Tuesday, September 22, 2015

None of my heroes speak (formerly Memory Quilt) - Edit #3

I've put together what I believe to be the third and final edit of the footage I'm rotoscoping in the new film I'm working on.  I've changed the title from "Memory Quilt" to "Non of my Heroes Speak."  Not entirely sure if I'm gonna stick with that name... heck I'm not even sure what that name means, but I'm going with it for now and I like it way more than the on-the-nose "Memory Quilt."  I might as well call it "Animated quilt of home movie footage" as long as I'm going with that one.

Anyway I'm pushing way more of the anxiety I feel every day to live up to the person I saw myself becoming by this age when I was a child.  Watching this movie through gives me near panic attacks since it feels so true to how I see the world.  Hope you like it.  Here's what I believe to be the edit:



What's next?  I'm gonna work on the first shot and try to perfect it and my process.  I've been spending the past two weeks downloading and organizing every jpeg of fabric I could find in folders with RGB's.

Pretty intense right?


So anyway I think the process of coloring should go more quickly, though I'm not sure what I'm going to do when I get to the photoshopping phase since I haven't even tried out yet.  In it I'm going to try to make it look more like a real life quilt since the first pass looked really flat and computer generated.  We shall see.  Hopefully I'll have the first shot done within the next two weeks.


Tuesday, September 8, 2015

Memory Quilt - Second Edit

It was 5 AM and I realized that the desire to wallow in the ever increasing depression over mounting debt, joblessness and loneliness I feel all day every day was vastly outweighing my desire to sleep.  But hey, just being depressed is no reason to be unproductive.  So decided to take another swing at editing my home movie footage into a piece that I can rotoscope to look like a quilt.  Not sure what I'm talking about?  Check out THIS BLOG POST and you'll see.  Otherwise just move on.  The sleep is coming on fast, and I don't think I can fight it off long enough to explain what the final product will look like if you haven't seen already.

Just know that:









And if anyone points out that downloading, and uploading all those images took longer than writing a description of my process would and what the final product will look like... then I will disown you as a friend.

Anyway I took another swing at editing the footage and it's much better.  More artsy and not so saccharine.  To quote myself from the Youtube description it's more Norman Bates than Norman Rockwell.  And more to the point it actually says something other than "look at how pretty my childhood filmed by my father's shake hands was."

The music helps too.  I switched it up to what I said I was looking for in the last post:  Simon and Garfunkel meets Daft Punk in the form of Justin Cichon and Brett Nels Anderson's band Benadanti.  It's a song I randomly named "False Modesty" years ago because it didn't have a name and I don't like have "untitled" songs in my iTunes because I'm anal retentive like that.  Much better to go with this song than the ones titled "Chipotle Burrito" or "My Fish Toy."  Anyway without further ado.



Please critique and let me know what's working and what's failing.  I really would appreciate it.

And now because I feel this post started out on rather a "bummer" note, here's a picture of my hero making a funny face:


Saturday, September 5, 2015

Memory Quilt - First Edit

So I've been editing home movie footage like a madman over the past few days.  I'm trying to create an open ended story.  Remember that the final project will be rotoscoped and drawn to look like each frame was quilted.  Let me know how successful you feel it is and where it could use improvements.



Is it too long?
Is is too repetitive?
Is it too trite?
Is it too perfect?

What do you think?  The most important thing is I don't want to have it coming off too corny or melodramatic or overly nostalgic.  Just an impression.

The music isn't what I want ultimate.  It think I might go with something similar in feel though more electronic to match the static feeling.  Like Daft Punk meets Simon and Garfunkel!