Mog and Chips

When it comes to animated films, I’m generally very tolerant. I can watch something for kids and be nostalgic, and something that might not be my thing if I need to study it.

I couldn’t watch the animated The Hobbit.

1977. At first it was nostalgic. The actual movement reminded me of The Last Unicorn, and the style did slightly as well. And well, there were always songs in animated films those days, and there were songs all through the book.

I got about 30 minutes in, and I couldn’t bear to watch anymore.

There’s too much stuff - and because they’ve cut some bits out, other bits have no purpose. Gandalf isn’t shown to be very clever by tricking the Trolls into arguing until sunrise, he just happens to arrive at sunrise and they’re like “Oh shit, it’s sunrise”. Gollum looks more like a frog than a vaguely undead hobbit thing (which he is supposed to look like, as revealed in Lord of the Rings)

Backstory: Ralph Bakshi made an animated Lord of the Rings film… but only the first half. It did so badly he couldn’t afford to do the second half. If I went into explaining why it failed I’d be here all day, so here’s one I prepared earlier that someone else has already done, and in quite an amusing manner.

http://flyingmoose.org/tolksarc/bakshi/bakshi.htm

Some time later, Rankin and Bass picked up where Bakshi left off. They did the end of the Lord of the Rings, and then they did The Hobbit.

And it suffers some of the same problems. A lot of stuff that’s in the book happens, but then doesn’t lead anywhere. Like they just put it in to buff it out, and then had to edit it down because they had too much anyway.

There’s just one event happening after another, rather than any character development happening at all.

If I ever am part of a film like that, smack me.

At least The Hobbit didn’t have any dodgy rotoscoping.

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Happy endings are cliche, but  give you the feeling of satisfaction.

Sad endings seal the story (everyone dies, the end, no sequels for you! ) and give it a sense of finalization.

A mixed ending perhaps?

In this novelly/comic-y thing I’m playing with, I’ve got a couple of characters that will, irreversibly, be changed in such a way they couldn’t possibly fit in with normal people ever. So living happily ever after is out.
But I do want there to be a sense of satisfaction - the character’s journeys of self-development are completed, after much trial and tribulation they are content and they can live happily ever after somewhere. Because “damnit, after all they’ve been through they can’t just die!” kind of thing, which hopefully the reader will feel if it’s written well

However, if they’re somehow magically turned back to normal, it kind of makes this “If you conform, you’ll be fine!” which is something they’ll have been battling from the beginning.

…My brain hurts, I’m going to watch Paul play Ace Combat now, and squeal whenever there’s a missile after him and make him jump and crash his plane

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Now I realise why my old writings never got off the ground. I just sat down and wrote. Ok I designed the characters in depth, but not what was going to happen to them. I enjoyed imagining things as it went along, rather than thinking I’m going to have a finished product.

I’ve been writing out a plan of this practice graphic novel/comic type thing, and thankfully resisted the urge to just get started on the drawing, because now I’m scrapping it and starting anew, with a sudden clarity on writing.

What I’ve discovered, is the plot doesn’t mean sod all on it’s own. It’s the characters you get attached to a story for (or at least, I do) and rather than plotting one big journey/plot for all of them, they all need their own journeys and then they must be tied together.

Every shot must have meaning, as must every action and every plot device. Not ‘because it’s there and they must deal with it’. If it just plays out like real life, whatever the setting happens to be, well… who cares? We live real life all the time, now lets have something that’s symbolic through and through, rather than having to dig through filler to get to what you’re getting at.

So not “here’s an event, and he’s a romance that grows out of it”

“Here is a romance, and we must get there somehow”

So my plan’s getting scrapped, and I’m starting again. With the characters, not the events =P

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I’m going back to uni in about a month, and my motivation is just spiralling downwards. I’m sick of education - last year was such a bad one, and I’m not sure whether that’s my fault or the uni’s for being so unorganized.

I think I need encouragement, which you don’t actually get a lot of in uni - probably because they want to push you to do better by telling you that you’re crap, but that doesn’t work with me, it depresses me =P

Or perhaps I’m just depressed because I’m hungry. I didn’t eat much yesterday. Drawing and writing seems to eat a substantial amount of energy even though you’re just sitting there. (Oh yes, I was munching away through much of my 10-hour Art AS level exam :P)

At the same time, I want (need?) to do a Masters, because the actual rigging and animating in 3D is something else completely.

We’re supposed to be getting 4 weeks extra tuition to make up for our lack of teaching in the first two years - those years weren’t “Observe how we do this”, it was “do this so we can mark it.” Very little actual teaching involved in the tutorials so you had to trial and error it to succeed and then your tutors in the second year are like “You lot don’t know much about animation theory” -_-

I wonder how effective those 4 weeks will be. I will not be happy if they’re skimped on.

At the same time, 5 days a week would be unfortuneate since that’ll take up my days at work.

But of course, I wouldn’t get the encouragement that I’d like when I’m actually in the industry. But then I find it easier to work for someone, than I do working for myself, perhaps because I know someone’s relying on me.

We’ve got multiple crits (presentations) this year, so hopefully I won’t freak out at any of them.

On a side note, at work we have to wear stuff that comes from work (and preferably in the newest, checkered shirt trend. I’ve been dared to ask our manager whether the tartan underwear that’s just come in is part of the uniform but I haven’t managed yet. ) so that means shoes too. Crappy, high heeled and thin soled shoes.

I’ve lost an arch on one foot (which explains why one of my knees is buggered) so I need thick soled, supportive shoes to stop it getting any worse - trainers, which we aren’t allowed. (dressing smart is part of our mystery shopper thing. Head Office is a bitch, they told us our one good result was a fluke and ‘50% is more like it’ ¬_¬)

Which means to avoid hassle, it would be neccessary to get a doctor’s note. I still haven’t gone to the student councellor about my motivation/freaking out at deadlines issue which I said to my doctor I would *ahem*. I thought it had gone away, but I’m worried it’ll come back as an association with uni.

Back to the point, it seems I must somehow fix this  ‘constant need for reassurance’ issue, and I have no idea how to do that. Everything resolves around needing to feel ‘needed’ - if I feel useless at work, suddenly every time I see myself in the mirror (clothes shop, they’re everywhere) I’m grotesque, while if I’m chuffed because I’m actually doing well and I’ve been helpful, I’ll be like “Yeah, I look damn fine in this fitted shirt!” It’s not something I can just brush aside.

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I have figured out how to do soft shading on Photoshop! Hurrah!

600 dpi down to 12% size ftw, btw

But seriously, I’ve been playing with hard cel shading but it’s just really not my thing - I’m never happy with it. Nor do I like hyper realistic.

My drawing style has always been somewhere inbetween, illustrate-y. Lineart, but soft shading. I intend to keep that.

And it’s just my luck that right now, I’ve got one month to go until uni starts again and I’m hyper on the one project that has nothing to do with it =P

But I’m going to keep going while the hyperness lasts.

Squee!

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At 4.30 in the morning, and we had to call the police.

I am not happy. Especially as I have to work today, and especially as when we moved in these people weren’t here. A lot of people moved into the area as summer started and a lot of them are scum. So after we’ve finally got settled at this address, we’re looking into moving.

It’s not like this place had a shining reputation, but it’s just never been that bad in the actual area where we live.

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I’m officially a lightweight, since it went straight to my head.

Trying to do lineart while drunk tipsy is fail though.

It’s the day after payday so work was packed and we only had three people. Being short staffed isn’t fun and we constantly are since our store is/was losing money and they’ve cut hours back. Fortuneately my old boss put my contracted hours up before she left and I’m on 10 hours minimum, instead of 4, giving me £50 odd a week instead of £20.

So we close the fitting room, and when we finally open it there’s tags strewn everywhere. That’s Aldershot for you. We need a door, or a gate, or something we can lock, instead of just obstruct the doorway and hope no-one goes in.

It’s rediculous. We generally tidy shoes (which is close enough for us to watch fitting room) and the other day the moment I take two steps from the fitting room someone runs in. As if they haven’t been watching me to see when I was leaving, sure.

People switch shoes all the time - we generally have our flat shoes on lil’ hanger things so we can fit more in, and people will put their (disgusting, manky) old ones on there, hang them up, and walk out with the new ones. Our shop is small but it’s not small enough to spot people doing that.

Someone tried to pay a cheque with a fake cheque guarentee card that didn’t have an account number on it. They had an arguement with the old manager and stormed off

Of course, its the summer holiday so people are taking their spawn with them everywhere. I’ve nothing against well behaved, polite people-spawn, but spawn that throw our shoes at people aren’t welcome. I can’t get to them to say anything to them, because their parents are in my way and not saying anything to their insane spawnlings. Bah.

…All that said, I don’t actually hate my work - it’s extremely rare we get an abusive customer, since we have such an easy returns policy (”it doesn’t fit” works fine) whereas at the large-chain-PC-store I used to work at people would build themselves up for an arguement and start yelling at me, and I wasn’t even responsible for returns so then they were pissed that I’d have to redirect them to the clearly labelled returns desk.

There’s also no-one stealing my commission or stalking my sister here =P Everyone at work is tolerable and pretty much everyone is likeable, including the manager, which seems to be a rare thing in most work places.

Bad customers are a given at any place, I suppose. Just the stealing at our store is that bad, and because Aldershot isn’t exactly a prosperous place, we’re not getting any Store Cards either.

I have a real problem selling store cards (Which we have to. Or we get sacked.) No-one English wants them (No wonder, at nearly 30% APR) and I’m not comfortable in the slightest selling them to people that don’t speak English very well. (”It’s a credit card” are the forbidden words, because it’s ‘negative’, but when I say “Would you like a — Store card” and someone says “…uhh… yes?” I’m not going to try and pretend that this isn’t a major financial descision)

I’ve tried saying “I don’t like the hard sell” at an interview before and I didn’t get the job

But anyway, my hard day at work is excuse for spiced rum. I’m not sure whether I prefer it to normal rum because it seems to have a stronger aftertaste than the dark rum of the same brand (Cap’n Morgan! )

Also I must find people that like Iron Brew flavoured WKD. Paul insists I’m the only person in the world that likes it.

For that matter, is Iron Brew (Or, Irn Bru, since the scottish manufacturers had the change the name incase people thought it was a source of iron XD) even sold much outside of the UK?

I’m sure now that we’re both working, once we get our student loans in we’ll be doing ok. I’d like to get out of our overdrafts but at the same time see some of what we’re earning. I think this year since we’re both working we’ll be in better shape, and we’ll have learnt from the mistakes from this year so far. If Paul can get his tax back from the inland revenue this year he’ll be out of half his debt already too (I believe it goes back to 6 years, so as long as the request’s in before the end of this year he should get his full amount back even if it takes months to actually go through?)

And why do footballers and models get paid more than coppers and firemen? Models don’t have to do that bleep test thingy to qualify, nor do they risk their lives on a daily basis (aside from starving themselves perhaps.)

I quite like the feeling of being tipsy and giggly (when it’s appropriate, of course), yet I can never allow myself to become totally and utterly hammered. I’m sure that that’s actually quite a healthy habit, but I do wonder why. I can’t down shots in one either, it’s like, I can’t allow my throat to be open enough let that much down it. (I’m going to smack the first person to take that out of context. Apart from me, when I reread it to make sure I didn’t do any drunken tipsy typos.)

I don’t think I’ve ever done anything completely and utterly stupid yet, apart from giggling at the fact I can’t walk in a straight line. And I generally stop drinking if I sense my mood is going downhill so I’ve never been a depressed drunk.

I have been rather confused lately. When I’m sober (when drunk, it’s kinda expected?). Like, I had that complete freak out over my deadline and that muteness thing, and my stomach hurt all the time, but also I had general mild confusion, getting tongue tied and stuff? The stomach ache is gone (but it seems I’m doomed to its return whenever I’m angry) but the tongue-tied-ness has remained? I never used to do spoonerisms (like, “I’m dot nrunk” type things) but now (when I’m sober) I do it all the time?

Edit: Frick, that’s long O.o How many minutes of someone’s life do I owe? =P I shouldn’t let myself on the forums in this state, right? =P

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Because if I can write it all out and read it later, I might reach somewhere Also, my photoshopping is going horribly horribly wrong and I need a break.

I like money in my bank account. I’d rather have £1000 and have it, than spend it on something. Money means security, security means safety. And in that safety I find comfort.

I suppose that’s quite difficult when it comes to mortgages and such. I think I’d rather rent than buy with a mortgage, if only because it’s a huge amount of money that is in someone else’s hands all at once and could go horribly, horribly wrong. On the other hand once you have your mortgage, you could have PPI if you get sick/injured, whereas with rent you just get kicked out when you can’t pay

And at what point does this saving stop? Would one year’s wages be ideal place? Two? Would I just keep on saving say, 10-20% per month forever?

I think I’d like to save as much as possibly until I get to such-and-such amount, and at that point maybe only save 5-10% every month, which can be spend on holidays and suchlike.

Security and stability mean much more to me than having or doing loads of stuff - my job satisfaction is from knowing I’m needed at my job and knowing that I have this security. I suppose if I had a job I didn’t like I’d need to have something else to replace the feeling that I’m actually useful and important in some way.

I like having a big (positive :p) numbers in my bank account, and on my payslip. I get depressed otherwise.

And here we have a massive clash of opinion.

I need this security of having a cushion of money in the bank account in case something happens. Otherwise I’ll become depressed - I’ll starve myself to attain it, like I did last year. I’ll budget everything to the exact so I can tuck away everything that isn’t used to somewhere I can’t waste it, and then I’ll get that proud fuzzy feeling when I’m under budget, and I’ll add all those under-budgets up and then buy something with that. It’s not like I’d still be buying tesco value if I were a millionaire, but as a student and soon as a young professional money will be tight and I’d be vulnerable to anything happening at all.

This makes joint decisions difficult.

I suppose the short way of putting it is; on one hand, our money is our own. On the other, we are dependant on each other.

In the first case, it allows privacy, but theoretically it also allows for things to go downhill for one, and the other ends up paying for it.

In the second, nerves get frayed because there is no privacy. Each needs a certain amount of ‘me’ money but that amount must be agreed upon by both parties.

…The thing that’s sparked this minddump is talk about future plans, where we plan to move to somewhere where our money will buy more. Therefore it makes sense to me to save while we’re here, and then that saving will go double the way when we get there and, say, put a deposit onto a house in America or Canada where the minimum wage is lower. Not to save to an extreme, just to put off the luxuries until we get there.

…The other thing, is that we’ve literally run out of money and I’ve had to drag it out of sum that was meant to go into other things. £300 of that was avoidable; there’s nothing that can be done about that than learn from it, but it still irks me. And now that I don’t even have that buffer, I’m very, very uncomfortable.

Getting that money is going to be very, very awkward because I need to ring parents to make sure cashing the cheque I’ve been saving for a while isn’t going to throw their finances out, and they’re going to ask why I’m cashing it now.

They made me promise that whatever money they gave me would be going to me, and I can understand entirely why a parent would do that - I would say the same if I had a kid.

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Six to Eight weeks. And I don’t have onboard graphics.

So I’ve stuck my harddrive inside Paul’s PC, but I still can’t run any of my games because they won’t be on the registry, and all the drive references will be one letter out. (It’s his PC and he’s still got uni work to do, so his Harddrive gets preference.)

Admittedly half the games probably wouldn’t work on his ATI X1050 256 “but virtual 512″ which apparently doesn’t have the pixel shaders for Assassin’s Creed and the like. It does, however, run Fable faster than my artifacting, hang-entire-PC graphics card even with the new (awesome) power supply.

I’m more worried about my projects and stuff; his photoshop will have entirely different settings to mine and I’m not sure how much the graphics card helps in terms of non-lag on a big, multilayered piece (or is that more CPU, RAM?)

I will not be happy if they send it back. I’ve done my research and I know there were faulty batches of the things, be in a gap between the VPU and heatsink, or the bios not actually having code to make the fan run faster. Mine’s dying, and since I’ve got a over-30A-PSU I know it’s not that. They’re not selling it anymore (while they’re selling older graphics cards), there must be a reason. When I took it out, the heatsink was very, very hot, moreso than the CPU’s heatsink.

I didn’t overclock the thing (I assume they can tell, since I will be very angry if I get accused of it considering it would take a complete muppet to overclock something you can’t detect the temp or fan speeds of.) and I’ve two, correctly working case fans and a ventilation grid over the PCI slot.

I wonder what testing is involved, because it only artifacts in 3D applications, and at somewhat high load. The Sims Body Shop is high load, apparently, and hung my entire computer. (That was the last straw, there.)

If they say “fair wear and tear”, my retort would have to be “What, it only has a lifespan of six months?!” (less since it’s been doing this for at least two months now) I got an £80 graphics card to play games with, not to “Oh dear, I’d better not play Assassin’s Creed, I might overload the poor thing! I’ll just play Windows Solitaire instead.” Apparently they can give you less because of “the experience you’ve had out of it so far” which will be very annoying because they won’t include that two months of not being able to play my more intensive games.

If they say there’s nothing wrong with it, on top of paying for a new graphics card (because mine’s unusable) I’ll have to pay £26 in testing (£10) and delivery (£8 to get there, I presume the same for getting it back)

They also better not automatically reject it for lack of drivers and manual, since they don’t sell it anymore and presumeably won’t refurbish is, and I rang their customer service to make sure and they said “It’s fine, just put as much in there as possible.” (And I’ve included a letter telling them so, in case they’ve tried it.)

At least I’ll hopefully have something before uni starts again.

Oh, and guess what? Or head or animatio- sorry, exhead of animation, since it was due to our 40 person complaint he had to stand down and isn’t talking to us (the entire class)… is teaching our first lesson.

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