The New Year

I'm not one for making typical New Year's resolutions, but I do like setting simple goals to keep myself busy. So my (almost daily) goals for the coming year are:

1. Sketch in my sketchbook every day, even if I just fill up a page full of ears or something

2. Compose music every day, even if it's only 4 bars

3. Practice guitar for at least 30 minutes every day (if not more)

4. Exercise at least 3 times a week, even if I just go for a walk in the evening after supper

This is separate, of course, from working on extended projects in art, music, animation, etc.

Orchestration Final Project

I've finished my final project for the online course in Orchestration through Berklee College. It can be found here:

http://www.electricminstrel.com/solo_player.html

It's the one titled 'Spirit of Fire'.

Broken XML parsing

So it seems that PHP5 has broken XML parsing now, according to this site:

http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=45996

Which means that if you are reading this via the Electric Minstrel website, you are seeing a bunch of broken HTML. Hopefully my site provider will fix their installation of PHP5, since I use an RSS parser to fetch posts from Blogspot.

Returned!

I am back to using Blogspot again!

I have had a busy 2008. In addition to studying caricature under people like Jason Seiler & the gang at the National Caricaturists' Network, I also took a wonderful course in Orchestration through Berklee College under Ben Newhouse. Actually, I am finishing up my final project now and will post it when it is done.

I am still using TVPaint (upgraded from Mirage) for most of my art, although I do occasionally use PhotoShop for some things. Oh yeah, and I still use ArtRage but haven't touched it in a long while. Now that my music class is closing out this week, I will be back to doing more art in the coming weeks.

ArtRage

I have been experimenting with a neat painting tool called ArtRage. It is a simple application intended to emulate the uses of oil paint on canvas (or other types of media). It also includes a palette knife tool, ink pen, pencil, chalk, crayon and glitter. How Kindergarten, huh?

Actually, considering it's free (or you can get the full application for $25), it's fairly sophisticated. Of course, it can't really compare it to high-end graphics tools like Photoshop, The Gimp, Mirage, Corel Painter, etc., but it's not trying to be any of those kinds of applications. ArtRage is simply a natural media painting tool and nothing else. However, it does support importing of reference images, tracing images, layers (and pretty much all of the layer blending modes supported by the high-end apps), scaling, rotation and fairly sophisticated coloring tools.

What I really like about it is the simplicity... you don't have to drill down through a bunch menus or hierarchies of dialog boxes to get something done. Everything you need is right on the screen (although there are some config menus if you need them), and the workflow is very similar to painting. It's especially targeted for use with a Wacom tablet (which I use, although need a bigger one!).

It doesn't support things like custom brushes, textures, animation, and some of the advanced digital art stuff you might find somewhere else... but... once you get into that stuff you are getting away from traditional painting techniques, which is what this application is for.

I did this quite quickly... a lot more I could do, of course, but I was amazed at how easy this is to use.



(Click on image to see it full size)

Well, crud

Was going to do some recording tonight only to find my audio hardware (Delta 1010) had gone belly up. Nothing but a nasty AC hum coming out of all outputs. Some research revealed that possibly an input power capacitor may have bitten the dust. Since the unit is way past warranty, probably not worth it to get it repaired, so decided to just invest in some new audio hardware.

I shopped around online at various places like Musician's Friend, Music 123, zZounds, Sweetwater, etc... and of all places, ended up finding the best prices on Amazon. In fact, instead of a new Delta 1010 I decided to go with an RME Hammerfall HDSP Multiface, which is a rackmount AD/DA converter that uses a PCI interface that communicates back to the unit via a proprietary protocol over firewire. It was only about $60 more than what it would have cost to replace the Delta 1010, and RME has a good reputation for high-end audio hardware, so that's what I went with. This hardware also provides zero-latency monitoring, 0 CPU Load (since all DSP operations are done in the rackmount unit), 720 channel internal mixing via TotalMix and since the hardware uses a proprietary protocol and not IEEE1394 to communicate to the computer, I don't have to rely on flaky firewire cards or drivers.

Alhazred update

I have been busy with lots of things in the past couple of months, including a complete house makeover (new flooring, carpets and painting), so music has kind of been backburnered a little bit.

Regarding Alhazred's album, we are shooting to have everything -- recording and mixing -- done by the end of February and off to mastering. Right now, most of the rhythm tracks are done, and we start recording the vocals this weekend. Should go fairly quickly since only two tracks have vocals, the rest are all instrumental. Then I get to agonize over the guitar solos for a couple of weeks. :-) Lengthwise, by today's standards it would be called an EP, although it will be about the length of a vinyl record from the 70s, about 7 - 8 tracks.

Once the album is done, then we start putting together a performance ensemble (I'd like it to include some dancers for a couple of the Middle Eastern pieces, but that may be a bit ambitious...)

Mirage Pro+

My new disk finally arrived and installed without a hassle. This update to the now discontinued animation product includes a new version of the Animator's Toolbar plus an updated verion of a storyboarding tool called Boardomatic.

Mirage no more

A couple posts ago I mentioned the new Pro+ package of Mirage from Bauhaus software... there's a reason for that. Bauhaus has decided to terminate the Mirage line of animation products (due, I am sure, to the neverending legal battle with TV Paint). Bauhaus did say they are coming out with new software soon -- hope it is as good as Mirage is. Even though I own PhotoShop (v. 5.5) and the Gimp, I find myself using Mirage for most artistic things these days.

Mirage update on the way!

Bauhaus software is releasing a FREE upgrade to Mirage... basially, you get upgraded to the Pro level of the product, which includes the new version of Animator's Toolbar and Board-o-matic (storyboarding software). I got the basic version of Mirage about a year ago, got ATB v1.0 last Spring, so this is quite an upgrade. Alas, the core software isn't being upgraded, due to some lingering legal issues, but all of the addons are still nice.

I know Photoshop is the industry standard, but I have gotten quite comfortable with Mirage and have tried doing stuff with Photoshop and don't like it as much. :-) Oddly enough, I tried doing some stuff on paper and it felt wierd, since I've been doing paperless sketching for a while... but I guess I shouldn't let myself get too rusty using paper and pencil just yet...

More on character design

So, now been studying character design under Stephen Silver, who designed characters for Clerks (cartoon) and Kim Possible.

The challenge now is to create a "Jekyll" and "Hyde" relationship between two characters, whether it's the original pair, or perhaps in the future or something even more bizarre ("The Nutty Professor" was basically a twist on Jekyll and Hyde).

So, me being who I am, I am working on a pair of medieval-ish fanatasy "kings" who represent the good and evil sides... the good side is something along the lines of King Arthur or Aragorn, and the evil side is something along the lines of The Witch-King of Angmar or RW Chambers "King in Yellow".

"silhouette" sketches are what I am working on right now -- a bunch of brainstorming and quickies scribbled out here at work when I happen to get a spare minute or two... it's kinda fun doing it this way, since you aren't focusing so much on the design as you are on the structure on the character, starting from basic shapes which you can then stretch, squash, twist, etc.

And I should add this is all hand drawn stuff, no 3D rendered art... that's cheating!

Musical Frustrations and a New Hope

Well, Alhazred lost its drummer and singer this week... the drummer decided to work with another band (more fusiony improvisational stuff from what I can tell), and the singer just disappeared without a word. :-(

So Woody and I are going to keep moving forward, making the music heavier and less progressive (although it will still have some progressive edge). Since we now lack a drummer, I have been building drum tracks with a software package called "BFD" from FXPansion. Very nice sampled kits, lots of mixing flexibility, and good options for "humanization". Nothing is as good as a real drummer, but this comes close!

So we are going to record a CD (probably 5 or 6 songs) and then use that to recruit additional band members for live performances. We lost all of the music our singer had written, but between Woody and me, we have a good bit of music.

I am still moving forward with the Electric Minstrel musical project... more music inspired by "Vathek" and "The Night Land" coming soon!

"Khalif" and others

I have been working on more symphonic music, inspired by the early gothic novel Vathek, by William Beckford (see this link for the full text of the novel --> Vathek At Project Gutenberg. This music is actually several pieces of music, some very Middle Eastern in terms of instrumentation and melodic style, some more Western and symphonic with hints of Middle Eastern melodies. Hope to have these up on the website soon.

I've been doing a lot of sketching lately, using the Wacom tablet. I am still not 100% comfortable with using the tablet yet. I found that I was tensing up too much when drawing, leading to some sloppy technique and overly thick lines, so I started just doing some pencilling exercises to help me loosen up, get more control over my technique and trying to get more delicate pencilling out of my hands. I still want a better tablet but just haven't gotten around to shelling out $300 or so for a new one yet.

A blog worth checking out

John Kricfalusi, creator of Ren Stimpy, has an excellent blog, if you want to learn some great stuff about traditional animation:

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/

Tales from the Perilous Quill

I mentioned this a while back, but I had a germ of an idea for a series of very short animations (30 - 60 seconds long) that would be animated one-liners, so to speak, along the lines of Gary Larsons "Far Side", but perhaps a bit more darker and bleaker... sort of Terry Gilliam meets Tim Burton kind of thing.

I've worked out a script for the first vignette -- I won't give away the details because I'd rather it be a surprise. My son Damien has agreed to do some of the voice work.

The name for the entire series is "Tales from the Perilous Quill", kind of taking off from the name I gave my little home studio, "Chapel Perilous".

So now I have three animation projects in the works:

1. Tales from the Perilous Quill
2. The Night Land pseudo-trailer
3. "The Crystal Ball" -- based on the story by the Brothers Grimm.

That should keep me busy for the next couple of years. :-)

"Nightland" trailer soundtrack

I have put together the musical track for the "Night Land" pseudo-trailer, comprised of selections of pieces I had written previously inspired by Hodgson's epic novel. It came out to around 1:42. I further broke down the soundtrack into about 9 sections so i can fit specific scenes to certain sections, including a animated title near the end. Now it's time to break the scenes down into frames (the music software I am using lets you set the playback time display to indicate frames in addition to seconds, which is helpful) and then create an animatic to see how things flow against the soundtrack. Then comes the fun of doing the actual scene layout and animating!

More computers...

The new 64-bit Dell Dimension turned out to be completely unusable... I didn't properly check out the specs before purchasing and didn't realize it had a low-profile PCI slot, plus two PCI-e slots, so my audio interface wouldn't fit into it. So off the new Dell went to my older son, Damien, and I went and purchased a bigger Dell XPS 410, essentially the same as what I am using for my art workstation except the newer machine has more RAM and a duo-core processor.

I started working out more production details for the "Night Land" pseudo-trailer. I also found out that the fan site for the novel and author, http://www.nightland.co.uk/ has been tracking my progress on the music I have been composing inspired by the novel and it has generated a good bit of interest in the site. I am even more inspired now.

Since this pseudo-trailer is just short scenes and panning shots of landscapes, storyboarding probably isn't going to be necessary, at least storyboarding in the traditional sense. I am still working on thumbnails and production art so I can determine what layouts will work, character designs, etc.

Pseudo-trailer

Another little animation project I have started working at (in addition to the more ambitious "Crystal Ball" project) is a "trailer" to a non-existant film version of William Hope Hodgson's epic dark fantasy novel The Night Land. I composed some symphonic music inspired by the book last year, and I intend to write more... but I have been jotting down some ideas for this fake teaser trailer of how I might envision a film version... but it wouldn't be live action with tons of 3D animation (although that would be ideal for someone like Peter Jackson), it would be hand-drawn animation, of course.

Studio setup

OK, here is my new art & animation workstation setup (with new monitor in place, on left):

Click here for picture

Cinescore

I've been experimenting with an application from Sony called Cinescore. It's used for creating musical tracks for videos and film... it's not a composing tool like I am used to (Finale, Overture, Rosegarden, etc), but rather a tool for assembling pre-composed themes and variations (it probably uses ACID (another Sony product) underneath). It's kinda fun to play with, since it's designed to match up music sequences to video, and you take sections of music based on a theme or mood, then you make variations to it (changing drum intensity, tempo, etc) and the software 'renders' the section for you. You don't get any control over the actual notes produced, since they are pre-composed and unchangable. It's a great tool for making temp tracks (like say I have a film I want to pass on to a composer, I can provide him with music that illustrates the mood and feel I want for a particular scene), or if you need to add music to DVD menus, documentaries, commercials, etc. Might be something worth having in my arsenal of musical tools... and the price isn't too bad, only $174 for the downloadable version, and they send you a DVD with extra theme packages for free.

PS. New computer is due to show up today! It goes down in the studio, while it's 19" widescreen becomes part of the animation & video workstation upstairs, as a second monitor.