Animation Begins!!! (and some unsolved technical snafus)

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This past week, I was able to successfully stick to my schedule: week one is checked off (for the most part.)

I know I want a scratchy look to be an intentional visual aspect of my film, but for some inexplicable technical issue (involving some disconnect somewhere between the use of the school HP, TVPaint, and the school's loaner Cintiq 13HD), the scratchiness of my shots so far will probably need some cleanup after all. I've been bouncing between forums and SCA creative tech (massive shoutout for the patience and hours of troubleshooting so far), but for some reason, I just can't figure out how to get the Cintiq pen to register as quickly as I tend to make lines in TVPaint. (I don't know if it's a latency issue, or a driver issue, or a compatibility issue with the program, because I can draw normally in Photoshop with the same hardware setup, have tried swapping Cintiqs, and had a brief stint of normalcy after we updated TVPaint and the driver for the cintiq, only for the problem to revert to how it was before.)

Lines as SO wobbly. This drawing probably took me like 10 minutes before I just accepted the fact that I will not be able to draw a circle at the current state of affairs. (It should not take me 10 minutes per frame)
What's going on here? I can't even draw a question mark without these weird straight lines registering. Frustrating!


Anyway this is actually a really frustrating problem and is causing me to work about half as fast as I would be able to otherwise, and it means that my shots aren't actually completed, because I will need to go and clean them up after all. I've been looking into finally investing in my own cintiq, but I need to ensure that that will solve my problem because the last thing I want is a huge expense that I can't even use until I'm not using the school computers anymore (which I like using!)


In other news: I hired a couple of colorists this week, and need to get them set up with payroll (but it looks like they will be receiving materials later than I'd anticipated anyhow). I also wrote some dialogue, and sent it off to my penpal in Milan for some help with the translations. I also decorated my cubicle with some print-outs of my character designs, and sketches of various props/locations for reference! 
My cubicle


All in all, despite my technological ineptitude (hopefully this issue will not persist...) it's been really fun to actually start animating. Also, I must say, having made a detailed schedule was probably the single most important step in pre-production for me in terms of keeping myself on task and on-track. Here's some pencils!


UDPATE: Creative tech stopped by again this morning and it SEEMS like my problem has been solved!! Fingers crossed! Massive shoutout again!!!





Comments

  1. SheilaSeptember 10, 2018 at 6:02 PM

    How frustrating!!! I hope your update is correct- I honestly don't see how you could proceed if this problem continued. It is like trying to draw with broken fingers!

    In spite of that, the pencil test is beautiful! Excellent work posting the designs around your cubicle. It will be helpful to always be able to refer to them.

    Excellent work Margaret!

    ReplyDelete
  2. George M. SpencerSeptember 12, 2018 at 1:35 PM

    A hard beginning maketh a good ending.

    —John Heywood.

    (He also said "When all candles are out, all cats be gray.")

    ReplyDelete

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