.

Have completed most of the fixes and the 'mystery' ending is being rendered. Will only have to render ONE more shot after discussion with Jeremy today. I should have all the video bits done by Saturday or Sunday. Will include sound and editing into the weekend as well.

It's strange how i was feeling really sick and tired about the project a couple of weeks back and after the scene fixes, things are starting to pick up again. Weird. I still just want to quickly finish this project. I can 'smell' the finish line now. I'm sure it'll taste great!

Adenosine binds to adenosine receptors in the brain and this binding of adenosine causes drowsiness by slowing down nerve cell activity. In the brain, adenosine binding also causes blood vessels to dilate (presumably to let more oxygen in during sleep).

To a nerve cell, caffeine looks like adenosine. Caffeine, therefore, binds to the adenosine receptors. However, it doesn't slow down the cell's activity as adenosine would. The cells cannot sense adenosine anymore because caffeine is taking up all the receptors adenosine binds to. So instead of slowing down because of the adenosine level, the cells speed up. You can see that caffeine also causes the brain's blood vessels to constrict, because it blocks adenosine's ability to open them up. This effect is why some headache medicines, like Anacin, contain caffeine - if you have a vascular headache, the caffeine will close down the blood vessels and relieve it.


Hmmm....feeling really really sleepy today. In fact coffee doesn't even help me anymore. Caffeine....BAH! Still need to keep awake to finish animating these bloody scene fixes. Ok so coffee doesn't work anymore. Red Bull next. Red bull, red bull, red bull, ed bull, bull, bull, bull, bull......

Have had a great deal of feedback from discussions with Jeremy and Kate on Tuesday and am now at 3/4 way of finishing the scene fixes for the film.

Was not too happy with the falling motion of UNmarked when she gets flicked out of screen by the father so I have decided to hunt for some motion-capture data on the internet. I found the 'ENDORPHIN-Virtual Motion Capture' (view demo videos here). Downloaded some of their demo videos of biped characters falling and i found one that i particularly liked. Took a few snapshots and used those images as reference to keyframe animate a falling motion for UNmarked. I'M REALLY CHUFFED WITH THE RESULT!




Anyway, the 3 PCs are still at the receiving end of lots of working nights, busy churning out the scene fixes that i've animated. The movie is sitting together heaps better now.

Will be getting the music files from Chris next week, which is when i intend to only be doing editing and sound. NO MORE ANIMATING NEXT WEEK! I HAVE TO HAVE A CUT-OFF POINT! (KATE ARE YOU READING THIS? hahaha just kidding).

All in all, I am quite pleased with the movements of the characters as I wanted to achieve a rather cartoony "snappy" sort of movement for all the characters to break away from the typical 'smooth' look on alot of 3D animated shorts. Again thanks to some great tips and tricks from keithlango animations.

3 weeks left to go. There are 2 ways to look at this:

i. Oh I wish time would hurry up so that this will all be over with!
ii. Oh I wish I had more time! ONE MORE MONTH PLEASE!

...the second option would be nice. But I don't think I can handle looking at my project for another extra month.

Anyway...Progress progress. Have completed rendering all of my scenes today and laid them down in FinalCut Pro but soon discovered that some of the scenes actually needed some tweaking. Have completed tweaking the ending bits and are rendering them now. I should be able to complete the rough cut over the weekend and sort out what needs to be tweaked in Lightwave and what can be tweaked in AfterEffects or FinalCut.

I can say that I am on schedule and I'm pretty glad I have this remaining time to iron out problems and stuff.

Have completed everything that needs animating. Have started the computers on a full time rendering run. Still don't think I'm going to need the beast yet. In fact, I think I should be able to get by without even touching it! Showed Jeremy my animation so far on Friday to try and iron out some problematic shots. Have come up with some solutions to all of that but I am going to wait for this render to finish (should be by Wednesday) so that i can put a rough-cut together and work on any shots that need tweaking.

Have completed animating and rendering till the scene where UNmarked spots the table. Have also tried putting the scenes together in Final Cut Pro and they seem to be sitting pretty well with sound. There's just a few minor editing problems to be ironed out. Haven't had the need to call upon the "beast" as of yet because I can animate with one computer and render on the other two during the day and when I'm off at night, all three machines will be rendering. That seems to be a good solution so far. Don't know if I'll ever need the beast as of yet.