Gus Goose" cartoon.

EXHIBIT 'A': CHAIR MOTION

In the cartoon, Gus Goose arrives at Donald Duck's house and rushes in after smelling the delicious spread of food that Donald has prepared to eat. He rushes in so fast, that the chair rocks back and forth extremely quickly (like a spring) before it stops. This is a plausible impossible because it is plausible to rock back and forth in a chair like he did, however it is impossible for the chair to rock back and forth like this simply by running into it fast. The chair also does not behave like a spring, such as the cartoon suggests.

EXHIBIT 'B': SANDWICH CARDS

After sitting down, Gus goose then begins to eat. He takes two tall stacks of bread and bologna and begins to 'shuffle' them in order to make a sandwich. It is plausible to "shuffle" the bread and bologna if you TRY, but they will by no means behave like a deck of cards, and shuffling them would not make a sound similar to a deck of cards shuffling. This is therefore a plausible impossible.

EXHIBIT 'C': ACCORDION NECK

Gus Goose then takes the sandwich that he just created and eats it. This causes his neck to elongate upward, and causes his neck to take the shape of an accordion, and even make the sound of an accordion. This may seem plausible because the sandwich is so very large that it may seem as though his neck will take the shape of it once the sandwich is inside, but this is impossible because his neck is unable to get longer or change shape in real life. His neck also cannot make the sound of an accordion simply because he ate a sandwich. Once again, this is considered a plausible impossible.

EXHIBIT 'D': PASTA SOCK

After seeing a heaping plate of spaghetti, Gus Goose then takes out a pair of knitting needles and gets to work knitting the noodles into a sock, which he then slurps down as though the entire sock was made out of one enormous noodle. While it may be plausible to create a single long spaghetti noodle and make pasta out of it, it is preposterous to think that he would be able to knit the noodle into a sock and then slurp it down the way Gus Goose did. This is yet another example of a plausible impossible.

EXHIBIT 'E': COFFEE AND BREAD

After getting irritated with Gus Goose eating all of his food, Donald Duck tries to calm his nerves by pouring himself a cup of coffee, with which Gus Goose promptly sticks a baguette into. The baguette then appears to soak up ALL of Donald's in a matter of a few seconds. It is definitely possible to have bread soak up a drink like coffee, plenty of people do this every day. But it is impossible to have a piece of bread soak up ALL of the coffee in a coffee mug and still retain its shape. It is also impossible to think that the bread would be able to soak all of it up in just a few short seconds. This makes this instance another plausible impossible.

These are just a few examples of plausible impossibles that I saw during the first minutes of this cartoon. Plausible impossibles are things that many audiences take for granted in cartoons, they are part of what makes cartoons so enjoyable. Plausible impossibles are everywhere in the cartoon world, and being aware of them is a necessary part of being a successful animator.

REAL LIFE SASQUATCH SIGHTING! (Or, 'After Effects Multiplane Animation')

RETURN OF THE 'SQUATCH

Multiplane Animation

By Drew McCall

This is a completely legitimate Sasquatch sighting.

In this project, we chose a location in which we would create a 3D effect in a 2D animation. The idea behind it is that the farther away an object is from the viewer, the slower it appears to move as the viewer moves, while the things closest to the viewer move faster. Using the multilane (or rather, multilayer) technique in photoshop, we created this effect by animating the closest layers faster than the farthest layers. In this project I learned that this technique can make an otherwise mediocre animation look professional. It actually wasn't very difficult to do, in my opinion. All you really had to do was keep track of which layers are closest and which are farther away. I really enjoyed this project because very cool effects can be created by using this very simple technique.

"The Chase": REDUX

THE CHASE REDUX

By Drew McCall

This project seems somewhat familiar...

This project utilized the sequencing that we learned with our past two projects.

I learned a lot about the teamwork behind making videos, because we really had to work together and everyone had to be involved in what was going on. I liked how we got to use music, because the music really helped to create the mood of the video. Intense music can really make a video scary. I also learned how to use color correction to get the right look for the video. In all I really enjoyed this project.

Capt.' Ironside: A Voyage Across the Seven Seas of Character Design

The Ballad of Captain Ironside

(Or, Character Animation 101)

By Drew McCall

This is Captain J. Mortimer Ironside...

This character is one that I drew on paper, scanned into photoshop, and animated in After Effects. This was a very time consuming process, which took a lot of patience while both animating and editing the original drawing. The original drawing, by the way, looked like this:

I chose this sea captain mainly because I liked the idea of having sea captain named 'Ol' Ironside'.

After assigning layers to each of the body parts and adding some texture and color to it, it ended up looking like the character you see above. I wasn't done yet, though. I still had to animate it.

It took a while to create the background ship and sea, and I had to use the perspective tool to get the floor to look right. In the end I was very happy with the way it looked. I animated the legs and added a slight movement to the body to make the walk cycle seem a little more natural. I added a built in rain effect and... Presto! I was done. I liked this project, it took a lot of time and patience but the end result was really worth it.

"Overdue: Librarians at Work" - Experiments with the 6 Shot Sequence

'OVERDUE'

By Drew McCall

This video utilizes the 6-shot sequence that we learned about during the previous project, only this time, we had to use 2 sets of the 6 shot sequence.

The 6-Shots I'm talking about are:

ECU - Extreme Close Up

CU - Close up

MS - Medium Shot

WS - Wide Shot

EWS - Extreme Wide Shot

OTS - Over the Shoulder

I liked this project because we were allowed to make longer videos and I learned that Brendan does a great boring teacher impersonation. Some of the things that I learned are that white balance helps to keep sots consistent, and that planning and storyboarding is essential to making a good movie.

2D Inchworm: Early After Effects Project

2D INCHWORM

By D. McCall

THIS IS A WORM.

Yeah, this isn't a very good project. It was fun to do, and I learned a lot, but you really should just move onto the other projects I have.

3D Inchworm: EXTREMELY Basic Character Rigging in After Effects

3D INCHWORM TUTORIAL

By D. McCall

THIS IS A WORM.

After being instructed to by one Mr. Netterville, I completed the 3D Affter Effects inchworm tutorial posted on YouTube by a certain Australian animator whose name I am not familiar with. Nevertheless, the fruits of my hours and hours of hard labor are now posted for the world to see. Using the Puppet Pin tool, I was able to alter and shape the 3D inchworm to move just like an actual worm. I am happy with this final product.

6 Shot Sequence; Or Evidence Why Audio Saves A Boring Movie

6 Shot Project

By Drew McCall

XCU: Extreme Close Up

CU: Close Up

MS: Medium Shot

WS: Wide Shot

EWS: Extreme Wide Shot

OTS: Over The Shoulder

This project was over David's Hobby, which is soccer. I liked this project because we got to use a wide variety of shots and I got to learn how to use the fancier cameras and editing software. My favorite shot is the extreme wide shot because you are able to show a lot about the setting of the video. In all I think this was a good project. I should note, however, that we were rushing to get the shots in so some of them are a little short and choppy.