This past weekend I hit another low mark in my short film career hobby aspirations and indeed felt the need to quit. I haven’t and I won’t.

As soon as my parents return home from their wonderful visit I’ll be getting back on the horse and working to finish up this film. To top it off I started work on the treatment for my next project.

Onward.

Actually, I was animating about 3 weeks ago, but life got busy and this is the first chance I’ve had to update my blog about it. Looking back I realize that I’ve been working on this project for over a year.  If you include time spent thinking about the stories I want to tell with these characters, then it’s closer to five years.  

It’s been slow going but I’m continuing to make progress.  That I have yet to give up means something: probably that I’m stubborn, but also that this is important enough to me to keep going on it.

After nearly giving up entirely on the project last week, I managed to pull myself together and dive into painting the robot. It’s almost finished.

I just need to come up with what I’m going to use for his eye and I’ll be on to animating finished shots, hopefully as early as next week.

This weekend I took two hours and made an animation table. It measures 48 inches long by 42 inches wide about 42 inches high. I’m not sure if that’s too high or not, but it should make it easy to get underneath for tie downs and I won’t have to bend over to pose the armature.

It’s also likely bigger than I need for this project, but: A) I didn’t want to cut down the piece of plywood I had, and B) If it goes well I’m hoping to do more of these and I may need a larger table the next time.

It’s very sturdy, giving very little when i knock it or lean on it. I still need to add some additional supports on the bottom as there’s a very slight vibration in it still and give some more surface area to glue it to the floor.

Last night I finished roughing out the chest and pelvis. I may want to de-bulk the chest a bit. I have to sit on it.

Unfortunately, this morning I broke off one of the tie down screws in an effort to extract it. I’m guessing that some Sculpey got baked into the threads and gummed it up. And I foolishly tried to force it rather than break the clay off.

Ugh. Now instead of spending the evening fixing a simple sculpt on the foot, I’ll be in the shop re-fabricating a new foot….

Lesson learned (or more like reinforced): Don’t force things.

Last night I went back to the shop and reworked the hips. I think they will make animating and modeling on top of the armature much easier.

I also found that my braising skills have diminished rapidly in the past year of disuse and what should have been an hour of work ended up taking 3 and several throw away pieces.

AT-AT: Still one of the coolest things I've ever seen in a movie

When ILM pulled up roots in San Rafael and moved to the Presidio in San Francisco, rather than closing down, the model shop spun off into their own company. (For more on the closing follow this link)

For many of us in the film industry, the closing of another FX house has become regular news.  It’s sad to hear, we hope for the best of our friends and fellow workers as they look for new work, and may even think of the times we spent in the building.  But largely we have become jaded to it.  It’s just part of working as a service provider in an industry that’s being squeezed harder and harder while our clients continue to show record profits based on our work.  It’s also one of the reasons I left film to go work at a stable video game company: I needed to reliably provide for my family.

But the closing of Kerner Optical’s modelshop is different.  The work that the model shop men and women did had a profound affect on my young mind.  Their artistry served as constant fuel for my growing imagination.  Growing up it was a rare summer day that didn’t involve us pretending to fight off Imperial storm troopers in their AT-AT’s, running from giant boulders, and flying around in X-wings as we blew up the death star repeatedly.

But even beyond fueling my imagination as a child, they inspired me to pursue art.  They inspired me to spend the tremendous time and energy it takes to enter into the film industry as a VFX artist.

Having been able to work beside them at ILM, even as a CG artist, is a badge of honor I wear proudly.  I got to see and touch some of the work they had done for the original Star Wars, and work directly with them directly Episode III.  I had the opportunity to see them blow stuff up.  It was with giddy, child like joy we would run outside to see an “explosion on the slab”.  When they blew up a test version of the train in XXX: State of the Union in an immense fireball that nearly singed our eyebrows, even behind the protective plexi-glass, I laughed very hard as they said simply, “Next time we should use less gas.”

Yeah, I helped with this. Cool.

I count myself extremely lucky to be able to look to the past and know that I’ve made my 10 year old self proud with what I’m doing and where I’ve been.  Having worked with them remains a highlight of my career that will difficult to top.

Over the past several months, I’ve been working hard on my short film.  Recently I heard the very interesting PAX keynote address by David Jaffe (warning: Long and full of swearing).  In it he talks of losing interest, becoming disillusioned, and generally losing your groove in what you love to do.  I know exactly how he feels.  Every one does at some point, I’m sure.

After listening to it, I immediately started to reconsider having dropped the stop motion robot I had been working on.  But self doubt set in.  I was scared of doing it because it’s something I’ve never really done before.

With the closing of a division of personal heroes, I believe that my choice has become all the more clear.  Almost everything they did was a big risk.  Throughout the ’80′s they were constantly doing something they “had never done before.”

If I am to continue to make my past 10 year old self proud, I only have one choice.  I am going to blindly proceed with doing the robot with stop motion.  I am going to take the path of adventure and head towards something I don’t know I can pull off.  I am going to choose to continue to run from a giant boulder and fight off AT-AT’s in an underpowered ship with only a lightsaber at my side.

I think I not only owe it to myself, but I owe it to the people who inspired me so consistently throughout my life.

I’ve put together a list of ‘work-outs’ to help focus your efforts while shooting photos.

Also, I’d love to hear more cinematic/photo training challenges that you could think of.  Comment below or shoot me a Tweet at @galaxyTwelve.  If I get enough responses I’ll run a follow up blog.

Here’s some exercises to try if you can’t think of where to start:

• This is one of my favorites:  Choose a lens (or even a specific lens length if you’re working with zooms) and take a full day or week of photos just using that.  Learn its advantages and disadvantages. You might be surprised on what a lens can (or can’t) do. I once spent a whole vacation using nothing but my 10-20mm wide angle lens.  I may have missed some great shots because I didn’t have a longer lens with me, but I found ways around it and got some amazing photos I wouldn’t have thought possible before trying it.
• Do a depth of field study. Decide that today is Narrow Depth of Field Day and shoot everything with as narrow a band of focus as you can.  Learn how to push and pull the focus range, using the F-stop and lens focus range to get the most out of what is and isn’t in focus.
• Do a Deep Depth of Field Day and try to take interesting photos where as much is in focus as possible.
• Set your shutter to stay at 1/50th of a second (or 1/60th depending on how you’re shooting video) and learn the limitations of it in a number of different lighting conditions.  Warning: After shooting in sunlight you’ll probably want to go out and spend money on ND filters right away.
• Subset to shutter day: Learn about ND filters.
• Experiment with your camera’s Style and Color Balance settings for one full day.  Really push it an find out how crazy can you make the colors without doing it in post.
• Try shooting a day’s worth of photos on a tripod.  Can you set it up and frame a shot that you like?  Use a much slower shutter speed or a telephoto lens to get a sense of how much they can help with focus and simulate handheld video.
• Spend a day filling the screen with your subjects.  Have them busting out of the frame on each side.  Leave as little negative space as possible.
• Spend a day trying to get your subject swimming in negative space.  Can you do it so it’s still interesting?

But why photos and why a lot?  It’s an art, and like any art (like drawing for instance) you need to make a lot of bad art before you can make good art.  Taking photos on a digital camera is an inexpensive way to take a lot of bad photos at very little expenditure on your part.  You’ll improve your cinematic eye and learn how to use your equipment.  Once you’re on set, your actors and crew will appreciate it immensely if you can block out a shot and dial in your settings quickly.  It will also help you spot opportunities that you hadn’t expected while storyboarding.

Still not convinced?  Here is a list of some the many reasons why taking photos is a great way to improve your filmmaking skills:

It will train your cinematic eye.

• Can you frame a subject to be interesting?
• Can you frame multiple subjects so that the viewer’s eye is lead through the frame in a specific manner?
• Can you do it so it’s obvious what the subject is without it being in the dead center of the frame?
• When do you want to use the rule of thirds? When don’t you?
• Why do you use a certain lens for a given shot/framing?
• When do you want deep focus?  When do you want a narrow Depth of Field?  When don’t you have a choice because of equipment limitations?
• Why might you want to change the shutter speed to something faster?  This is arguably best experimented with in video mode (just don’t go slower than 1/50 for 24fps, or 1/60 for 30) so you can see what it does to motion, but it’s good to see what manipulations to exposure/depth of field can be done with higher shutter speeds as you head towards a Black Hawk Down/Saving Private Ryan look.

Get to know your equipement.

• There are a ton of settings on a DSLR, many of the useful ones for video often aren’t in a useful place.
• Can you get to the important settings and set them quickly and properly?  If you are taking candid shots of subjects on the move at your kid’s birthday party, you won’t have the option of getting everyone to sit still while you fiddle with the camera.  If you can do it quickly here, it should be significantly easier to set your camera properly on the set?
• Can you set white balance quickly and properly? I highly recommend a good gray card and learning how to use it.
• The Canon line, for example, allows for different “Look Styles”.  Do you know which one you want to use where? Do you want to create or download a custom one?
• Can you swap out your lenses safely and cleanly on the go?
• Can you set up your tripod quickly and in the right place?

It will help train you technically in what your camera can or can’t accomplish

• Do you understand how to manipulate depth of field?  Perhaps you’ll want to invest in some ND filters…
• Do you understand how each of your lenses responds to different situations?
• It will help you figure out what equipment you may be missing.
•  Do you know what ND or polarizer filters are for?  Look them up and see if they’ll help you get the DOF or colors that you feel are missing from your stills.
• Lens hoods, eye pieces, etc. are all extremely useful but often don’t make sense until you’ve shot a bunch on a sunny day.
• What can you do in post to color correct and play with color in post?
• How do your lenses and maximum ISO settings deal with low light?  What about direct sunlight?

So go out and shoot some photos while you’re waiting for your next shoot.  You’ll be glad you did.