Hover Car!

Just done a little mock-up for one of the Police hover cars. This is more of a patrol car as the hover cars are quite slow. For high speed chases they still use petrol cars with wheels. They also have heavily armoured vehicles. I shall try to mick up some of those over the next few days. Having done this though it has opened my eyes to how simplistic I am gonna have o make things if I intend to adapt as much of the book as possible. This took me ages and would only be good to animate from one side of the screen to the other. Anything more interesting than that and I would have to make several variants of the same angle. Hmm, all exciting stuff…

Dissertation and Major.

Word up all you homeys who love to read my blog. Sorry I’ve been away for so long- I hate to disappoint my fans. Thought I should jot down some of my ideas about dissertation, major and stuff and see if I get some feedback. No worries if not, but it would be interestig to see what people think. Anyway, here goes…

 Dissertation- still thinking along the same lines. I know this is ridiculous but I haven’t pinned down a final, proper bo title yet. Thinking something along the lines of “Globalisation or Americanisation? With a focus on Japanese and American stuff (films or games? Hm) discuss the influences of one culture to another in the contemporary world”. That last bit sucks, but you get the idea. I want to look at whether globalisation is real or whether a culture will just take an idea from another culture and change it to suit themselves. Thrilling stuff.

 Major- I want to do a feature length animation adaptation of “The Running Man” by Stephen King. Watching the film is actually accutely painful for me when I know it is (oh so loosely) based on such a good book. I want to make an animation that is as faithful to the book as possible and see whether it compliments the book or fails miserably. The only thing is that I sort of realised that it takes Disney, with a huge team of animators, script writers, sound guys etc about 3 years to make a feature length film, and all I would have on my side would be me, Nescafe Instant Lattes and my slippers that I bought from H&M for a bargain at £7.99 at the weekend.

Obviously I would make my animation “stylised” (for that read; easier to do, not great animation but, hey! It’s meant to look like that!) in a kind of Frank Miller, film noir, graphic novel kinda way. Although I don’t want to go down the route of a Stephen King inspired Sin City rip off. Watching Manga is interesting to see how budget the animation can look sometimes, in spite of which I still think the animation is amazing in pretty much every instance. It just seems to work, even if it is something like a person falling over stays frozen in the same postion and literally just moves down the screen at speed. It kinda fits with the style.  

 So yeah, thems my ideas. I’ll start getting some concept sketches up in this biatch soon so that people can cheer me on. Gonna link to this on facebook as well innit.

Dissertationface

Still thinking about my dissertation. I’m thinking of applying for the “Jet” scheme after uni, which is where you go to Japan to be an English assistant for a year. Obviously showing an interest in Japan and its culture will help your application, which makes me think that the dissertation I was thinking of doing might be really helpful.

 I was going to look at the idea of the global village, and maybe the idea of whether a translation can ever really translate meaning properly. So maybe I will do that and focus on Japanese -> English game/films. Another idea might be to do something along the lines of; “what effect has Japanese media had on western media?”. Maybe narrow that down to games if needs be, as it is more relevant to the course, but that would be a shame as there are many interesting media artefacts out there which benefit from a knowledge of Japan’s culture and history. For example; books (and the following TV/film adaptations) like James Clavell’s “Shogun” and “Gai-Jin”. Then you have Japanese films being remade by Americans, shortly followed by Japanese films being remade for Americans, but by Japanese. The games industry, up until the XBOX, has been dominated by Japanese companies, and their games are still very popular in both the western and japanese markets. Examples being the Final Fantasy series, and the Metal Gear Solid series.

 Food fo’ thought fo’ shizzle.

…

Sean Bean is awesome.

PDP

 Haha, just found a “draft” which I guess I started and forgot about. Here it is in its entirety;

“ Well, I suppose this blog is primarily for our PDP? I guess I should write something about that. Uh…”

Innit

Well, I got my mark back for my second media theory option. 68% which I’m very pleased with- my highest essay mark yet (well, apart from my PDP essay last year, but I don’t count that as a real essay). I guess I should probably write now about how my essay skills are obviously improving and blah blah blah, but I’m not going to. Mainly due to the fact that my essay writing skills haven’t improved in the slightest, I just bothered to put some effort into this one.

 Annoyingly enough I’m now worried that I would have made the extra 2% and got the first if I had done some minor things slightly differently. Example; Jan wrote that a minor quibble was that I had put my quotes in italics, something whih my girlfriend told me her uni marks her down for if she doesn’t do. Also, I forgot to date the films I mentioned in the first paragraph. I obviously referenced them properly in the bibliography, but I guess I had a good flow going when I was writing, intended to go back and fill in the dates later and then forgot. This was something else that Jan had made a note of. I’d be interested to know who the second marker was. I don’t recognise the signature. Looks like  a “C” at the start, so I guess it could be Claudia? Thing is; whoever it is agreed with Jan that it was a good essay, which is why I think it may no be Claudia- she’s seemed to be slightly off with me ever since I sabotaged her “Media and Identity” board on Media2 with my “What Cyborg” magazine cover. I was about to post that on here, but then realised it was wiped when I gave my Dad my old laptop Ah well.

 I’ve thought some more about my dissertation, and in the light of my essay result, I was thinking of basing it around “images of conflict”, but to make it a bit more relevant to the course I thought I could maybe look at computer games etc rather than just films. Then I thought about looking at the effects debate, as there is always something to write about that. However, I think that topic has pretty much been done to death, and I doubt I could find 10,000 words to write about it. Pluss the whole issue really pisses me off (like the matrix sequels, and pirates of the carribean- don’t get me started), so my essay would probably be rather to opinionated and subjective (something I have been marked down for in the past).

 Also I wanted t maybe base it around Flash, as I am loving it so much at the moment. But I don’t want to end up doing a dissertation on it and killing my passion! It would be like A-Level Media Studies all over again- every trip to the cinema for over 2 years ruined by little voices in my head going “ooh, interesting representation of women”. But then I guess there would be the same risk with computer games. I don’t play them so much anymore, but every so often they are good to relax with, you know, shoot some bad guys and pretend they’re lecturers, so I don’t want to end up sick of games thanks to my dissertation. But then maybe I just have to think about priorities….

 One of which has to be getting a PS3. Played a demo of the new Gran Turismo the other day. Pretty amazing! Shame about the lack of rumble, but I’m sure they’ll get it sorted soon enough. Now if only I weren’t piss poor…

 In other news, I had an awesome Idea for a Flash animation the other day. It’s going to be a 5 episode drama/action type thing , drawing inspiration from games like Max Payne, and films such as Kill Bill, and even more so Sin City. Usually I think something through half way then try to start it, fail due to lack of preparation, then get bored and give up. This time I am properly planning it out and writing the story and script, and experimenting in Flash before I try to do anything that will actually be in the animation. My main problem is that I am fucking awful at animating stuff (lack of patience I think), but I’m gonna really try with this one. To be honest I can see it taking at least a year with what I want to do, which is why I’ve split it into 5 episodes, which will each be about 5 or 6 minutes. That way I can set myself more goals and milestones, and have something to show for my work on a regular basis. Also, it makes for a nice, easy sructure to follow in each episode. Rather than have a sprawling half hour story where you can’t really leave stuff out without confusing people, separate episodes  would be easier to tell the story without having to show everything- you know, you can just briefly tell people what happened in the time between episodes with a quick bit of narration.

 Wow, look at me getting into this blogging thing after all my scepticism.

It’s coz I haven’t been laid now for like…. phew…. a day?

Uni Shizz

WELL, it’s been a while since I wrote anything which is at all relevat to the course, so I guess I probably should do something now. Also this is a good way to procrastinate over tidying my room…

 Well, we’re supposed to have handed in our dissertation proposals by today. However, the dissertation is supposed to be based on one of the media theory options we studied. We haven’t had our marks for the second option back yet, so I don’t want to commit myself to anything before I know which option I did better in.

 This is obviously bollocks, I’m just making a point. If they want us to complete our tasks to a deadline, I think that they should be expected to do the same. Obviously the dissertation proposal isn’t committing you to whatever it is you propose, it’s just an idea of what you want to do, and I know that I will have received a better mark for my second theory option, but that’s not the point.

 Speaking of the theory options and whatnot, I want to apologise to Joe for the dire essay I handed in for participation. The last sentence that he wrote on it when marking was “I know you can do better”. I also know I can, but the thing is that I’m stuck in a habit of doing things last minute, because I know that I can get an alright mark that way. If I actually tried I could probably do quite well, but that’s effort. Therefore I would also like to apologise to Joe (seeing as you’re the only person who seems to read this anyway) about the quality of my “Space” contextual analysis. Now, I did actually spend a few days on that, but for some reason I was at home at the time and didn’t have access to the library. This was my own fault of course.

 Now I got 37% for that essay, harsh but probably fair considering what I know I’m capable of. I tried much, much harder for my second theory option. Sadly it was too little too late for my Space project, and if I get a good mark for it I guess it will be pulled down some by my participation essay, but at least I’ll know that I worked hard on it and it was the best work I’ve done all this year. I actually got a book out of the library, my first this year, so that’s a good sign. I would have got more, but all the others were gone, and this one was only on short loan so I had to scan a load of pages and then take it back the next morning. Luckily it was a compilation of journals so, despite it being only one book, it padded out my bibliography nicely. My girlfriend also found some extracts of other books on the netweb and used those. I referenced properly, I planned it beforehand, I reached the word count… all things I haven’t done for a very long time, so fingers crossed I should get a good mark. Or at least better than I have been getting.

Got a placement sorted, which reminds me- I must tell the placement office and email the company because they still haven’t gotten back to me with the information I asked them for. I think we should have been sent on placement this term. Everything has been voluntary and I’m bored out of my fucking skull. On top of that it means that I have to lose half of my summer to unpaid work which I’ll have to commute to London for every day. Which in turn means that I will have to spend the rest of my summer working full time to make some money. It’s going to literally be my shittest summer ever. But that’s ok, it will all be worth it when I get my TVR

Monkey Scrapers

The kinks are awesome.

Hey hey I’m a monkey.

Well, another three weeks has gone and I figured I should probably write another entry that’s actually relevant to the course. Trying to think of something to do for my online assignment for my theory options. I would have loved to export a scene from The Matrix as jpegs, then turn it into a cartoon in photoshop, but the only program I know of that allows you to export movies as .jpg files is Quicktime 7 and I don’t really want to spend $30 on it, especially at Christmas (gazes sadly at the smoking hole where his student loan used to be). So maybe I’ll do something really inventive like do a flash video using album covers. But then I don’t have the skill or energy to actually animate anything. Hmm.

 Speaking of The Matrix I ended up watching it a total of 5 times last week. Amazing film, I’ve been totally blown away by it all over again! Might watch it again soon in fact. What else have I watched? Blade Trinity, watched that again. Total arse, but enjoyable. Shame though as I actually really liked Blade 2. Got into Spaced recently. Watched a load round a mate’s house then bought the boxset whilst Christmas shopping. Good show. I like it coz I adore films, and all the little references make me smile.  This really isn’t about uni anymore….

Hmm, yeah, I feel that I am progressing not only in my work, but also as a human being. I feel that over the last term I really developed my social and academic skills having worked solo to a deadline and having started a group project. I feel that the last essay really helped me to improve my writing and referencing skills and that in doing so I have made myself into a more complete and productive human being. However, having spent so much time using a computer to do my work, I am concerned that maybe people will start to consider me as a cyborg.

 Back to the real me, and Merry Christmas! I doubt I’ll have anything more to say until we’re into next term.

The Matrix

Watched the Matrix last night. After about 20 minutes I had decided that I was very impressed with the cinematography and mise en scene. I decided to compare it to the sequels, and try to think about what made the first film so good but had been left out of the second and third installments. I eventually came ot the conclusion that it was everything. Every aspect of The Matrix which makes it an amazing film has been omitted from the sequels; good script, good cinematography, tension, humour, enjoyable action scenes. Basically the second film was a CG wank-fest, and in my opinion, the CG was never good enough to justify that. I wasn’t impressed at all by the effects in that film. Obviously the effects in the original already look a bit old, even at the time some of the blue screening was awful, but a lot of them are physical effects and therefore look that bit more believable. The CG in Reloaded was terrible in places. The fight between Neo and all the Agent Smiths was a joke. Third film the story was just arse.

 I’ve always been angry with the sequels based on the fact that they are pointless in terms of their story. In the first film, they quite lclearly set out that “The One” can do whatever he wants within the matrix, and also can not die in the matrix. So why do all the baddies in the sequels try to kill him? He can’t die. Also the fact that he has to fight the agents again because they’re “upgrades”. That doesn’t matter, he is the one. He can do ANYTHING within the matrix. And I have no fucking idea what the twins or the Merovingian were about. I liked the first matrix because you had the world in a simulation. Every one was normal and living out their lives except for the people who had been freed and the Agents who were programs that worked to regulate the matrix. Suddenly in the sequels you have these “naughty programs” who could go invisible, and fly and shape-shift, and they just ruined it I think. It annoyed me, they never should have made the sequels. Written as a trilogy my arse.

 Grr. The first film is king.

This is my attempt at writing a blog. MAAAAH.