Tazakk's Blog

Work is continuing to move along. Currently, the matter most on my mind in regards to animating is pacing. Having a scene run just long enough for the transition to another seem fluid, or leaving just enough space for a joke to sink in, is simple in concept, but becomes difficult when you must battle with frame rate. Unfortunately, playing back the animation within Flash does not run it at the proper pace, so if I want to check my work I must export and then watch the entire animation. If I am not ready to continue after that, I have to watch the entire thing once or twice more.
 
It is a process that grows increasingly time-consuming as the animation grows in length. It also makes pacing scenes correctly a somewhat frustrating process of trial and error, where I can only make an educated guess as to what will work best before having to export the entire animation again.
 
Beyond that, the animation is coming along well. In comparison to the previous one, this one is rather lengthy and complex (as I may have mentioned before), so it is proving to be far more time consuming than I thought (also as I may have mentioned before). Still, I do not wish to make any concessions in quality in order to speed the process, so for now things shall continue at this pace.
 
I feel as if I am restating myself. Perhaps I am. It is unfortunate that I do not want to share any plot details here; if I did, I would have much more to say. At least when the second animation is completed, I can begin talking more about the direction the project will take as a whole.

With three of my classes wrapping up for the semester (online and thus on a different schedule than the other classes), it is beginning to appear as if I will have much more time to dedicate to animating. As opposed to working only on the weekends (as I have been), I will soon have an ample amount of time to dedicate to the project on weekdays.
 
I am quickly learning that it is a difficulty to generate a sizable paragraph or two with which to fill these blog entries. I am afraid that I have nothing more of interest to say at the moment.

I began animating today. Honoring the time-honored saying "a picture is worth one thousand words" (does that mean the saying is doubly honored now?), here is a screenshot, purportedly worth one thousand words:
 

 
...and with a stunning 1033 words, I conclude this week's blog entry.

After a week spent away from home at a steampunk convention with friends, I returned and immediately began not working on this project. The workload from school has not, as I had hoped it might, lessened over Spring Break, but remained constant, which effected the amount of time I could work on writing/animating.
 
... but of course you don't want to hear a jumble of excuses. I would guess that if you are reading this, you probably want to know about how the animation is coming along.
 
At this point, I am considering revisions to the script. I want to ensure that the plot can continue to be balanced and reminiscent of Templar's animations. I already know that I can imitate their animation style well enough, but the story is another, far more delicate, matter. I don't want to rush, as it could mean creating a less than ideal story.
 
When considering how Templar created the plot for MNOG and the subsequent news animations, one must consider not only the style and voice of the authors, but the limitations they worked under as well. Templar worked with LEGO during the heat of the violence debate, and as a result were severely limited as far as combat. Not to say that this is a bad thing (rather, it can even be said to add a unique element to the animations) but it does require creative thinking when you are animating something for a heavily conflict-based toyline. An interesting example is that you never actually see the Boxor vehicles in action; they are either disabled by the enemy or the animation cuts off before the conflict begins. The punching action of the Boxor was apparently too violent to depict. Since the plot of the Bohrok news updates featured the Boxor vehicles heavily, Templar had to invent maneuvers to avoid the issue.
 
Now I have to do the same (with the Boxor vehicles and other conflict-related elements), and I have begun to realize how tricky it is. Creating interesting new scenarios while avoiding direct combat is an interesting challenge, and I hope that I am able to overcome it successfully. As such, I shall continue to work, and probably post another update this upcoming weekend detailing my progress.

This week, I proceeded to write the script for the upcoming episode. One of the problems that I feel was extant in the first episode was a lack of action, but this will most certainly be compensated for by episode two. Given the earthquake at the end of episode one, you can probably guess the direction the next episode will take, but I won't say specifically what is in store, just to maintain some level of suspense.
 
It was interesting to see how the format these animations are in worked as a limit to what I could do. One notable issue is that it is difficult to show Bohrok destroying things, as that would require special animation that I am not at the moment capable of. Hopefully, I will be able to improve my animating ability to the point where I can do that at some point in the future.
 
You can expect the next episode to be a much better length, as that was another of my pet peeves with the first. Although I cannot gauge it to be certain, the next animation will probably be about the length of or slightly longer than one of Templar's episodes.

Before I get to work on the next animation, I've taken a week to look at what I am aiming to accomplish as a whole. The plan is to have my animations compliment those by Templar, so now seemed as good of a time as any to decide where I want the overall story of my project to go, and how it will work with the original animations.
 
I did this by creating a timeline that had everything I have planned for future episodes, along with everything Templar has done. From there, I broke down my ideas into episodes, and came to a total of seven, including the first and already completed one (Ta-Koronan Guard Arrives in Ko-Koro). With Templar's animations, this will bring the entire story up to fourteen episodes, or seventeen including the Bohrok-Kal.
 
This is a rather small update, but unfortunately it is all I have for this week. Next time, I will probably have more content as I write about creating the script for the next episode, and perhaps a bit of animating as well.

Hello there, folks. I have decided to finally take advantage of my blog here; but instead of making this a traditional blog, I hope to use it as a means of keeping people updated on my New BIONICLE.com 2002 News Updates project. As making the animations takes me a considerable amount of time, this blog will (hopefully) prove to people that I am still at work, and not just slacking for months at a time.
 
In the future, I will probably take the time to decorate the page with a few content blocks, but until then you can always check out the animation I have already completed in the link above. [/poorlyexecutedattemptatadvertizing]
 
I would like to post weekly updates, so if all goes as planned you can expect some information on my progress with the next episode on this coming Saturday.