Work is frantic – trying to get the trilobite animation finished in time to take it to Mexico for the opening (I’m leaving on the 26th) is quite a job – mainly because I’m being very fussy about getting it right.

Well, actually it’s because it’s so long (10 minutes of animation) and complex (trilobites have many many animated legs!) and has to be scientifically accurate.

However, I’m getting there and I think it’s going to be really good.

I’ve had to down-size the rendering – even though I’ve now got 3 dual core pcs and 2 quad core machines working on the rendering. I’ve gone from HD to SD video – mainly because I know they’re not going to show it in HD and I was just doing HD to give them the option in the future.

SD feels very low resolution now, but it’s solved my rendering problems – what was going to take 20 days was done over a weekend!


I’m now at the stage of choosing music and writing the script – I’ve gone for the blue Danube which gives the whole thing a graceful, but unusual feel…

having set up my new PCs, the render farm is having a few teething troubles. One or more computers in the network seem to be dropping off randomly so rendering isn't going as fast as it should.

I've also come to the conclusion that my schedule is impossibly tight for the trilobite animation. I've stripped it down a little. listing only those shots which are absolutely essential and concentrating on getting them rendering rather than working through the project scene by scene as I was doing.

hopefully there will be the chance to go back and finish off with some of my more interesting shots later, but I'm cutting it fine. I've just been contacted by the yacht people asking when the other project will be ready and I've proomised them something by early next week. in addition it's time to do the newsletter again and I've been given a small writing job by Computer Arts. This is something I can't turn down just now as I want to keep my hand in with the magazines.

All in all, I'm going to be doing overtime for the next couple of weeks. I'm not happy about that. but doing a couple of nights should make things more doable. Once my current projects are done I can relax the schedule a little, finish my documentary and look into developing the children's tv show I've just had an idea for....

Today I had to take most of the day out to go to the Avid offices in Pinewood studios for a meeting about the newsletter I'm writing. Most of it was stuff I already knew well, but it's always good to go to these things because it's the only chance you get to meet the people you're working for.

Pinewood seems to be about the only place in the UK you can still see people building things. There are carpenters, metalworkers, plaster of paris moulders, all busy building sets and props. In fact the site isn’t just a studio, it’s everything you need to make a movie – including the post production which is why I was there.

Our part of the complex was named Broccoli road – and went right past the Bond soundstage. You couldn’t see in though…

On the way back, my taxi driver gave out some free tips on the benefits of declaring yourself bankrupt… how to have £100,000 on credit cards and have them all wiped clean. He spoke from experience apparently.


Down on the farm
the render farm I'm setting up still isn't working properly. I'm coming to the conclusion that Backburner (the package you use to farm out jobs to each of the computers) isn't quite as bug-free as it should be. I'm slowly learning there are magic things you need to do before it will all work.

For example, you need to delete a certain file from the max installation on every machine. You also can't have computer names that begin with a number... when one machine is on, it throws others off the network... it's all a bit untidy.

On balance, of course, I'd rather have it than not have it, but I'm still not operating at full capacity.

That said, the rest of the project is going well - animations are coming along nicely and the clients seem very happy.

Looks like I'm paying a visit to Mexico in a few weeks for the grand unvieling...

Managed to get the voiceover done for the yacht video – the voiceover artist was recommended by the client and turns out to be very good. The initial version of this project is getting very near to completion now and today I’ve set the renderers up with the last two shots. After that it’s all just tidying up and editing (and any changes the client wants to make).

I’m starting to render the other project too – the trilobite animation for the museum. The images look great – and it’s possibly my enthusiasm for the project, but I’ve gone with all the highest quality settings for my rendering. I need to keep a reign on rendering times, and so far that’s not happening. I’m also rendering in HD which doesn’t help. It’s also not necessary strictly speaking – the clients haven’t asked for HD – I just think that if I can I’ll do as much of the project in HD as my rendering times allow.

Unfortunately, that’s meant 2 hours per frame on one shot – so I’ve had to re-think a little… Having done a couple of tweaks with the lighting (I’ve found area lights are a real time killer – especially when combined with raytraced shadows).


I also returned from holiday to find another project landing on my desk – another animation for another museum – this one a medieval castle – which should be fun and not too stressful.

Today, I also got an email from an old friend from Computer Arts – he’s now working for an osteoporosis charity and needs some medical illustration done. It’s easy enough since I’ve got a high quality medical model I bought for a poster project which didn’t come off at the beginning of the year.


All of this means I need to by my extra rendering PCs as soon as possible. Which I can’t do until I get the first payment for the trilobites animation… let’s hope that appears in the next week and I can begin to clear the rendering log-jam.

It’ll also be good to get a new pc with a bit more memory and shift my adobe suite onto it. For some reason, capturing video is becoming a real problem, with stuttering playback and lost sound.

When I recorded the voiceover yesterday, I did it using my camcorder and a tie clip mic. Transfering it to the computer eventually had to be done through the PCs sound card because firewire wasn’t playing ball…


I also returned from holiday with the desire to make a series of 10 minute animations for children’s TV… is that going to happen? It’s a big job…. Hmmm. I’ve got a documentary to finish first (although with my current computer not behaving with video, that will have to wait until I get a new 4 or 8gb machine).

3d stuff
today I spent the morning at an Autodesk press event. Taking time out to go to these things is always worthwhile, but I could have done without it today – with the pre-holiday rush and the fact that I got very little done yesterday.

I really must make an effort to get some writing work about the 3d packages – otherwise my position as a journalist writing about 3d is going to drift… Don’t quite know where I’ll find the time, but it’s well worth doing.

What I got from this event was a chat with one of the 3d guys who pointed me at the value of normal mapping and the importance of render passes. Neither of which I’d really understood before….

Normal mapping, by the way is creating a kind of fake painted on bump effect which can make simple 3d models look like much more complex shapes without slowing your computer down.

Using Render passes on the other hand means getting the computer to produce separate pictures for the colour, shadows, reflections, lighting, etc. in a scene instead of putting them all together. The advantage being that you can go in later on in After Effects and adjust the effect of each element of your scene without having to go back and do it all again. If someone tells you they’d like the same thing in a different colour, it takes 10 seconds to change instead of 48 hours….


Anyway, one thing worth noting is that even though the company is absolutely right at the cutting edge of technology, they still couldn’t get either their coffee machine or their TV to work… it’s not just me, then.


Work on the safety video is going well – and I’m very nearly at the stage where I can see it actually being possible to finish it. There are a few shots that are taking their time to render, and a few others that will need re-doing, but now everything is in place, and I can see the project coming to a close.

After my holiday next week, I’m going to jump straight in and get the narration recorded, and then there are only a couple of shots to do before I can present a preliminary edit to the client.

Just in time too – as the trilobite animation is really hotting up and I just know, if I’m going to get it all rendered in time, I’ll need to stick hard and fast to my deadlines.

The images are looking good, and I’m really discovering in these projects just how valuable a firm shot-list is. It lets me know exactly where I am at any point and allows me to see where the tricky shots are likely to be. Even if I end up leaving shots out or adding others in, it’s at least a framework I can depend on.

It’s also something that I tend to leave out when I don’t think I have time – and it’s always a false economy.

10x10
On Wednesday I managed to get to the 10x10 documentary filmmaking night – where five filmmakers show 10 minutes of their work and get 10 minutes of (constructive) criticism from the audience. It’s a great evening to go to – and always makes me want to do more documentary work.

Time pressure is still pretty strong and I can’t see when in the next couple of months I’m going to be able to finish my current documentary – despite the fact that there’s only a couple of days work to do on it.

On the plus side, my other projects mean I’ll have to get a more powerful computer (actually 2 of them) so when I come back to the project I hopefully won’t have the same problems with Premiere crashing during rendering.

Anyway – among Wednesday’s films were a snippet from a film on Lost Vagueness – the bizarre festival/theatrical experience I’ve been to on a couple of occasions. Lost Vagueness is difficult to explain (and I think that’s going to be a problem for the documentary maker) but my experience of it involves a Victorian mental hospital, a fair featuring such games as “guess the name of my cat” and a man who only spoke backwards.

I look forward to seeing the finished documentary.

There was also a documentary made by someone who had William Shatner’s name tattooed on his right buttock for some reason he can’t quite explain – and his quest to explore the murky world of the star trek fan.

Good luck to him. They’re a funny lot.

…compared to us sensible Doctor Who fans that is…


A reality cheque
Just as a bit of reality for documentary makers. I got my first invoice request from my distributors for the shark evolution documentary – it’s been with them since just before Christmas and they’ve sold the programme to four different countries including Canada and Spain.

Pretty good going I think and their set-up charges (about £500) and commission (35%) aren’t bad deals, so I’m happy with their work.

The profit though, comes out at £1,700 with another roughly £600 still to come.

In other words, it’s not going to make a living for me. The documentaries are great fun to make and I’m not backing away from doing them. I enjoy it and it’s worthwhile. It’s just that even if the income continues at this rate for 5 years, the programme will just about have justified my time. I don’t imagine that it will.


Trilobites
The trilobite project – a museum display animation – looks like it will entail a trip to Mexico at the beginning of November.

The project is proceeding very well right now and I’m managing to re-create some fascinating creatures. I’m making them extremely bright and colourful and I’ve put together a storyline which turns this animation into a real documentary – or at least a fictional film based on real evidence….

The guys I’m working with are doing their best and seem very helpful but they’re both very busy and live at opposite ends of the world. One is getting married and the other trying to set up a museum and neither speak English as a first language – so I’m largely working on my own and hoping I’m getting things right.

I’m trying to send updates to them as often as possible so as to minimise any re-working of the models and animations.

Poster
The Trex poster, a project I was working on a couple of months ago but which seemed to grind to a halt, is now back on. This is a wall poster which I’d got very closer to completing when the company who’d requested it suddenly changed their minds about what they wanted.

Now, they’d previously done this with another poster (on human anatomy) and the whole image had eventually been cancelled after I’d done an awful lot of work for which I didn’t get paid. I told them I wasn’t willing to re-do the Trex poster unless they could do what most other clients do and issue a commission – a firm commitment to pay me.

They’ve instead suggested some minor changes – and I’m willing to do them – although when I’ll get time to, I’ve no idea.

Credit crunching
Last week I emailed a couple of other clients about some projects which I thought were pretty firm (a pop video and a documentary intro). They haven’t responded – which I’m taking to mean that they’re pulling out.

This would bother me if I didn’t have so much work on – especially as I’d already done a couple of days work on these projects). However, these are tough times, so if the clients don’t feel they can continue I’m not going to kick up a stink

I also dropped a line to another client who asked me to do a small piece of work illustrating some sales ideas he had. This work was finished and used, but he’s now said his business is failing and he can’t pay.
Well, it’s only a small amount (£125) but I worked hard for it and he had plenty of opportunity to contact me and discuss the problem earlier, so I’m afraid I don’t have much sympathy.

Luckily, there’s legislation in place (the late payments act) which allows small businesses to charge late payment fees (about £40) and interest if an invoice isn’t settled within a month. I’ve politely highlighted this to him, but not directly imposed it. I’m giving him every opportunity to pay, but if he persists in not paying, I will sue him through the small claims court. I’ve done it before (in fact I sued Highbury Publishing for about £3,000 and they payed up just before the company collapsed owing millions).

Anyway, as a small business, and especially as a creative one, you can’t afford to have bad debts and you especially can’t afford to be seen as a soft touch.

Work is distracting me. I’ve got these two big projects on right now – the safety video for the yacht and a trilobite display for a museum in Mexico. Both are big, complex jobs and both have deadlines in September.

The problem with having these long term projects is you’re never quite sure where you ought to be on them at any point and you need to set (and keep to) goals throughout the project.

There are so many different aspects to these animations (both are really like mini films – involving narration, music, characters and editing as well as animation) that are all both exciting and difficult – so I sometimes end up getting preoccupied by them.

Although, obviously I want interesting and challenging work, it’s hard to turn that off when it comes to the end of the day.

I end up getting distracted – as though the real world is happening somewhere else with me – or my mind not connecting fully with it, and I don’t like that about myself. It must be obvious to people around me sometimes that I’m not all there…

The only real solution is to be as organised as I can – to plan out what I’m doing on what days. For some reason when I know I’ve got a difficult problem to tackle, knowing WHEN I’m going to tackle what portions of it frees me up somehow – it allows me to forget the problem for the most part – knowing that even if I don’t have the answers, I’ve at least dedicated a time-slot to dealing with them.

On Saturday I scribbled a few notes on a scrap of paper, planning out the next couple of weeks. It helped a lot – and even if some of those plans don’t work out, I at least know I’ve got time for most of what I’ve got to do.

Hopefully that made me a little better company for the weekend….





The joy of farming
I’ve now got so much rendering to do for the two big animation projects on my plate right now that it’s become pretty clear that one computer isn’t going to cover it. If you make a guess that each frame of animation takes about 5 minutes to render (the practice of getting the computer to draw out every beam of light bouncing off every object in the scene to create a finished 3d picture), and there are 25 frames per second, my museum animation on its own is going to be about 50 days and nights of rendering.

Since I’ve got to deliver it at the end of September and I’m not even going to be able to start the rendering until all the other work is done on the project, I’m going to be in a spot of bother.

Luckily 3ds Max (my animation package) has a trick up its sleeve. Basically you can install (for free) unregistered versions of the software on as many PCs as you like, and network them together so that each computer renders out a portion of the job.

Commercial rendering farms as they’re called turn out to be more expensive than buying extra computers and doing it yourself.

Anyway – I’ve now set up Lisa’s laptop, and re-energised my old PC (which fell apart earlier in the year) with a copy of Windows Vista. So I’m now rendering 3 times as fast at a cost of about £100.

So I’ve managed to get a good chunk of my yacht safety video rendered over one weekend. What’s more, it doesn’t matter that some of the renders need tweaking because I can go back and do them again overnight whenever I like. It’s a very freeing experience.

At the end of the month, when the museum animation starts in earnest, I’m going to buy and add a couple of quad core machines – bringing my processor count up from 2 to 14 – so I should be able to take on these big tasks without worrying about rendering time.

It feels as though I’m slowly scaling up my operations what with render farms and Elance. This is something I’m not used to as a freelance artist – but it’s going fairly well…

Render farm idea
Here’s an idea for anyone with a bit of web programming skill: set up a website which allows people to donate downtime on their own home computers for network rendering. You’d be able to call upon hundreds (even thousands) of PCs to do a rendering task, pay the contributors a small amount per frame, and charge animators to use the service.

You’d be able to undercut all the commercial render farms out there, plus you’d have no overheads, and an almost unlimited supply of render machines.

What’s more, instead of a render task taking weeks, you could typically finish the job in minutes.

Just an idea.

I’ve been working pretty constantly on my two big projects this week – pausing only to write my video newsletter – which of course arrived after a long delay with a very tight deadline.

It looks like I will be making the trilobite animation and that’s great news. It also seems the same people want to meet me in Mexico to talk about other possible projects – which would be great.

Elance
Having decided to use Elance for the first time to hire in people to help with my animation work – and having given a team in India the job of rigging some of my 3d characters, I got the finished rigs back this week.

They weren’t brilliant, I have to say. I did choose the cheapest people – which I guess says something - and the results were mixed. I don’t think they’d done much character rigging before.

Character rigging, by the way is adding animatable bones to a 3d person so that when you move their arms and legs, the right parts of the body bend. If you get it wrong, you get unlikely looking bends and tears and the character’s bodies go out of shape. This is what happened in this case – and if I’d been using them in the normal way, the results wouldn’t have been satisfactory. Fortunately, I’m only using the characters as silhouettes, so it doesn’t matter too much.

I’ll definitely use Elance again – it’s a good way to farm out work you can’t or don’t want to do – but you have to be careful about who you choose.

I think the main requirement – aside from an understanding of the task – is an understanding of English. You really need to be able to communicate complicated ideas when working on an animation projects – and that means a common language is a must.