w00t! VERONICA MARS SEASON THREE HAS BEEN EXTENDED FROM 13 to 20 EPISODES! That's two less than a "regular" season, but far better than not being extended at all. Now if only they would offer the episode for sale at the iTunes Music Store.
I hit a major snag in animating my music video last night. I was playing test footage and suddenly realized that I was very unhappy with the composition of the clips. The characters are all kind of short, so I always ended up having to zoom way into the scene in order to avoid having big gaps at the top and bottom of the frame. This has everything looking claustrophobic and makes Lil' Dave's world seem so small...
This is very bad, because there's no way to center in on the action when the entire screen is moving. At first I was just going to reduce all the elements by 85%, but that was even worse. The action was just a blob in the middle of the screen.
It was then that I decided to just bite the bullet and recompose every shot in HiDef...
Suddenly all of my problems disappeared. Not only that, but widescreen allows so many more interesting options for scene composition... clips that were kind of boring and hard to follow actually end up looking interesting. The bad news is that all the work I've done so far has to be thrown out, recomposed, and partially re-animated. This was upsetting at first but, after I realized it was an opportunity to make things better, I was okay with it.
Except for the jungle scene. The thought of having to go back and re-draw those backgrounds fills me with dread. Just one of them took five hours, and now they're twice as big.
Argh. When did having fun become work?
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“When did having fun become work?” SINCE ALWAYS but it is funny work, isn’t it ?
PS. I can’t wait !!! Lil’Dave and BadMonkey on a widescreen. (16/9 is better that 4/3)… More possibilies… More fun… More ideas… Great!
PPS. I WANT TO WATCH VERONICA MARS! JE VEUX VOIR VERONICA MARS! DESIDERE VEDERE VERONICA MARS!
In which language it is necessary that I say it to you ?
HD is always better. Good Choice.
Whoa, wait…..it’s not going to be an entire season?!
Yay for the VMars news – although, if you’re going to extend for 20 episodes, you’d think they could add the other two…
i was JUST thinking about this, veronica mars, on my drive last night. thank god. although, i’m a few weeks behind, tivo is saving them up for me so it’s all good
>>When did having fun become work?
That’s the reason I got out of the porn business.
IT is much more rewarding and never seems like work. Even as I tell the same person the same thing for the 100th time it always seems fresh and fun.
I love that you are doing this, and sharing the process. I am DYING to see the finished product! You could be the next Trey Parker/Matt Stone…only with better production values!
Where’s your info coming from on VM? I hadn’t seen that yet.
The extended version is better. Besides, now we can see what Bad Monkey has been up to. Apparently he’s being naughty! Look at that mess!!
Sorry, I know that means more work, but it’s a labour of love right? You could always pull a Flintstones and have the same background repeat…or not.
Looking good Dave! Keep it comin!!
🙂
That’s like asking “why aren’t vacations relaxing?” Because they involve planning! It’s a damnable Catch-22.
I suppose Lil’ Dave and Bad Monkey are watching VM there?
Hm, interesting thought, Jeff. I was thinking (based on Bad Monkey’s expression), that this is the moment when all that’s on tv is LOST and Bad Monkey says, “This Sucks!!” and flings poop at the tv. Then he suggests to Dave that they go out and have some fun…thus leading to the disco!
I can’t wait to see if I’m right. 🙂
Laurence… Yes, 16×9 is definitely better! But a lot more work!
The Chad… It will be great for when I release the video on DVD. 🙂
Danielle… Well, it depends on what you consider an entire season to be. It is CURRENTLY short of a “regular” Veronica Mars season by two episodes. Who knows, maybe they will be added if the ratings pick up? Hope. Hope.
Suze… Yeah, that’s what I thought. But I’ll take anything I can get! An additional seven is gold!
Jodi… Hopefully the entire “Hearst Rapist” plotline will be wrapped up soon. From the last episode, it certainly looks that way!
Delmer… Yes, but some work you just can’t complain about. I think “porn star” is one of those jobs!
Belinda… Well, considering that I just added an additional two weeks to the workload AND made all future work be more time-consuming by moving to HD… well, it might be a while until we get the finished video. 🙁
Avitable… It was a CW press release. I’ll send you the link.
Nancycle… He’s not called “Bad Monkey” for nothing! 🙂
Kevin… I certainly would not be complaining if somebody wanted to send me to Bali to finish up the video!
Jeff… Actually, Veronica Mars has just ended when the video starts up… so you were close!
Diane… I finished the scene, so I’ll post another clue later today. 🙂
Letterbox/16×9 is *definitely* better – the choice of filmmakers forever – but I’m curious: why are people referring to that as HD? Isn’t HD the number of pixels per inch (i.e. resolution)?
Personally I thought Diane’s idea for a storyline was brilliant.
And I think we should all chip in to get Laurence a French-dubbed version of the entire Veronica Mars series to date as a Holiday gift. 🙂
Hah! Laurence’s English is probably better than mine! We just need DVDs that will play in her region encoding! 🙂
You are correct though, a widescreen aspect ratio doesn’t necessarily mean the video is HiDef (though all HiDef is widescreen). But I actually AM animating to a HiDef resolution of 720p (1080i seemed like overkill)… so I’ll be able to play it on my television when I’m done.
The VM news is great news. I only learned the other day that they didn’t pick it up for the whole season so I am very relieved that it will be around all year. By they way, I thought that last week’s episode, which you thought was boring, was really good mainly because we were able to do some sleuthing and eliminating of suspects in the rapes. Logan’s secret was pretty lame though.