Doing nothing is expensive

By Neil | Published: April 29, 2012

I am struggling with the question of how to break free of a deeply flawed society.  In my childish imagination, I picture a quiet home in the woods where my food grows around me as I sit on the porch watching the clouds float by and think of stories to write.

In my brief moments of motivation to focus on long term goals, I try to figure out how to go about making this a reality.  The first thought I have is that I need to find some land on which I could build a home and grow some food.  To own land, though, I would need a large sum of money.  To acquire this money, I could either save for many years, or take on a massive loan and be a debt slave for many years.  Either way, I would not be relaxing in my quiet home in the woods for a long time.

I also would need to build a home on this non-existent land that I do not have.  I would need to know how to build a home, which I don’t.  Otherwise, I could hire a contractor, which along with the land, is simply unaffordable.

On top of the land and home that I cannot afford, there is also the problem of living expenses.  If I truly wanted to be able to relax on my land, I would not need to sacrifice half of my waking hours to the task of earning a wage.  In order to cover this, I would need a large sum of money to supply me with a steady stream of interest.  Once again…unattainable in the short term.

It is at this point where I would think I should have a well-earned moment of hopelessness in regards to my ability to achieve my goal.  That would serve little purpose, however.  Instead, I think I will ponder the absurdity of how expensive a seemingly simple life is to attain.

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Create a short animated film by yourself – Part4

By Neil | Published: March 23, 2012

Creating the environments and lighting

Now that your film is planned out to the last detail and you have a consistent and intriguing design, it is time to actually make…everything.  If you had thought that planning your film was taking a long time, the fact is that you have still just begun.  Animation takes patience, especially when creating a film by yourself.

Be patient

It is at this point where all the planning will come in very handy.  Begin to go through your storyboards and see what the camera will actually see in each of your sets.  You can write down a list or just remember, whatever works for you, but these are the things you need to make.  You can work on optimizing your modeling skills, try to find ways to speed up the process, but if you want your environments to look good, it is simply going to take time.  Your desire to complete your film will be especially tested during this process, but if you have created a story that you believe in, then you can rely on that internal desire and passion to fuel you through the mundane tasks.

Add imperfections

As you build your sets, especially when using a 3D modeling software, make sure you do not gloss over details out of a desire to move on to the next step. It is important to spend the extra time roughing up your sets and adding details to make it look more lived in.  Computer modeling tends to make environments that look smooth, shiny and new, so adding character and imerfections to your world have to be added in intentionally.

Lighting matters

You can build the best models in the world, but it is ultimately the way that light reacts to them that matters.  Light creates the mood for your scene, and can add believability and life to an otherwise ordinary shape.  It is helpful to read up on how light behaves, how light bounces and reacts to different kinds of materials.  Even subtle tweaks with bounced ambient light and adjusting shadow behaviors can pull your audience further into your story.  Some may be tempted to throw in a couple of lights and call it done, but for me, lighting needs to be just as important as the models themselves.

Characters

Once you have finished off your sets, it is time to turn your characters from sketchy concepts to finished models.  More on that later…

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Create a short animated film by yourself – Part 4

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Desperation, theft, and the need to remove complexity

By Neil | Published: March 16, 2012

It is difficult to fully appreciate the phrase ‘love your enemies’ until you have been mistreated by someone to the extent that they could rightfully deserve to be called an enemy.  There is certainly not a shortage of thieving scam artists in the world, without mercy in their manipulative schemes to drain what little life savings you might have managed to scrape together from countless hours of hard work.  They will smile at you, lie to your face, shake your hand, or perhaps take the violent route and threaten you with harm until they get what they want.  In they end, they will have left you with an empty bank account and shattered your faith in your fellow human beings.

How could it be possible in any way shape or form to love a person who would treat you in such a way?  The contrary nature of this statement is exactly why it is so revolutionary and rebellious.  If only everyone was naive enough to trust every stranger they met.  If only everyone treated whomever they met with kindness, respect, and honesty, because they naively expected the same, then the world would bear little resemblance to its current state.

No matter how you treat those who could be called enemies, however, the fact remains that this kind of evil should not be happening, and I foolishly believe that there must be a way to eliminate this kind of wretched behavior from our world.

I find it interesting that the smaller the amount of people living in an area, the less crime there is there.  In fact, if you were the only person living within 100 miles, then those 100 miles would be crime free.  How many relationships are actually needed to provide social fulfillment.  50 people?  5 people?  For the loners of the world, perhaps none at all.  Crowded cities supposedly provide culture and opportunity, but they also breed complexity which results in oppression and depression.  The more complex your life becomes, the more people you need around you to keep everything working smoothly.  To have a functioning car, you would need a car manufacturing plant, which would require other factories to make the parts, as well as mechanics to perform repairs.  Thousands of people, and an entire industrial system created all for the supposed purpose of making life easier.

If I could have a simple enough life in which I had a firm understanding of every aspect, then I would be free to remove myself from these oppressive complex systems.  For food, I would grow it.  For clothes, I would make them.  For transportation, I would walk.  For entertainment, I would watch the clouds float by.  This lifestyle would be horribly inconvenient, but oh the peace that would come.

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Finish your novel

By Neil | Published: March 9, 2012

I have been always been writing one story or another ever since I learned how to write, though I fully admit that none of them have been published.  Publishing stories is not the point of this post, however.  Finishing them is.  They may all be complete junk, but I have written numerous short stories, several novellas, and I’m on the final chapters of my first novel.  Despite whatever overwhelming imperfections they might have, the fact that remains important to me is that I did manage to finish the stories that I started out to tell.

Finishing my stories has always been important to me.  The very thought of giving up on a story midway through is depressing.  I created the characters and gave them trials to face.  I created the worlds for them to live in with as much complexity as my little brain could muster.  If I fail to bring their plots to completion, then I am abandoning them.  If I do not wrap up the themes that I have weaved into every sentence and paragraph, then the magic and power of the story would be lost.

What does it matter if I never finish a story that probably no one will read except for me?  The fact is that no one has any reason to care about anything I write.  The important truth here is that just because only one person in the world cares about something, does not mean that it is not important.

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Stress about today

By Neil | Published: February 24, 2012

Why do I worry so much about today?  Yesterday feels far less stressful than today, and by tomorrow, today will have become yesterday.  A year from now, today will be a whole year away, and a year ago does not stress me out at all.  I may have completely lost my train of thought, but the point is that if today is only this stressful to me today, then I am placing far too much emphasis on it.

I really must disconnect myself from my current circumstances if I am to have any chance at all at true freedom.  It is true that I have to devote some level of energy to the daily activities of life to keep serious problems from arising.  I have to earn my paycheck.  I have to pay my bills.  I have to buy food.  I consistently go far beyond what is necessary, though.  Instead of just putting in my hours and earning my paycheck, I obsess over my job even in the hours after I leave it.  Instead of just paying my bills, I obsess over whether I have enough money, what I should do with my money, what I could do if I had more money.  Instead of just buying food, I obsess over whether I am eating too much food, too much salt, too much fat, how I never had to think about salt or fat when I was a child.

I must move beyond the temporary and temporal.  I must gain an eternal perspective that rises above my job, my hunger, my financial obligations to a place where I am simply existing.  If I can ever accomplish this, then I will be able to take a walk and have no worries, play with my baby son and have no worries, and forget any stress I might have felt about today.

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Create a short animated film by yourself – Part 3

By Neil | Published: February 20, 2012

Design

After you have gone through the storyboarding phase of your film and have each shot sketched out, you will probably already have some ideas as to what visual style you want your animated film to have.  Now is the time to nail the details of this down.

Environments

Personally, I find the design of environments to be the perfect place to start.  As important as the characters are to a film, they need to feel like they belong in the custom built world you will be creating for them.  Without believable worlds, the best designed character will not be able to truly come to life.  Run through each of your set changes, indoors, outdoors, different planets, whatever the case may be.  Whether you are drawing, painting, or just sketching with a sharpie, keep in mind the fact that these environments will all be coexisting in the same alternate reality.  The fictional societies of which your character are a part will have their own cultures, building materials, and quirks.  Digging into this kind of background of your story will help to inform the style of your film.

Lighting

Related to the design of your environments is how they will be lit.  The lighting of environments is about as important as the environments themselves.  The light in your scenes and the tone of the colors based on that light can create a specific mood and add a powerful sense of believability to your environments and characters.

Characters

With a well designed world to live in, you can now design your characters to feel as if they belong there.  This can be a tricky proposition, though.  Whether you are trying to create a realistic or stylized look, the challenge is to make your characters believable enough so that your audience can emotionally connect with them while avoiding generic pitfalls that will prevent them from being memorable.  There are inherent limitations in character design.  Environments have almost unending variety from different building styles, climates and vegetation, but characters are stuck within the trappings of a body.  Solid animation will go a long way to making your characters real, but a design that exaggerates their features to reflect their life experiences will help as well.  A tough battered life will form a battered character.  A life of luxury and privilege will form a soft character with perhaps a sense of arrogance or a conflicted nature.  It is a tough process and a very personal one for each artist.

Production

Once you have designed your world and your characters, it is time to move on to the intense process of production, making a world from scratch.  More on that later…

Related Posts

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Gaming for cheap

By Neil | Published: February 18, 2012

A video game habit can become a burden on a tight monthly budget. A few hundred dollars for the new game system and 50 to 60 dollars for each game are simply out of reach when there is hardly any money available for entertainment. On top of this, gaming consoles have such a short lifespan with a new console becoming obsolete in a short five years.

With such a financial commitment required to stay up to date in the gaming world, is it necessary to just give up gaming entirely until some future time when money is easier to come by?

Nope. The answer is simple, but it requires an ability to ignore the constant barrage of manipulative marketing ploys screaming, “Buy Now! Buy Now! Buy Now!” When considering buying gaming gear, pretend it is five years ago. If a new console has just been released, then it is time to buy the previous system that is supposedly becoming obsolete. There may be a period of transition with this way of thinking, but once you are five years behind, you will be set to play all of the top of the line games for a small fraction of the cost compared to those who could not bear to wait. After all, if a game is really worth playing, it will still be worth playing when it has been around for five years.  Only then, you might find if for five bucks instead of 50.

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A life without cars…someday

By Neil | Published: February 16, 2012

Cars are stupid.  They undoubtedly provide a level of convenience to transportation, but the overwhelming cost of car ownership is astounding me more and more.

Owning a car is a financial black hole.  Every 10 years or so I have to shell out thousands of dollars for a newer car once my previous car has broken down beyond repair. This large investment not only provides me with no return whatsoever, it is assured to lose value day after day without fail until it ultimately becomes nearly worthless.

On top of this, it is required to invest further thousands of dollars in continual maintenance and repairs to simply keep the car functioning properly.  One day the brake pads have worn down.  The next the struts are failing.  The transmission is leaking fluid. The battery has gone bad.  The cam shaft synchronizer has to be replaced.  The list of complex parts just waiting to break down is neverending.

Unfortunately, our society has set itself up to be utterly car dependent.  Crossing towns by foot can be a difficult chore and downright dangerous at times.  By the very nature of their complexity, expense, and stress-inducing abilities, though, cars cannot be a part of a truly simple life.  Perhaps we are simply doomed to be trapped in our little car tombs for the rest of our lives, as they sap away our hard earned money.

My stubbornness and illogical nature tell me otherwise, though.  If I cannot be rid of cars today, I can at least choose to walk when I otherwise might drive.  One more mile walked, is one more mile of freedom from the tyranny of the automobile.  Maybe someday, when simplicity is within my grasp, I will decide to walk 1000 miles for no other reason than I have the desire and the time, and as the thousands of cars whiz by me, I will pity their drivers and enjoy the sun on my face.

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Create a short animated film by yourself – Part 2

By Neil | Published: February 12, 2012

Once you have your story in mind and at least a vague idea as to what the environments and characters will look like, it is time to move on to the storyboarding phase.

What is it?

Storyboarding is basically drawing a quick sketch of each shot and action in your film.  If the thought of such elaborate preplanning is distasteful to you, and chaos is your creative ally, I can definitely sympathize.  Without such planning, though, you may be in danger of getting lost in the details and never see your animated story to completion.

What’s the point?

Animation is a labor-intensive process where some seconds of video may take weeks to accomplish.  It can become monotonous if you lose sight of your purpose and require a methodical slowness that is unnatural to many personalities.  Storyboarding will help you to work out any weak points in your story and see your film from start to finish before committing a great deal of time and energy to it.

It can also help you to have a better idea of exactly what sets, props and characters you’ll need to make.  With animation, you are generally starting from nothing.  This can be a blessing or a curse, perhaps a bit of both.  It is good to gather reference material from the world around you as inspiration, but ultimately, you will be putting thought, time, and effort into every last detail.  This is why knowing what will and will not be seen in your film is invaluable.  Why bother making a chair or a bug or anything else if it will not ultimately be seen on the screen in the finished product?

How do I storyboard?

As with the process of coming up with your story, how you storyboard is up to you.  You could buy a small sketchpad and draw out each shot of your film on a piece of paper and adjust their order as needed as you make changes.  If paper and pencil feel unnatural to you, you could use 3d animation software and model simplified versions of your scenes just to get the idea across.  Ultimately, the goal is to be able to see your film play out before you make it.  However you can best accomplish this goal is up to your own personal style.

Finding your style

Once your have a set of storyboards and every second of your film is playing out in your head, it is time to nail down your design and style.  More on that later…

Related Posts

Create a short animated film by yourself – Part 1

Create a short animated film by yourself – Part 2

Create a short animated film by yourself – Part 3

Create a short animated film by yourself – Part 4

 

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Escapism: Dream up the life you want

By Neil | Published: February 10, 2012

I am not going to go into whether or not engaging in escapist behavior has merit.  As with anything in life, escapism can be taken too far and distorted in an unhealthy way, but the need for it is real due to the unending list of imperfections in our world.

I am also not going to go into social escapism.  Parties. Sports. Bars.  Parties in sports bars.  These activities fall far outside the realm of the AntiGravity Turtle and have more than enough web space devoted to them.

Instead, the issue of far greater importance is the way in which a single individual can escape into fantasy to drive his or her life into a much healthier and satisfying place.  This may sound counter-intuitive to some.  The common sense of the crowd states that escapism is a coping mechanism, a fearful avoidance of real-life problems that must be confronted.  This definition suffers from a serious lack of imagination.

Escapism is a recognition that our society is flawed and many times does not offer the chance to fulfill our craving for real freedom.  When a gamer rides his computer generated horse through an endless virtual wilderness and could swear that he feels the wind in his hair, it shows how the freedom to explore a real wilderness was taken long ago.  When a movie-lover watches her favorite fantasy movie for the hundredth time and it still inspires her, it shows how the expectations of modern life have sapped away so many inspiring adventures that could have been.  When the characters in a novel are as close of friends as those of flesh and blood, it demonstrates the ability of a humble human being to speak into existence an entire world that is entirely different from our own.

If we have the ability to use words, images, and sounds to generate a reality for ourselves better than the one in which we are living, what is stopping us from using that same drive to dig ourselves out of our depressed little holes and regain a sense of freedom and adventure in our real lives.  This has nothing to do with changing society.  Society will continue on following the crowd regardless of our actions or intentions or desires.  Society is what we are escaping from.  If positive societal change is what we truly want, we must run away as fast as we can, find some quiet forgotten corner, and begin to build our dreams of a better life in secret.

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