I hate being sick

I've been sick this entire week! I've been trying to get some animations done for the first scene when the trees pass by really fast into a large shot of the tower, but I keep knocking out in the process. Haha, too much Robitussin, I guess. I already took a nap today so I'm going to work on the tower tonight if I don't fall asleep again. I swear, sleep shall be the death of me.

Oh right, I'm tired

Too tired to think. Ketan scanned MORE stuff. Basically from when I was first creating this, I didn't reread the story at first b/c I was relying on what my past memory of the story which I hadn't read in about 5 years. After rereading it, it was pretty close to the original but I forgot about the house of people that freaked out which is why he turned around to see the disgusting figure behind him. I drew up some storyboard like images but I'm stuck on the last one.

















Okay, that took forever. Now as for the last part I said I was having problems with, I don't know how to make it so that when he's facing the window, there's going to be a lightening striking in front of him, and he'll somehow fall backwards and see a 'shadow' behind him or something from seeing that burst of light. I'm too tired to think. On Thanksgiving I'll get started on the actual animation and put something up before it turns official into December or something close to that day.

Thanks Ketan

After failing to figure out how to get the stupid scanner to work (which it does not), I asked Ketan to scan some of my sketches up for me.

At first I asked Andy to help me create a sick and disgusting figure for the main character and he made this nice sketch
After this abomination (in a GOOD way!) I tried to make my own character which I now hate. It reminded me initially of the "Peek-A-Boo!" monster from Guillermo Del Toro's "Pan's Labyrinth". Other people said that it looks a lot like when Gollum from LOTR was changing from Smigel into Gollum:

So the other night I made another attempt at the creature and I think this one is a definite improvement but not finished yet. If anything from the previous one to this one, this one looks more like Gollum but with jowls. Kind of like what Richard Nixon looks like naked after massive liposuction:

Awesome

My sister moved my desktop to her room, which was the only computer that had the Epson Stylus CX4800 software installed that allows me to scan my sketches... Now I gotta do that for my lovely laptop... Except I don't know where the disk is that installs it. I think it's in Dover. Fuck. I need to find some kind of a link that'd allow me to do the installation online or some shit. I need sleep.

Okay so I'm bad at this

I can never keep track of blogs ever. Anyways, here's a link that tells the story that I'm basing my animation on:
http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/theoutsider.htm

That place is great, I think it has ALL of H.P. Lovecraft's stories available online. The only issue is that the design is terrible since it hasn't been updated in ages. Literally. I remember reading stuff from that website when I was a freshman or sophomore in high school and it still looks the same.


Ideally, I want to make a very visually appealing flash animation of "The Outsider" without using any dialogue, although sound effects are welcome. From what I've already seen from youtube videos of it, I DO NOT want to create mine to look like theirs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bE0sB1VIm3s
^That video is just a guy narrating the entire story which gets drawn out for waaay too long with Lovecraft's infamously complex dialogue and still images. It tells the story but doesn't bring anything interesting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2BlkBqvJMM&feature=related
^These guys tried to make their own rendition of The Outsider using 'real' actors and a camera. Nice idea but again, goes on for 8 minutes with long narration.

One of my biggest qualms about making anything is narration. Using a greatly provocative concept from the movie "Adaptation" (2002), the main character Charlie Kaufman is a screenwriter who needs help converting a non-fiction book into a movie, so he actually attends a seminar on screenwriting and the speaker tells him
Robert McKee: ...and God help you if you use voice-over in your work, my friends. God help you. That's flaccid, sloppy writing. Any idiot can write a voice-over narration to explain the thoughts of a character.
Keeping THAT in mind, I don't want to use any narration if possible.
:)