Wednesday: went to a writing group at Palio (in Ladd's Addition) with G. Three of us, three 10-minute stream-of-consciousness exercises. I like it generally: very "zen with a pen", to coin a phrase. But it could get old kinda quickly, too.

It was G's & my 11th luniversary, so I made her a card and we lit saved-up fireworks in the driveway. Morning Glories, which look like Godzilla sparklers, rule! We saved two for New Years. Wanted to go on a bigger date, but G wasn't going to be able to feel comfortable, what with the movie hanging over my head. Of course, that was the day I figured out that I'm not going to get the movie done in time for this year's fest. ...If only I'd figured that out a day earlier!

Thursday: went to see "Monster Road" at the Clinton Street Theater with G & Leopoldo. It was a documentary about Bruce Bickford, a psychedelic clay animator loosely connected to Frank Zappa. ...Turned out to be about the broken psyches of a very disturbed family. Well done for what it was, but not what I was expecting. Sorry to say I can't really recommend it, nor that I "enjoyed" it.

[Oh, but I did manage to throw a clog in the cogs of Leopoldo's brain afterwards with this one: "Is Sam Raimi the American Peter Jackson?" After all: both cut their teeth on horror films, then recently got these big budget contracts (Spiderman, Lord of the Rings).]

Friday (today): Explored VoodooPad, and how to publish to the web with it. I've been thinking about putting up a website about the movie... G & I watched another episode of Buffy season 6 with lunch. (Meh, meh, meh!) I made home-made mac'n'cheese, which carb-comatized us into a nap...

...That messed up the day pretty good, but we ended it well -- we watched Spiderman I, in anticipation of going to Spiderman II next week. I made caramel sauce from scratch and poured it over popcorn. Yowza!

The neighborhood girls have formed a yard work company now. G gave them $12 for assorted weed'n'seed work in the bark dust areas. ...Tomorrow the carpenter who built our stairs -- who built them badly -- comes back to fix them. The landlord's voice has signs of irritation. Feeling increasingly nervous about him. Not good.

Lovecraft update: Dammit! Dammit! I can't finish it this year!

Even with the new submissions deadline on Aug 1 instead of July 20, I now see that I'm not going to be able to finish my movie in time. Not without killing myself, that is. Comments and condolences from my regulars very welcome.

I am disappointed. I've worked really hard on this project. I feel bad for the people who've been helping me on this, like I'm letting them down. ...I know that's not fair -- that no one's really going to feel mad at me -- but you can understand the slight sense of guilt.

Dammit.

Nonetheless, I'm proud of what I've accomplished so far. I WILL finish this project -- but on a more sane schedule, now. Let me show you the latest test shots and tell you how I arrived at this hard decision...


Ice cave #1: color test with Elder Thing and lavaman


Ice cave #2: side wall


Ice cave #3: looking back at entrance into hive


Ice cave #4: lavaman by entrance into hive

OK... So, I decided to go with a blue-green pallete for the cave. It makes the lavamen really stand out. It sort of suggests ice (though some of these shots are a little too green). It keeps with my notion of a "Neon Gothic" visual style. Since things are beginning to lean in the direction of psychedelic colors, I needn't worry *as* much about lighting sources -- the setting is inherently bizarre. Maybe it's ice, with light from outside somehow filtering down through...

I got these great colors by sending my LightWave footage through PhotoShop. That's not as bad as it sounds, work-wise. Everything inside of the cave does involve LightWave -- but not that many shots actually involve movement. Mostly, all I need to do is render out a still shot and tweak it. For shots where there *is* animation, I can create an "action" in Photoshop, and batch process the image sequences rendered out of LightWave.

Here's where I really came to realize what kind of trouble I was in...


Ice cave #5: lavamen walking through hive

What's wrong with this picture? The critters aren't big enough -- they should be 9 feet tall, relative to the lavamen. There aren't enough critters -- they should be much more clustered. And look: the lavaman is stepping on a tentacle.

That last one is a real killer. See, it's a plot point that stepping on a tentacle brings down the wrath of the creatures. If the lavamen walk over the tentacles willy-nilly all through the story, then there's no oomf. Translation: I need to have several versions of the critter model, with tentacles in different positions, and I need to take great care in placing them, to make sure that there's a clear path when we see the lavamen's feet.

Oh, but assembling several versions of the critters is not the worst part.

***Begin technobabble complaint***

See, the thing that is going to take way more time than I imagined, is arranging the sets and putting the camera in place. I have my animatic files, and I had thought that I'd just be able to replace the stand-ins with the final cave and critter models. Can't do it. See, there's a significant amount of tweaking that's going to have to happen in order to get a good composit of the lavamen and my new sets...

...And it takes a full minute to render that frame that you see above (Ice cave #5). When you're tweaking things by small amounts, that rendering time is going to add up. You'd think I could render the models in wireframe mode. It's harder to interpret, but you can rough things out that way. BUT, you can't superimpose the lavamen in the frame to check their placement, if you do that!

See, there are two ways to get the lavamen (which are created in After Effects, but can be sent to PhotoShop) into LightWave. One: you can open up the "composit" tab and use a still shot from photoshop as a "foreground" element. Two: you can create a 2-dimensional rectangle that hovers in front of the camera at all times, use the still shot of the lavamen as its surface texture, then give that object 50% opacity so you can see through it. BUT, both of these effects are only available when you render out a frame at full resolution -- so wireframes do no good!

Ultimately, rather than an elegant solution (where I'm able to bring the lavamen into LightWave), the simplest solution seems to be to use trial and error, rendering out shots (perhaps in smaller sizes?) and testing the lavamen's positioning in Photoshop (where the lavamen are a separate layer). Eyeballing it, basically.

[The other ultra-low tech solution I'm contemplating is to print out shots of the lavamen at the appropriate size, and then just holding them up to the screen. Buh!]

***End technobabble complaint***

Put in plain English: every shot in the film is going to require a lot of individualized attention. My estimate is that the easiest shots at this stage in the process will take 30 min, and difficult ones could take 3 hours. It's like I climbed to the crest of a mountain, only to discover that its real top is a few more miles up.

So, in addition to rendering my background stills, here are the other big bits left to go...

The critter models are close, but they're not done yet. I haven't experimented with the eyes yet -- which worries me. I haven't done any of the actual 3D animation shots yet. I'd be foolish at this point to think that they'll be a breeze. And then there's sound, which hasn't even been begun yet. Putting together music is bad enough -- I think I can do that -- but Foley work worries the heck out of me. ...That's a lot of walking through snow / gravel to record and sync!

...

So here I am. Admitting defeat. I'll get it done -- but not in time for this fest. (Dammit.)

...

Option to consider: taking a few shots from the film, and turning them into a "Welcome to the H.P. Lovecraft FilmFest" clip. It'd be nice to have something in the fest, even if it was short... And it would serve as a sort of advertisement for what's to come next year.

I'll give myself a day or two to recoup morale, then give this option some serious consideration.

Ee! Ee! Ee! New concept for how the cave interiors will look!


Neon-Gothic Cave Interior

I think I've got the cave texture mostly licked. Then I was tussling with the problem of how to make the critters stand out against the backdrop when everything is so dark, when... I decided to stick a muddy still in Photoshop. A bit of contrast and a lot of saturation later: Ee! Ee! Ee!

I'm not 100% decided on using this look -- but it sure goes well with the whole "Neon Gothic" concept I've been going after!

Significant news: the H.P. Lovecraft Film Fest deadline for submissions has been moved to August 1!

That doesn't immediately mean that I can slack off -- still need to keep up the pace. Significant news, nonetheless. Less stress if I discover that the animation or soundtrack are wuppin' my ass.

Also: the fest will be held on Oct 1-2-3 this year. Mark your calendars now!

A laid back July 4th. My main event: making two batches of pop-overs. I figure, "hey, what an ideal July 4th food!" Yummy hot, with honey, or our homegrown rasberry sauce. Shared some both with J and G's Michael.

Addendum: How could I forget to mention the fireworks?? G & I went over to Michael's -- which is a 24 story highrise! We went up to the roof... Very crowded (stupid drunks...), but excellent view. I've been hearing about this for a year, so I'm happy to have got to have seen it. The fireworks over PGE Park were way cool, since we were looking down on them. And the "sprites" (or was it "pixies"?) that G had described, were indeed magical. My only disappointment was that Portland's main fireworks show, over the Willamette, was occluded by buildings. Not to worry -- we can see that next year. Neat to see these things from many angles! :-) End addendum.

G got her hair cut Saturday, and is to die for. Ohmigod she's so cute!!

I've been thinking that it's time to start expanding my circle of friends again. Or, that is, again but *intentionally* really for the the first time. Saw an interesting ad on Craigslist, that sounded like it could be a friendship at least (which is probably all that I'm looking for). But they weren't going to waste time on someone who's openly poly. Ouch. ...Well, I knew when I got into this that a "you are not my property" philosophy wasn't going to buy me any popularity. Restrategizing.

The upside -- and yes, I put the "Pollyanna" back around "poly" -- is that our incredibly brief correspondence prompted me to write a short description of the movie:

"An Antarctic avalanche uncovers a cave. Two hapless explorers enter and discover a nest of ancient alien creatures. Are they actually dead? No! Of course not! ...Oh, horrible, horrible, fate..."

Oh, hey: remember how we lost our mailbox key and had to go through trauma to get a new one made? It finally turned up. Inside a sock... Buh?!