And We're Live In Three....Two....

In a perfect world, this is where I'd fill in one sentence to stand in as the body of my blog, and leave the rest of you, oh dear sparse and few readers and spammers copious and plenty, riding the edges of your seats. What is he going to say next? He left off at two...what happened to one?? What happens when he gets to one??? Will there be prizes, and damned if I should submit....pie?!?!?

In a perfect world, you would be doing that, instead of reading this.

In a perfect world, there would be rainbows and kittens and bunnies.

In a perfect world, I would have seventeen ho-jillion dollars, and an army of robotic sex slave concubines that are capable of dominating the world for me while simultaneously delivering ice cream and massages to me every six seconds.

This is not a perfect world.

But hey, not that I'm complaining. As I write this, I'm currently sitting deep within the bowels of the concrete, metal, shitstained beast they call Brooklyn, New York. I'm a twenty minute subway ride from the heart of Manhattan, bar none one of the greatest cities in existence. There's gatorade in my fridge. There's a grocery within pissing distance of my apartment. There's a broken down car in front of my apartment building. And I have no bed.

Its like I'm living one of the best damned dreams ever.

God bless grad school.
Also, god bless debt.

But hey, its not a perfect world.


In other not completely unrelated news, rabid ferrets have invaded my apartment and are trying desperately to sell me life insurance.
Actually that's a lie, that's not as unrelated as you'd think.

But I've got one big project coming up. This one's on delivery courtesy of CADA at the NYU SChool of Continuing and Professional Studies. Chances are it'll fuse a lot of AfterEffects, and a little bit of Photoshop.

THe problem here is, of course that I barely know anything about AfterEffects. I'm like a toddler, who's had new feet surgically implanted onto his ankles. I don't know much about what I'm supposed to do.

I was however, asked to come up with some ideas for projects that I could do.

Some thoughts thus far:

STYLE: Horror
TECHNIQUE: Blending effects and filters, with strong emphasis on composition in general.

Using these tools, I'll attempt to create in motion one of my favorite ambiances that I have been creating for so long in stills: that of the horrific. The fusion of metal and flesh, the horrors of death, the horrors of life, all the things surreal and terrible that place us on edge.

STYLE: Punk/Rebel
TECHNIQUE: Rotoscoping and that neat line-drawing/scrawling effect that everyone and their mother uses.

Lots of moving around is planned, and heavy emphasis on aspects of punk/rebel culture will be used to portray the feeling. Expect graffiti, tattoos, mohawks, and kids that have bad attitudes. Or at least look like they do.

STYLE: Nu-Medieval
TECHNIQUE: Streamlined motion, 2d image layering, lights and other solid effects

A style of medieval that merges the ancient with aspects of modern design and technology that I dreamed up one day is going to be the focus of this one. It will celebrate a culture that has no gunpowder, has standardized bioengineering and has fused the primitive and the advanced that will hopefully be described as beautiful anachronistic.

In other words, I have barely any idea what I'm doing. I've been tooling around with AfterEffects for about two, going into my third week now, and I still have a whole metric fuckton to learn. I'd be more confident about taking on this project if I knew more. In a perfect world, I'd know AfterEffects like the back of my hand, and I'd have some storyboards by now.

But this is not a perfect world.