This week I took on a job I knew I shouldn’t have. In fact, there were a couple of them.

The main one is a short film someone’s making for a competition. He had a grand idea involving multiple CGI characters in a hand drawn animation style running around in a real filmed environment.

However, it quickly became clear that the script involved a lot of CGI work and that the money and timescales weren’t nearly sufficient to do the job.

I took it on on the basis that I’d do the work in a day, but of course the director added shots and didn’t really know what he needed and it grew and grew.

Even on the basis I accepted the work, I knew it was going to be a struggle. It’s now taken 2 and a half days, and been very stressful. I’ve had to delay going away for the weekend and I feel as though the job was a bodge.

I really owe it to myself not to take on projects where the budget and deadlines aren’t sufficient for the work being asked for. I’m getting enough work now and I really am having to delay real properly paid work to do this.

The film will end up being a lot better than the producer thought it was going to be and I’m sure he’ll be happy in the end, but I’ve had a rotten couple of days doing something that was far too ambitious and getting paid the kind of rate I’d have been on 15 years ago.

It’s so easy when you’re freelance to just take on whatever is handed to you, but it’s not always worth it, and you really have to see beyond “I could do this” to “why should I?”

All I’ve really done, actually is convinced a young director that if he demands the impossible, he can get it. And that does nobody any favours.

I’m a professional and I need to treat myself as one.

presents
On the plus side, I’ve already used the money I did get for the project to buy a new widescreen monitor and a proper graphics tablet – two things I’ve been meaning to get myself for ages. It’s so good to be able to see High definition work in High definition as I’m working with it, and it’s also useful to be able to edit pictures and do 3d sculpting with a more responsive tool than a mouse!

Ok, it seems the re-vamp of the website has paid off. Despite halving my investment on Google adverts, I’ve now got 3 more jobs confirmed and another 2 that might come off in the last week.

One was a pretty standard piece of illustration for a card company.. one is a short animated sequence zooming from outer space to the Earth – again, not difficult in itself, but I’m going to make it quite sophisticated looking… The third is a filmmaker who wants to add some animated figures into a real life scene.

Fair enough, except that he wants to do it by next Friday and he wants to do it for an absurdly low budget… I’m going to take the job anyway because it looks like fun – even though there’s a hell of a lot of animation, it doesn’t have to be strictly naturalistic, so it should be just about do-able.

Anyway, that’s for next week.

There’s also a possibility of a pop video for a group who have just finished touring with the Killers… and a safety video for a yacht on the cards.

All in all, the re-vamp is doing pretty well for me.

Apart from the fact that it’s so successful my ISP is complaining that I’m overusing my bandwidth… so it might be time to get another host for the site – or at least buy a domain name so I can switch if and when I need to.

Did manage to grab a quick look at my notes for my next documentaries – and I think I may be able to turn the plan from 4 60 minute pieces into 6 30 minute documentaries.

This will be a lot easier to manage, shoot and organise… not least because I can use the same interviewees without them looking overused. And that’s quite a consideration because there aren’t that many experts on specific dinosaur species, so I’m going to have to use the people I can get.

The next step here is to arrange interviews and write questions for them. But right now that feels a bit like taking the plunge…

Once I commit to when I’m doing interviews that gives the whole project a momentum… which of course is what I need to do, but it’ll mean putting other paid work on the backburner and I’m only just getting used to the idea that there’s enough of that around to keep me going!

In the meantime I’m really hoping to get somewhere towards finishing the space exploration documentary next week… NASA haven’t come up with the footage I need of the solar sail test, but I guess I’ll have to do without it.

Managed to finish (hopefully, but there’s been no feedback yet) the advertising image for Vodaphone.. they wanted an impossible shape and although that was quite a challenge working in 3d (where you have to be able to really build whatever you want to draw!), the result looks good.

The rap video is coming together too, but I can’t go much further with it without the artist providing some visuals and photos himself. Hopefully these will turn up next week.

I’ve also had to do some extra writing work – three advertising emails – but they’re pretty much OK. I’ve even managed to hit another deadline I’d forgotten about: I’ve done the re-writes for my latest book “the really really really easy step by step guide to creating and editing digital videos using your computer”

Pithy title eh? Not my choice….

David Davis
After the Government barely managed to get through legislation allowing them to hold terrorism suspects for 42 days (although the bill will almost certainly not survive the house of Lords), David Davis – one time runner for leader of the Tory party has resigned on principle. His idea is to force a by-election which he’s going to campaign on the basis of fighting the erosion of civil liberties.

Good for him – and I told him so in an email:

Hi
Just a note to say that I thought your actions today were honourable and intelligent.

You may be feeling isolated without the backup of the party mechanisms you’ve become used to right now, but be assured, you are not alone in believing that the principles on which our democracy was founded are worth defending.

The British have always guarded our freedoms jealously, and the veil under which they are now being eroded is thin indeed. Our freedoms were forged in times far more dangerous than these, and we forget sometimes quite how hard won they are.

I am not a natural Tory supporter – and I’m unlikely to become one any time soon, but I’d like to commend you for your stand today. As an IT journalist I’m constantly reminded of the small, technical developments that are eroding our personal freedoms piece by piece and of the difficulties of bringing the real issues underlying those changes to the public eye. The excuse of terrorism may be allowing our police and our leaders to persuade themselves that more and more draconian measures are needed, but it is good for them to be reminded that democracy makes them our servants, not our masters.

Good luck with your stand.


Christian Darkin


It turns out this morning that the government aren’t going to stand against him and neither are the Lib Dems – but if they don’t, Kelvin Mackensie – one time editor of the Sun (and somebody I once had to sue to get my money out of Highbury house – a collapsing publishing company) will stand.

Apparently he’s being backed by Rupert Murdoch.

This would be fantastic – great theatre! I’ve got half a mind to go up and follow the campaign with a video camera – it would make a great documentary!

Cut down my web advertising budget to half - not because it’s not working, but because it is. Right now I’ve got so much work, I feel like I’m in a constant rush… not good.

Anyway, this week’s rush is an advertising image and a rap video. Both are full on projects – the first because of it’s deadline (Friday) the second because of it’s budget (not enough to allow me to spend the time I’d like to).

However, both are things I want to do and both will be fun.

By Wednesday I’ve got a pretty good start on both. The rap video is set in a kind of half/videogame, half real world kind of environment which allows me to play with perspective and reality. I’m starting with photos, and constructing very simple 3d environments with the photos maped onto them, so that when I move the camera, the pictures sort of appear 3d and sort of get distorted. The effect is quite disturbing…

I’m also using after effects’ puppet tool to bring to life some stock photos of people for the backgrounds…

The advert also is going OK – the client wants to change lots of things, but that’s OK – that’s what happens.

Things appear to be going pretty well until a spanner appears in the works – I’ve now got another job doing three advertising emails from the company I write the digital videomaking newsletter for… and you’ve guessed it, it’s urgent.

Everything’s urgent these days….

I’m now well into the Tyrannosaurus poster, but it’s one of those things that won’t come together until it’s nearly finished, so I’m feeling a bit as if I’m getting little done.

It looks like I’m going to be doing the rap video, but my tryout footage wasn’t any good as it turns out the reason the guy can’t shoot a live action video is that he’s recovering from an accident… so that means he can’t do any shooting at all.

I’ve come up with a solution that will fit his budget (although I’ll need to work very quickly to make it worthwhile for me) – the idea is to do a videogame type animation – somewhere between Californication and faithless’ “my culture” – that would allow me to use the artist’s previous videos as part of the backdrop – thus getting him into shot without having to film him.

Clever eh?

Well, maybe – if I can create the effect I want to do with just a few days work…

The wall st videogame animation thing is finally over (I think) and the client seems to like what I’ve done – which is a surprise to me because it took ages to get right.

It looks like there maybe another job next week too – a still for a print advert, so relatively well paid.

We’ll see.

Web hosting
I’m also getting emails from my ISP saying my website is exceeding their bandwidth limitations (probably because of the advertising I’m doing). They (of course) want me to upgrade my account, but I’m thinking now might be a good time to look at hosting it elsewhere.

It might also be a good time to finally get my own domain name for all my emails so I can change my ISP if I want to. I’m not planning to change because broadly I’m happy with Demon, but it’d be good to know I could and it’s really cheap to get a domain.

Can I be bothered? Have I got time? Stay tuned to find out….

Maybe what I really need to do (since I seem to have a virus brought on by overwork) is turn off my advertising and go back to making some documentaries – which though it’s not an easy job, is at least under my control….

Wall street

The last couple of days have been filled with the wall street animation… communication with the company has improved, but information about what they want still comes in dribs and drabs and the requirements are always unclear. There are constant changes required to every piece of the work. The changes are always URGENT. The deadline is always TODAY, but once the deadline passes, there’s always a reason why the deadline never happened and ended up getting moved on to the next day so that the panicked rush can continue. I begin to suspect that the deadlines aren’t really deadlines they’re just picked out of the air, which is a shame for them more than for me because when you organise yourself to a very tight deadline the first thing you drop is any attempt at experimentation or creative interpretation. All you’re left with is a formulaic interpretation of the brief (or whatever brief you’ve got) and you’re forced to do everything in the quickest possible way rather than the best way.

In addition, nobody at the company seems to have any notion of working hours – they called me at 1;30 am on Wednesday morning and when I didn’t answer, they emailed to ask me to call them when I got into work (1am their time!). Once the work was finished, they still kept adding extra changes even calling me to insist on another update at 8pm when they must have known I’d stopped work for the day.

It didn’t help that I’d already spent the previous evening working on their animation, as well as some of the previous weekend. And the one thing I’m very definitive about in freelance work is that I don’t work evenings and weekends!

In fact, yesterday was my day for looking after George, so there was a limit to the amount of work I could do anyway.

Anyway, job done – it’s out of the way now (hopefully – they could still come back with other changes)!


So today I’ve been taking it a little easier. I did a brief bit of what I suppose you’d call pitching, but I don’t call it that. Basically someone emailed saying they wanted to make an animated rap video. Fair enough, but they really didn’t have the budget for it. What I’ve done is a quick mock up of the kind of thing they could do for their budget – with an improvised green screen and some pre-shot footage and stills. It’ll work well, and his budget will let me spend a couple of days working on the project. Plus it’ll be a bit of fun if it works out.

That only took a couple of hours, so I spent the rest of the day working on a TRex poster I’m doing for a company that make – well – posters. There’s still nothing ready to show for it, but I’ve done a lot of the groundwork, the 3d modelling (actually adapting and refining models I’ve already done). The results are pretty good, although the young Trex needs to be feathered and that’s a little tricky.

Anyway, it gives me a chance to work on some models and techniques I’ll eventually use in my theropod documentaries… if they ever get off the ground!