Week Three

William Cox
May 20th, 2016
Senior Project

Week Three

This was officially my last week at proctor. It was definitely a sad time for me, but also strangely

happy, just in different ways. Im happy to move on to new grounds, but I'm sad that I'm leaving

behind what has definitely become my home for most of my life. I feel that this week I was able to

channel a lot of my emotion into my work, and get a solid amount done. Not only was the sheer

amount of work that I got done considerably solid, but the quality and variety of the work as well. I

learned through my experiences working on my animation this week that the end result of a project

does not always look as it was expected to. In this case, I did not really have any idea of what I

wanted my animation to look like, so I actually have found that I am mostly satisfied with the final

result. Of course I wish I could have made it much longer, and more visually intensive. I also wish

that I could have spent more time making each motion more fluid. This is a hard process, and to

accomplish it I would have to have created much more frames, which would have taken much more

time. Overall I feel very proud about my project, and I cannot wait to present it to whoever decides to

come check it out!

May 20th, 2016

William Cox
May 20th, 2016
Senior Project

The Last Day

Today was my last official day of working on my project. Of course I will have to do some more writing and paperwork, as well as preparation for the presentation. But after today my animation process is completely finished. It was a sad feeling at first, but I have a feeling it will not be the last animation I create in my lifetime. I worked on some random scenes to go into the mix with a lot of the other random scenes. At first I tried to animate a tesseract, which is a four dimensional cube, but that quickly became far to difficult. And instead tried to make a flowing hallway that somewhat reminded me of the a-ha video for Take on Me. This worked out okay. I don't know if it was as flowing as I expected it to be, but it was definitely something that I will add to my final production, because it looks cool either way. Even if it needs a few more key frames her and there, to smoothen out the motion. After today all I really have to do is catch up on some blogs and write my weekly reflection, as well as writing my three to five page paper that I am oh-so exited for. And then prepare for my presentation and hope for the best. 

May 19th, 2016

William Cox
May 19th, 2016
Senior Project

Thursday

Today I worked more on my animation. I had to move all of my equipment into the tech department to do more work, because in Slocumb they were preparing for the art show. This did not hinder me one bit. I decided to animate a scene in which the man who was falling off of the cliff sprouted wings and landed safely. This took me a long time to figure out how to animate. In the long run I kind of took the easy way out and simply rotated the paper instead of redrawing the figure at a new angle every frame, but this saved some of my precious time so I could move on to the next scene first thing tomorrow!

May 18th, 2016

William Cox

May 18th, 2016

Senior Project

Wednesday

Today I got in as early as I could and began to work on my animation. I started some new scenes. I decided that I may want to use this James Blake song called I Never Learnt To Share. It is a dark song of a very specific genre called organic dubstep. Which is basically a song that has the patterns and sounds of a dubstep song, except it is played on the an electric organ. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSvb_jGwQ7s

Because of the lyrics, I decided to animate a scene where two figures are talking to each other, and another is left out. This scene quickly became very dark, as I animated the figure who was left out walking off of the edge of a massive cliff, and falling. While he is falling he has this thought bubble that expands to take up the whole screen. I think I will use this scene as the introduction to my final video. 

May 17th, 2016

William Cox
May 17th, 2016
Senior Project

Tuesday

Today I worked on the technological part of my project. I spent my time collecting and downloading all the images from my camera into a computer in the computer lab. I then imported them into Final Cut Pro, a professional grade video editing program, and configured them into an animation. This was difficult because I had to find the right frame rate so that the animation would look fluid, but also go somewhat slow, so that It would not be too quick. I then spent the rest of my day adding sound to the animation. I made several copies of the project without sound, so that If I decide that I do not like the sounds I chose then I can choose some new sounds for the animation. I definitely want sound to be a part of it though, because all the animations I have watched online have lots of sound, and it adds immensely to the atmosphere that the artist is trying to create. Choosing the sound effects and the background ambience/song will be a journey in itself. 

May 16th, 2016

William Cox

May 16th, 2016

Senior Project

Monday

Today I got in early, feeling good and ready to go. I began working on my elephant, but quickly put him aside when I had an idea for a new scene. This scene included an eye, which cries a tear that then sprouts a plant, and the eye becomes a sun over the plant. This scene took up the rest of my day, which is somewhat sad because of how short it actually is. For this scene I used a new tactic, instead of drawing and erasing on the same sheet of paper, I began to use several sheets of paper over each other, because I could see through the first sheet, I could then draw on the second sheet with precise marks, so that the objects in the scene could move with fluidity in the final animation. I am beginning to worry that I will not have enough animation to have a presentable project at the end of the term. But at the same time I am happy to be back making progress in the studio, and plan to continue my endeavor tomorrow at lightening pace. I think that for this animation to be presentable I will need to come up with a lot more filler, and some longer scenes, because as of right now I only have short scenes, minus the scene I shot on the first day, which makes up most of the actual animation. Perhaps I can come up with a way to do a similar scene, because that scene required less drawing and erasing and more just capturing frames for the final animation. Which speeds up the process a lot and makes it far less tedious. 

Week Two

William Cox
May 17th, 2016
Senior Project

Week Two

This was my first week of animation on senior project. I learned a lot from my experience in the 

woods and tried to apply it to my animation project. This week I learned that animation can be very 

difficult. Through various attempts at different scenes, and failures vast and many, I have learned that 

anything that you want to accomplish takes a lot of time. I believe this is a good motto for not only 

animation, but many things in life. Though I really liked my first couple days of animation, my 

motivation seemed to fizzle out a bit towards the end of the week, as I began to accomplish less and 

less each day. Im hoping that my weekend will rejuvenate my motivation and allow me to make 

further progress once again. Everything this week happened mostly as expected. My days of feeling 

very down and under the weather came as somewhat of a surprise, I was kind of expecting to be 

exited about the project through and through. I believe that this week has been a learning experience 

for me, it has shown me what I can accomplish in a short amount of time if I am truly motivated. And 

I also realized how much work I can miss out on if I lack motivation. In my next week I hope to learn 

how best to accomplish this motivation, because this truly has been the deciding factor on how much 

work I can get done. I feel that with motivation I could create a truly wonderful and amazing 

animation, but I know that finding this motivation takes time, and I believe the animation that will 

come out of this senior project will not be something I am entirely happy with. I will be proud of it, 

but I think that If I were to create something I really loved, I would need a lot more time. 

May 13th, 2016

William Cox
May 13th, 2016
Senior Project

Friday

Today was another day where I did not get much done. I went in with the intention of working long and hard on my animation, and somehow only ended up with a few frames that I was happy with. If your farmiliar with animation, you know that a few frames only makes up a very short amount of time in video, varying slightly between the range of frames per second settings that are most commonly used to create an animation. I worked more on my elephant, which in turn is getting more and more smudged. I may have to scratch the idea of the elephant, or start again on him. Because he simply doesn't quite look exactly how I wanted him to. Perhaps I will use several sheets of paper to create him, instead of erasing and re-drawing on the same sheet of paper. Next week I plan to really crack down and get most of my animation done. I feel that I have not put enough work into it this week, and I expect from myself utmost effort in this next week of senior project. 

May 12th, 2016

William Cox
May 12th, 2016
Senior Project

Thursday

Today I worked on my animation for most of the day. I got in early in the morning and began my process. I used the same piece of paper that I had been the whole week 1 last time, animating a small scene with a candle in the dark. It did not look exactly how I would have liked it to, but it was also not terrible, and I think people will at least be able to tell what I was shooting for. This candle scene took me most of the morning, and before I headed off to lunch I teed up my elephant, laying down a rough sketch of the beasties shape and proportions. So that I would be able to get right to work on his movements after lunch. It became increasingly difficult to animate the elephant as I kept drawing and erasing, because of all the charcoal smudging around. I will have to find a solution to this problem so that I can move on with my work. 

May 11th, 2016

William Cox
May 11th, 2016
Senior Project

Wednesday

Today I woke up and felt very under the weather, I had to make the executive decision to stay home. However this did not impair my project too much, and I was actually able to get my hours done working on the technological aspect of the project. Learning how to configure the pictures into an animation using more professional software than the web app I used to create the gif in the other blog. I plan on getting back in tomorrow to keep up the good work. I think I am going to animate an elephant next, start with the elephant walking, and see where it takes me. I also have an idea to animate a scene from my camping experience, where a woodpecker was spying on me. This will hopefully y make for a pretty little scene towards my end product. 

May 10th, 2016

William Cox
May 10th 2016
Senior Project

Tuesday

Today I worked some more on my charcoal animation. I got to the studio in the morning and continued right where i had left off. I was less motivated today for some reason, and have high hopes that my motivation will come back soon. I got a little bit done, and I tried some new things, like I tried to make it look like a burning candle, with a dark background. But it was harder than I had originally imagined and I may have to redo or make another bit with the candle, because I think it is a cool idea that looks really good. I started something new at the very end of the day, it was a hallway with a door in the end. I plan on making it look like you are moving down the hallway into the darkness of the door. I want to keep using animals in my animation. I feel like the spider and the worm have added a lot of depth to it, and I see animals in a lot of animations and think that they are a great subject. Maybe I will animate a porcupine, or a turtle. Perhaps a toad. 

May 9th, 2016

William Cox
May 9th, 2016
Senior Project

Monday

Today was my first day in the studio. I arrived at nine in the morning and began to set up. I first had to get a tripod and a camera from my father at the tech department, then I had to find a good spot in the art studio to work. I chose a corner and placed my tripod in it, marking the floor with tape so that I would not forget where the feet of the tripod go. Then I broke out an easel and charcoal and paper and got to work. I started simple, deciding to try to animate a walking stick figure, just to test the waters. I imagine that later on I will be able to animate a full person with depth and hopefully accurate dimensions. I kept animating until I had a short little bit with a worm and a spider. It isn't exactly beautiful, but with the right background sounds, it could be a cool little video. I believe this was certainly the first step towards something big.

I do not have all of the technological aspects of the project figured out yet, so I simply used a gif creator online, hence the watermark in the bottom left corner. For my final products I plan to use a more legitimate video creator so that I can add music and or sounds. I have been looking up a lot of charcoal animations online, and I have found that most of them are augmented by sound effects which can add a lot of emotion to a piece. This is very much only the beginning, I cannot wait to see where this project will take me next. 

Week One

William Cox
May 9th, 2016
Senior Project

Week One

This week I learned the importance of time outdoors and time away from technology. I learned that 

fresh air can be the key to a creative mind. Through my time outside, and away from technology, I 

found that I was having much more vivid dreams, this is a sign of creativity coming back, and 

sprouting from the nutritious soil that you can only find in yourself. I believe that seeing nature and 

its mysterious and beautiful creations could help anyone become more creative, no matter what they 

are making or doing. I also have found that technology can keep your creativity from flourishing. 

This is because instead of your mind wandering on its own into the unknown, and creating its own 

ideas, your mind is bombarded with the ideas of other people. Often I find that my own mind 

becomes so overrun with the ideas implanted into my brain that I see videos or video games in my 

dreams. But not in the outdoors. Once I had gotten some fresh air into my lungs, and completed some 

creative writing, I felt good as new. I was dreaming vividly of things I had never imagined before. I 

loved being out in the woods, and I hope to revisit them soon. I will probably spend a lot of time at 

that same campsite over the summer. I also hope to incorporate some part of nature into the final 

product of my senior project. Everything in the woods went similar to how I imaged it would. There

 were a few surprises, like the amount of fisherman that visited the pond every day was astounding. 

Plus when I arrived at the campsite it was a little bit trashed. The funniest surprise I had was a 

woodpecker spying on me. I looked out the window of my tent one day to see a woodpecker staring 

at me from behind a tree. But as soon as he saw me he ducked behind it. He proceeded to annoy me 

with his incredibly fast pecking ability, attacking a tree by the water while I was trying to sleep in the 

morning. Another surprise I had was when my buddies Riley and Logan came to visit the campsite. 

We all sat around the a fire and ate beans and beef stew. It was a grand old time. I believe that this 

visit into the woods was exactly what I needed as far as inspiration goes for my animation. This will 

tee off the rest of my senior project perfectly, and I can't wait to get back to work! 

May 6th, 2016

William Cox
May 6th, 2016
Senior Project

Friday

 There was one today point where I looked out the window of my tent and saw a bird peeking at me from behind a tree. He ducked behind it, and proceeded to peck on it at an astounding pace. He did this for several hours when I was trying to sleep, I wonder If he annoyed me on purpose. Either way I had a good humor about it, birds will be birds i guess. I woke up completely at about seven-o-clock and got straight to work. It took me half my day to clean up the campsite and move everything back to my car. I decided to make two trips to the campsite and back, this way I didn't have to spend the extra hour that it would take me to stuff everything into my bag. I was happy to be headed home, but I will miss that place. 

I said one last goodbye to my campsite and took off down the trail for the second time that day. It would be nice to relax, I remember thinking, indoors and such. But i'm finding now as I type this that the indoors are nothing like being outside. I will miss waking up to fresh air and the sound of fisherman not making any noise at all (fisherman are quiet).

May 5th, 2016

William Cox
May 5th, 2016
Senior Project

Thursday

Thursday was my most intensive writing day. I started off the day with a some dry cereal and then heated up some water for oatmeal. This was a great start to a fantastic day. The weather was nice, unlike Wednesday, so I was happy to be able to do most of my writing outside. I sat by the water in my crazy creek and pondered reality. 

After further thought, I decided to stick with creative writing for now, because it more fit my skill set, yet I had never really been given the freedom in school to write stories. I wrote an episode of a series I call Greenleaf Manner.  Its about a boy who lives in a mysterious mansion with his parents, and various random interactions send his mind deep into the dreamworld, where he battles various obstacles. I worked my 6 hours on a story that ended up somewhat readable. I plan to take this passage in my journal and type it over the weekend, making changes and adding a lot of detail. I actually also plan to continue this series until I can form some sort of novel, but thats an adventure for another time. This is my last day in the woods so I figured I would make the best of it. After it had gotten dark and my writings were all finished, I invited my friends Riley and Logan up to the campsite to visit, and we had a wonderful time sitting around the fire and eating baked beans. 

May 4, 2016

William Cox
May 4th 2016

Senior Project

Wednesday

Today I spent a lot of my morning writing about the cosmos. As is typical when it comes to philosophy, I found myself doing a lot more reading and thinking than actually writing. But eventually I put together a far fetched theory about the multiverse, and about our life energy, and what happens to it when we die. The next half of my day I actually spent in at proctor. Originally I was supposed to play a tennis match at around noon, but because of the rain it got cancelled. I wasted my time around campus until dinner, because I planned to stay in until my guitar lesson at seven thirty. It was nice to eat a full hot meal, but I missed the woods, and could not wait to return to them. After my bass lesson I headed back out into the woods, and promptly fell asleep. 

May 3, 2016

William Cox
May 3, 2016
Senior Project

First Night in the Woods

Today was my first day in the woods. Because of a sudden change in the local weather prediction, I decided to stick with the original area that I had planned to stay: Adder Pond. I spent a good portion of my day setting up camp. I arrived at about 9:30 in the morning, and proceeded to clean up the site a bit, and to set up my tent. The rest of my day was spend sitting in my crazy creek and writing a story. I tried my best to use a story writing technique that I had learned about online. This technique breaks down every story into eight parts. 

It was difficult to write a story following these guidelines, or at least more difficult than I had imagined it would be. But I came up with a story that fit the mold somewhat. I plan to write another story completely outside the guidelines, and see which one turns out better. My first night came to a close as it began to get dark. I took out my stove and cooked up some sausage. 

A Picture of my Campsite during the Daytime

May 2, 2016

William Cox
May 2, 2016
Senior Project

First Day

Today I spent my six hours of working time on gathering, shopping, and packing of materials that I will need for my next adventure. I plan to go hike to the proctor cabin and spend three nights there. I was originally going to stay at Adder Pond, but on further review, due to rain, with the help of my parents I decided that the cabin would make for a more comfortable stay. Not to say that I'm not willing to leave my comfort zone. I relearned how to light a camp stove today and it took three tries to pack up the backpack in a way that would make everything fit. My cat even hopped in my bag at first, I guess she wanted to come with me. I worked starting at three o-clock today, and just finished now at nine o-clock.