MERRY CHRISTMAS · 26 DECEMBER 2013
I always plan to get a lot of work done over the holidays on this project, but not a lot really happens. I did do a large renaming pass on all of my shots to remove number padding from my version numbers. Also worked on one simple shot the past few days. 2013 hasn't been a great year for this project and just in general. Hopefully the next one will be better.

CHEAP TRICK · 4 AUGUST 2013
The past three shots have all been super simple. I could have skipped over them and moved onto some of the more ambitious shots, but it's always nice to see some of the blanks get filled in. It's not a huge jump in progress, but it does at least give me a sense that things are moving forward. While it may not be much, at least I put some effort into not letting this project fall into moth balls month after month. What I'm hoping for is to work on or even complete one animation shot per week. Sounds super simple and easy...and the actual work kind of is, it's just getting up the inspiration on weeknights or even weekends that is the real challenge.

VISUAL FX · 3 AUGUST 2013
Now I'm really cheating in the shot production department. The layout shot for this could suffice as a place holder because there isn't much animation to do without the actual background plate. Even if there were, it moves into the realm of comp, in terms of what there is to do. However, I wanted to port it over with some of my new scripts to get it into "animation." I did do a little bit of work making the wireframes look nicer and the overall temp comp. It will be some time before this shot will be fully realized though. I'd like to do some more computer HUD type stuff to make it look more like a jet fighter or terminator style readout. For now though, it gives me another shot wip in animation!

3 FOR 1 SPECIAL · 30 JULY 2013
Pretty much wrapped up Shot 20 yesterday and spent some time adjustng my playblast script so it's a little more flexible. The path was too hardcoded into expecting certain folders. I now have it just remove the scenes folder and switch from the Alien.Maya folder to the Alien.Footage folder. Everything after scenes/ remains the same. Still specialized to this project but at least lets me playblast from anywhere in the scenes folder and mimics the path and filename. Tested it on an old 10 second club shot I did in 2005 to make sure the HUD worked and that it saved to the correct location.

After all that, I didn't have a lot of energy to work on another shot but figured I should at least transfer the layout over to animation for Shot 21. It's such a simple shot, I copied the camera into Shot 20 and started adjusting from there, the feet, timing, etc. Given how slow I've been going on this short, I think I'm going to take advantage of this animation and use it twice. Feels a bit like cheating, but hey...what are computers good for anyway if you can't get away with a little certified pre-owned animation every now and then?

AUTOMATION · 28 JULY 2013
Since I've been doing a bit of mel scripting on and off at work, I've learned a thing or two. When I come home to work on this project, I find myself missing some of the tools I've written. As a result, a few weeks ago I spent some time writing a little menu for the short. Makes it easier to bring in characters, props, run camera fix scripts, etc. Basically a collection of anything I write for this short in order to speed up repetitive tasks.

A few months ago, I wrote a dailies script at work to automate the process of playblasting, naming, and saving videos. I always like the video to have the same name as the file so that it's easy to find where it came from. It also adds a bunch of info to the hud such as the animator's log in name, frame number and filename. Today when I was working on a simple shot, I found myself wanting similar functionality. Mostly because it makes it very easy to just hit a button and the file is named and saved in the correct spot, with corresponding hud info relevant to the scene and short. So, I spent the majority of the afternoon writing a similar script at home. It's not as flexible as the one at work, but it doesn't really need to be.

TEST · 3 JULY 2013
This is just a test to make sure multiple webistes are working locally with Apache.
BLOCK...BLOCK ON · 7 APRIL 2013
Just trying to get back into the swing of things. This is a pretty simple shot, not too different from the layout version. Figured I would try to start off easy and work up some momentum. First blocking pass. Had to remember how to get everything on the website for a new shot. Luckily since it's all in php now, it's not too hard to see how I did things. Just a matter of rendering out new thumbnails and h.264 video, etc. All of my templates in AfterFx still exist and are named easy enough for me to pump out a new page with minimal effort. I'm considering giving myself due dates, but man...would I really stick to them?

COUNT IT! · 25 MARCH 2013
This whole website is designed to remind me to work on this project. However, it's just not enough! I decided to add a shot counter like we had at Sony. After a bit of messing around in php code and adding a master list of shots, I was able to use my "versions" lists to calulate how many shots have been worked on for each stage and then subtract that from the total to see how much is left. Can't tell if I'm actually procrastinating, but I do get a bit tired of counting them manually. Especially the kitchen sequence, which is the longest. The shots page has it further broken down by sequence. Hopefully this will motivate me to get those "remaining" numbers lower. Stats are always nice. Not sure if I really like what I came up with for the main page here, but we'll see how it goes

Looking at it now, as I just typed this, it looks so pathetic that I've only animated 15 shots! Laughable even. I know I can go way faster than that. I really need to get my mind into this. I can forgive myself for the rendering and comping, since that all needs to be built, but for animation, I have zero valid excuse.
ST. MEL SCRIPT DAY · 17 MARCH 2013
Sometimes I'm not sure if I'm just avoiding animating or what. During the past year or so, I've been using MEL alot at work to write simple scripts. I've been doing it so much that I'm getting pretty good at using variables instead of hardcoding too much in. Since I take such long breaks from this project, software tends to advance and make some shots I haven't touched in....years, a little obsolete.

Today when I went to look at some of the shots from the Kitchen sequence, which I worked through layout many years ago, I had some hacky things going on with the cameras to get a gate mask on them using various scripts. I actually did a pass before upgrading to Maya2010, so they weren't too inconsistent, but still have that geo mask on them. Since 2010, Maya finally built that function into the camera's attribuites. Now that I know some scripting, I spent the afternoon writing a camera script to fix my cameras and get all the settings the same.

Basically, it gets rid of any extra garbage attached to the camera, renames it corrcetly, cleans it up, sets all the attributes the way I like them, and even sets the resolution, file format and frame sequence naming. I added another feature to give the camera a namespace based on the shot number it gets from the path info and scene namespace. The scene namespace is actually hardcoded in as COOKIE, but it's still a variable and easy to change. I could derive it from the folder, but I want all caps for the namespace. I'm sure there's a way to change that via mel, but didn't seem worth it since I keep all scripts related to this project in the project Mel folder anyway.

Not totally sure this counts as working on the film, but hey, it was fun to do, and whatever gets me back in the swing of things. It really does bother me when I open up old scenes and things are "out of whack." Especially things I know can be scripted and fixed easily. Irish!
MARCH MADNESS · 10 MARCH 2013
Actually, more like, what the hell happened madness. The beginning of last year started off ok, but quickly got out of control working on DLC for RAGE. However, that was over by mid April. Things just never really picked up and I couldn't get myself back into the groove. Even when I tried in July, it just didn't take. This project has been a labor of love, but for some reason the love has been missing. I am not sure what it is. Perhaps it is just the thought that there is so much to do and it becomes overwhelming even to start one shot.

I know that when I get into something I can go full force. Just the last two weeks I spent all of my free time making a racing mod for RAGE. I guess because with that, I want to get it done as quickly as possible, and there really is no animation involved. It's just strange how "into" it I get, but not this. Even now, instead of working on it, I'm writing about it. Well, I did need to update this, so there's the webstuff maintenance. Still a bit of an exuse.