Sky Hye Report

Captions have been the bane of my life. They drove me so crazy, I had to take a break and sew for a while. Perhaps this was helpful, because while I was sewing, I thought of a new way to attack them. After getting a couple garments finished, I started back on them. Before, I was attempting to hand write them into the printed manuscript under the illustrations. No room. I tried typing them into a separate document. For some reason, my brain did not let this work. There is something about reading the manuscript, then looking at pictures, then trying to write something about the pictures that simply didn't sync up.

The solution I found was to create a template in Filemaker Pro that allowed me to identify every illustration (there are hundreds) and dictate the captions with Dragon Dictate. Talking about the illustrations was easy. At first I thought I could hand the dictation off to Max and let him work out how they would be referenced in the manuscript. To make everything easy for Max, I printed the captions to display on pages opposite of the manuscript pages with the illustrations -- In other words, every page of the manuscript. With everything all nicely organized, I sat down and looked at my handy work, and realized that I was the best judge for modifying the manuscript. I found it quite easy, although time consuming, to insert changes and improvements, move a few things around, and polish the caption writing. Page by page, I worked through the manuscript until finishing it a few minutes ago. Well, okay, there are a few more pages in the extras sections, but their illustrations are not settled yet. They should not be too much trouble when I am ready to get to them.

With captions and manuscript more resolved than ever, I can now establish and standardize the presentation of the manual. That is what I will dive into the next time I sit down to work. The change will be welcome.

Orthodontic update:
I am still in braces. It's been over three years. There are an unknown number of months to go, yet. The psychological misery around braces subsided when I totally gave up on attempting to speak or grin for long periods at once. I also figured out that I have a sensitivity to the latex in the elastics that must be used. They caused horrible painful raw welts in my cheeks and inflamed my gums wherever they touched. Once I figured this out, I was switched to plastic elastics, which was a big relief. Right now, I am dealing with a hideous sharp bracket that was placed on the tongue side of a tooth last month. It rips at my tongue as I eat. I can't wrap this story up with a string and a bow yet. I'm sure new horrors await, but I agreed to this project and I accept whatever consequences it brings.

So, in case any of my former students still read this journal, I want to assure you that the dvd project is happening. I am making progress as fast as I can, and I cannot do public things around it for a while. I still hope to see it finished this year, but it is starting to look more like not until next year. I can't stop now. It will be finished.

So much time has passed since I last posted. Perhaps this is because I entered a phase in the project that was equivalent to crossing a vast, featureless landscape. Anything I could report would replicate any previous or subsequent report. I deplore monotony, so I've had no desire to subject my readers to it.

Every day, I get up, get breakfast, feed kitties, then sit before the computer and force myself to do something, anything, on the project. This usually entails finding and fixing weak writing, discovering an animation requiring tweaks, fixing animation, followed by adjusting the writing, sending drafts to Max for review and changes, re-recording and placing new voiceovers to reflect changes, having Max watch and listen for inconsistencies and weaknesses, making corrections, re-reading script to find weak writing, and then it starts all over again. Boring, but required.

Over the last month, I've been developing the manual. I must say, it looks quite good. Everything looks good. When people finally see this, I think they will be very impressed... possibly blown away -- drinking from a fire hose blown away.

This work is so grueling, I am extremely vulverable to distractions, and the easiest distractions are from garment design and sewing. I posted a mohair coat concept some time ago... That coat is still not made. I had to think carefully about additional notions, part details, and such, to make it. I finally found all of the parts, so when I am ready to finalize the design, I will be able to go straight to work on construction.

Meanwhile, I have been sewing many of my new designs. I made a vest, three shirts, knit tops, pants, some scarves. Everything fits just right. I'm also working on the "lecture jacket" design. Soon, I'll make a 1/4 scale model of it, so I can examine its overall proportions. Once everything is right, I'll make a muslin mockup in full scale to see what details need to be adjusted. Then I'll make the jacket.

Finally, I have decided to stop resisting the urge to embroider. I have never embroidered, but it seems so closely related to drawing and painting, I expect it to be an easy hobby to take up. I love how embroidery transforms garments into something covet-worthy. I want to design my own image icons, but I suspect I will incorporate some traditional imagery with it. I don't know anything about embroidery yet, but two books are on the way as I write -- after a little study, I'll be able to verbalize this better.

I wish I could report great progress since my last post, but for some reason, three stupid paragraphs have me completely stymied. They transition into the encore section of the dvd. They highlight a new topic/step that follows measuring. They explain how this topic is distinct from measuring. They tease that measuring is a mere tidbit in a full course of study. One of these days I will finalize this [under 2 minute] speech. What a relief that will be. Meanwhile, I breezed through several entirely new and illuminating animations that support the encore section. It is an important ending. It must be right. I only wish I could be a better writer.

It does seem like I am on the home stretch with my braces. My bite is getting closer and closer. Perhaps I will be done in a month.

This is to illustrate how one might imagine the nose as transparent like glass,
so the location of the eye corner can be estimated.

The portrait section continues to be very painful to work on. Very nit-picky! Sometimes all I can do to sit in front of it and wait for inspiration to strike. I do something every day, even if it is just plain bland. Eventually I will be past this. All downhill from there. No doubt about that!

I'm working hard over here. This is a tidbit from this week's timeline:




As with previous tidbits, this is all rough placed and subject to lots of revision. The voiceover is placeholder quality, only.

I'm very slowly examining my newly installed software. The first thing I see is that several of my final cut files are incompatible with the new version, so it appears I must rebuild certain things from scratch. Perhaps that was going to happen anyway, as I am now in a position to replace much of the rough placed material with final quality stuff.

I mentioned how excited I was that Second Life is about to introduce mesh import. Unfortunately, however, I won't be able to play with any of that for the time being -- the beta viewer for mesh crashes every time I start it up.

I just wrote a nice long post and then clicked a link from the editing page, came back, and my post was gone. <poof>
Too much work to write it again.
It was more of the same from the last post.
I may do some home remodeling for a week or two. Not sure.
Finishing the dvd by late spring 2011 is beginning to look iffy.

Things are settled down again, since Max's return. One of his sailing friends wrote up an interview, found here.

I've been working, of course. That's as it should be. Getting the new computer is delayed until some accessories for it come out next month. I also need to know more about the new version of final cut pro, coming out soon, before I can determine how much computing power I can actually use. No need to buy the most expensive machine, if the software can't use the power.

I've been rewriting the script in the head and portrait segment of the dvd. To better compose the wording, I created the visuals for it over the past week. I'm liking the results. Here are a few images from the process...

I can't seem to embed images from flickr at this time, so I am using links for now:
It was fun building this simple wrap with elastic top and draping it to the model. The wrap was built in Silo and the draping was achieved in Poser 7's Cloth Room.

I built construction line models in Silo and placed them in Poser, attaching them to the model. Shown here is the external contour center line of the face. The model is a morph I created in Silo from the Poser character, Sydney.

In this image: Using the Sketch render feature in Poser 7, I attempted to give an egg volume any amount of transparency to reveal the center line inside, but doing so created a bizarre artifact within -- that imagery inside the egg on the right is the figures and objects in the scene whose visibilities were turned off! Their orientation did not reflect their positions in the scene, either. No tinkering resolved the bug, but the resulting renders were fascinating! The left egg has 0% transparency.

Um, it's a little disconcerting, regarding Max. A few days ago, he told me he cut his foot on something and was concerned about keeping it dry during the sail home. He'll be sailing back singlehanded, just like the race. Then two days ago, he called again to say the cut became infected. He saw the doctor and received antibiotics. Now he's hoping everything is under control for the trip home, starting tomorrow, even though it's not actually all better yet. A group will depart tomorrow (Wednesday) and they will track their progress in the forum. When I expressed concern about his infected foot on the phone today, he scoffed at me. Then he admitted it was worth concern. He sounded strange. I can't figure out why he seems so remote. He wasn't remote at all before.

Meanwhile, my project progresses. My pal, Thohi is contributing a musical composition for the opening section, and oh boy, it's sounding great!

And one other nice piece of news... My dear kitty, Aaron, was not well for the longest time after we brought him home as a 7 month old kitten. I'm not sure what made him most unwell -- having feline Corona virus, Giardia, or later, a tapeworm, but he simply wasn't able to handle food well. He was plagued with diarrhea over the last year. Very little food sat well with him. Slowly, one at a time, we took care of each issue. Wonderful Aaron is finally well. He is sooooo happy! It makes _me_ happy to see him relaxed and happy and eating a variety of foods without problems.

-

We're having our first heat wave of the year. I have air conditioning for my computer room, but I detest the sound of its fan. When the room is warm like today, the computer gets hot within only a couple of minutes when I work in Motion. I may decide to work on remodeling jobs around the house during these heat waves. I hate the delay, but I hate the sound of my air conditioner even more.

Here are two new segments of the artist training dvd I am making, and as usual, these are all rough-ins and voice overs are low quality placeholder, only. Everything is subject to change. I'm using Motion, a part of Final Cut Studio, to build these animations from still renders, captured in Poser 7.

Flickr makes me limit access to things containing modest frontal nudity. I have no idea whether A] you can see this first one, as a result, or B] this needs to be age restricted here on DW. It seems completely tame to me, so I depend on someone else's judgment as to whether this is lewd.

In this example, you can see how the overlay elements can be moved together or separately, as needed. Very convenient.


In this example, you can see a nifty feature I added which literally draws lines from the pencil tip as I move the hand across the paper. Very convenient. The different line weights of the two short marks will be equal in the final version. The low quality render here makes them look different.

I am working with an aging computer. It was a top of the line machine when I bought it for my dvd project. Work was always painful on this machine because of Poser 7. When I originally bought my computer, frame render speed was what it was -- too slow for comfort -- but there was nothing faster on the personal computer market. Poser's bugs drove me nuts, but I couldn't get tech support to fix them, even while acknowledging they existed. The Poser bugs were blatant, not esoteric, but no, they wouldn't get around to fixing those! When Poser 8 came out, I bought it and found it very, very slow on my aging machine. Version 7 is faster. All of the software products I use have much needed updates now, but these will not function properly [or at all] on my aging machine. Even Second Life is reaching a point where I can barely use its most primitive viewer. Its version 2 viewers and all third party viewers are not supported by my clunker's architecture.

I have been waiting for the imminent release of the [several generations later] refresh for my computer much too long. It's been due for months. I can't stand Poser 7 anymore. I can't stand how slow my machine is when I render frames. I can't stand the way it heats up when I attempt render intensive activities of any sort. A few weeks ago, I decided to wait on animation and work only on other parts of my project, but that's not a lot -- mostly just rewriting, and that's nearly done now. Like so many professional users, I am anxiously checking rumor sites for news of an anticipated release date. The latest rumor sets its arrival anywhere from late June or July to October! Yikes! October? This is very out-of-character for this machine's refresh schedule. It's already overdue.

My original anticipated video completion date of early 2011 is beginning to look iffy. The original estimation was based on a belief that I would be using a new, much faster machine with improved software by now. Now it seems I may not finish until mid 2011, maybe later.

-

Here's the news: I just finished all rough placement of my initial voice over and animation for the section on parallax in my measuring dvd. This is major. This section is the crux of the entire video. Throughout the dvd, discussion will return to issues covered in this section: a) the point of view, b) the imaginary projection plane, and c) parallax. As rough placement, I am very satisfied. I can see all of the necessary elements in place. The script is almost completely tweaked, with just a few foreseeable changes to come.

I'm thinking it's time to try out final [quality] voice over recording. I will likely redo final voice over more than once, but now is a good time to bring out the expensive mic and recorder and run some tests. I want to decide what voice over style/standard I want to employ. Should it be casual, official, gentle, perky, argumentative? A blend? It'll be good to record samplers and get feedback from friends. I'll post here when I have something.

So, to sum it up, things are feeling optimistic today. I should celebrate!
-