Finally Free Time

So after a very boring one week long landscaping job I'm finally free to do whatever I want, which means I can start working on things. I'm currently in the midst of writing a script for out next short which will hopefully get filmed some time this week. I hope to have it all done by Saturday, but it depends on my friends schedules and whether or not they feel like it. It's a bit frustrating working with them at times, but whatever, moving on. I've got a lot of ideas ready for when we start making horror shorts, so as soon as we can meet up with our director we'll be able to get that started, which I'm really excited about. I've never tried making/acting in any horror shorts before, so it'll be a totally new experience for me. I feel like it will help my abilities grow and make me better at what I do. Unfortunately I haven't really started any art projects, or any projects in general lately. I haven't even really had time to be on my blog, but now that I have more time you can expect that to change. I'm going to try and update this more, and be able to show more projects instead of just talking about them. That's all for today, I hope I'll have more to say next time.

Planning Next Video

Hello everyone, I'd like to start by thanking you for your comments the other day, they were about what I had expected them to be, as I've said before I didn't expect too much out of this video. Moving on

So, I have a pretty good idea about what our next video will be (there's about 3 different ideas we could do) so it's just a matter of getting everyone together and deciding which one we want to do. I hope to have it decided by tomorrow so that we can film it sometime next week. Although due to work we may not be able to film it until next Friday, if that's the case then I'll probably actually have time to write a script for it instead of us just improving the whole thing. Hopefully this one will turn out better than the last. That's about all for today, thanks for stopping by.

New Video: Straight Shooters

So, after a few days of fumbling around on a few programs and figuring everything out, I finally got this video done.  In the future it won't take me nearly as long to finish these since I've got everything set up for next time.  Now onto my opening thoughts, I had this video done yesterday and was seriously considering not uploading it at all, watching it over and over again had made it stale and to be honest I don't even know if it's that funny.  But I finally decided to just go ahead and do it, if people like it, good, if not, lesson learned and I'll try something else.  I don't claim to be a master at this yet, I'm still learning how to take things I think are funny and portray them well in video form.  With that being said, here's the video.



So, what I'm interested in is your thoughts on the video, what did you like?  What could we make better?  Etc.  Well that's all, thanks for stopping by.

Rendering Issues, Also Good News

So, the video that I'm currently editing is the first video with my new camera, as expected I've run into some issues with rendering.  I'm still trying to figure it all out, so hopefully by tomorrow it will be released, I'll be making a blog post for it as soon as it's done.  Now time for the good news, our CreepypastaTV is coming along nicely, we should be meeting early next week to discuss what videos we want to start with and how we want to go about making it all.  We've recruited one more actor to help fill some roles and we have some contacts for finding locations to film.  I've got a pretty good feeling about all this, so hopefully it will all work out nicely.  That's about all I have to report for now, this week is pretty busy for me so I may not be able to update this much.  See you all soon.

New Vid Update, Possible Series Coming

Yeah, so this is kind of ridiculous, I'm not sure if I should just keep the footage I have (poorly filmed) or try and get people together to re film it.  It's taking much longer than it should considering it's really not too good, or long or complicated or anything really.  Speaking of all that stuff, I'm thinking of starting a series, it would be sort of a continuation of this video which I made for a school project, but I really like.  When I made that video, I had to really push myself and try my best to get good results, and I liked that.  With this recent video I dunno, I just don't feel as proud of it as Hardly Heroes.  So I think I'd like to take the concept of it and turn it into a mini series or something.  It would be good for both me and my crew that I make films with.  Since it is more complicated it demands much more complex acting, special effects and script writing, something we all need to improve on.  Not only that, but it would get us back into the mind set of "ok, we're filming regularly now" as opposed to how we currently are (everyone's really neutral on the idea, not a whole lot of motivation from the team).  I discussed this with one of the members earlier today and got mixed feelings from it, but I really feel like pushing for this, it would help us evolve as a group and become slightly more professional.  That's all I really expect at this point in time, improvement, while I'd like to make it big as fast as possible, I know that it isn't very likely to happen any time soon.  However, I really want to try and make this series something that people will enjoy to watch.  That being said, I'd like to get some opinions from you guys.

In a universe similar to this what kind of super powers would you like to see?  What kind of heroes and villains spark your interests?  And if you have any suggestions, please, please leave them bellow.  I want to make these as good as possible, and any input I can get will help tremendously.  Thank you.

Short in the Works

So we wound up being able to film the other day, although I had my friend on camera duty and he didn't do too good of a job (my head is cut off a few times) but it's not too big of a deal.  It's pretty short, only a minute or two long, not sure how funny it really is yet since I haven't finished it, but we had a good time filming it.  I probably won't be able to edit it until Monday since I have a lot to do this weekend, but it should only take an hour or two to get done.  Sorry for the short update today, I'm actually typing this at 3 in the morning before I go to bed because I'm not sure if I'll have time to type something up when I wake up.  Hopefully I'll have something more to report tomorrow, until then, thanks for stopping by.

Intuos4

So yesterday I finally decided on which tablet to get.  I went with the Intuos4, I had to spend a little bit more money but I think it was worth it.  I've done a few sketches on my computer with it and I must say it really is like drawing on paper.  The buttons on the side are convenient and easy to use, it even has a function to help you zoom in and out while drawing, which is really nice.  I got the medium, but I can't imagine me needed anything bigger, it takes up a good amount of space and the active area is big enough for me to comfortably draw about anything on it.

In other news, I'm supposed to be filming a short today, but due to lack of communication and a storm hitting out of nowhere, that may not happen.  This weekend is pretty busy for me, so if I don't film today, the earliest I will be able to film is Monday.  Well that's all for now, thanks for stopping by.

New Camera: JVC Everio GZHD3

Hey everyone, so yesterday I went out shopping for cameras, after a few hours and looking at a few different Best Buys I decided to swing by a local pawn shop.  At first their camera selection looked dull, most of them were non HD Sony Handy Cams.  Then I laid my eyes upon this

This is the JVC Everio HZHD3.  It shoots in 1440x1080 HD, has 10x optical zoom (up to 200x digital), optical image stabilization and shoots up to 7 hours of HD.  On top of that, it seemed brand new, I tested it out for a bit and it all worked fine.  It came with all the original equipment and everything.  It was price at $449, which was cheaper than the other camera I had already planned on buying.  So without checking the price at other locations I decided to go ahead and buy it.  Not really a smart move, but it turns out this camera is valued at $979.99 on Amazon, so I wound up getting a really good deal.

I feel like this was a really good investment, and it's definitely an upgrade from my old FlipCam.  I plan on making a short comedy sketch this Friday, but it may be delayed so no promises.  Also something to look forward to, I'm planning a meeting with a friend of mine who's a Junior year Film Student who's going to be directing our CreepypastaTV soon.  So hopefully that project will be kicked off within a week or so.  That's all for today, thanks for stopping by.

Current Animation Project

So recently I've been working on a short animation.  It's called Ragnar Danes: Space Warrior, as you can gather from the title it's a space themed adventure.  The main character, Ragnar Danes, was based partially on Zapp Brannigan from Futurama with some major alterations.  He has Zapps incompetence, stupidity and overall cruelness to his crew; while on the other hand he does actually know how to fight, and no he isn't a sexual deviant.  His first mate and pilot is named McQuirck who serves as the logical yet apathetic sidekick in this adventure.  The first episode is mainly dialogue between the two, which I feel does a really nice job showing their relationships.  It will be about 3 minutes long and I plan to turn it into a short series if it does well (or at least ok).  I had a lot of fun writing the script and the characters I want to introduce in later episodes are great additions.  It should be done in a few weeks, all of the voices are recorded, the characters are made, and most of the sets are done.

This is the sketch I drew a few weeks ago that gave me inspiration to make it.  This is basically what the characters look like (only colored, so they look much prettier).

If you want to see some of my previous animations, you can check them out here

Where I Stand on Art

So I thought it would be good to start this off with a little showcase of my current skills on art.  I recently got accepted into a Fine Arts major for college so my skills will be greatly improving come the school year.  I don't consider myself particularly good at art, but I think it would be fun to see my skills in drawing and illustration progress.  So here are a few of my favorite pieces of art that I've done.

So, this is a drawing I did for an elementary school walking club, long story but it's a Cougar riding a Flying Pig.  They put it on their shirts, it was pretty cool.  This was the first time I had ever drawn a pig, so I feel like I did a decent job here.

I call this one Quincy Gearbottom.  He came about because I wanted to draw a robot who was also a gentlemen.  Originally he was going to be fighting a bear, but I got lazy.  This was made in Flash CS3 and Photoshop Elements.  Took me about an hour to draw and two hours to complete on the computer.

So this is some fan art that I did for the game Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time.  This is Link fighting Volvagia, the boss of the Fire Temple.  I can't tell if I actually like this one or not, but I figured I'd post it anyways.  This took me about four hours to draw and two hours to color and two hours to finish up in photoshop.

These are some characters I made for an animation I got too lazy to finish.  I like their chibi look which was going to clash with their mindless semi adult humor.  Maybe I'll finish it someday, these were all made in Flash CS3.

So those show what my current skills are pretty well, I've been drawing for five years now, I've never taken any formal art classes outside of art class way back in elementary school and I've never really drawn anything outside of a cartoon universe.  I'd really like to improve my skills and ideally be able to draw realistic pieces.  On top of that I've been contemplating buying a Tablet to make drawing on the computer easier.  I'm debating between a Wacom Bamboo Fun Tablet:

1024 levels of sensitivity, 8.4" x 5.4" active area, $199

or the Intuos4 Medium Tablet:

2048 levels of sensitivity, 8.8" x 5.5" active area, programmable buttons to switch between programs, 60 degree pen tilt range. $349

The Intuos4 definitely seems like the better buy, but what I'm wondering is if it's worth and extra $150.  If any of you guys have any experience with either of these let me know if it's worth the extra money.  That's all for today, thanks for stopping by.

The Point of This Blog

Hey all, this blog will kind of be tracking my personal progress on my quest to making it in the entertainment industry.  I have always wanted to make a career out of videos and animations, but have never really legitimately tried.  Now that I am, I figured it would be nice to have a blog to share my progress with people and get their feedback.  I plan to release one comedy short a week, and soon I'm starting a project with some friends to convert creepypasta into videos.  I have a few videos and animations already made, I'll post a link to my YouTube and Newgrounds at the end of this so you can check them out if you'd like.  Some constructive criticism would be nice as I'd like my abilities to improve with each new release.  I'm also going to use this blog as a sort of comedy outlet, I'll try and post some humorous stories of my life, or anything funny that I think is worth writing about.  I hope to update this at least 3 times a week, so be sure to check back regularly.  It's my hope that you'll enjoy reading at watching my material as much as I love creating it.

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/DiscreteError
Newgrounds: http://sunaminot.newgrounds.com/