Two of my design classes (coincidentally taught by the same professor) had final projects due tomorrow (today, I guess.) The idea for the first class was to link video and audio together... artistically, or something. The second one was to render a story using digital media. In short, I did animations for both of them. The first one is a scene where a guy flips a light switch, and the background keeps changing on him. The second one is a sci fi story about scientists with a tree farm that gets burned down by the ruling oil company. (Oh, and the trees produce electricity).

I've spent a long time on these projects. I worked on the basic drawings on and off for about two weeks (including thanksgiving week). Last week, I really put my nose to the grindstone as I looked up all the video and audio clips I'd need. (Availability of some caused me to alter my storyboard. Then I spent most of my waking hours for the last three days in the school's lab creating the final product.

I used a ton of programs on this. On my computer, I used Flash Professional to draw out the animations, and RealPlayer to grab audio clips off the web and convert them. (I also had to download a specialized program just to upload movies from my digital camera... it was a pain. Next time, I'm using the camcorder, which ends up being easier with better quality.) At school, I edited audio files with Audacity, images with Photoshop (no, really?), animated the visual stuff with After Effects, and then put it together with the audio in Final Cut. Suffice to say, there were a lot of file conversions going on, and my thumb drive is now completely full of project-related files... so much that I had to start deleting content in order to make room. (And it wasn't a small thumb drive either... I'm talking GBs of space I had to delete.)

Now... well, I'm finished with both projects. I'm more satisfied with the first, because I narrated the second and I just don't like my recorded voice. (Seriously, how do people listen to me on the powercast) Now I just gotta show up to class tomorrow and present it... but in the meantime I'm blogging about the process. Just in case anyone cares. Or so I can refer back to this post when I become a famous animator. (Because animators become very famous!)