I have been very busy the past couple weeks, unfortunately not on my personal animation. On slow weeks such as this, rather than trying to stretch out a few scattered drawings, I will go into the techniques I am using to make the film. First I’d like to go over a recent addition to Photoshop, the timeline. It seemed rather odd to add a timeline but looking at the whole scope of Adobe’s product line, Photoshop is fast becoming the hub of Adobe’s catalog. The program you need to get any type of media done, which makes sense, the essential element of any piece of a graphic, film or software is the layout of the frame.
Down to the basics, why not Flash or After Effects?
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Image courtesy of broadstreetministry.org
I would like to pause for a moment and share a small portion of the health-care “town hall” debate that took place yesterday at Broad Street Ministry. Reverend Bill Golderer hosted and moderated the debate, which filled the entire church and spilled over into the streets. The center of the debate was featured speaker Joe Sestak, a freshman Congressman representing Pennsylvania’s 7th district and retired United States Navy Rear Admiral. For more information on Rep. Sestak take a look at his biography on Wikipedia. The forum had an unusual feel not only for the church but the tone of the debate deviated from the vitriolic shouting matches seen on the news of late.
The sanctuary, at capacity.
Broad Street Ministry is no stranger to difficult social and political issues. The ministry has held a number of forums in the past few years on topics ranging from prison conditions to religion in politics. Even more important are the weekly programs of the church, which address the fundamental problems of society simply by bringing citizens together from all walks of life. At times it seems singular goal is to bring people together and for good reason all of their work is made easier with common understanding. It is no surprise then to see the health-care debate at church but to see the sanctuary filled with attentive listeners unfamiliar with the unique atmosphere of Broad Street was truly inspiring. It is an atmosphere I cannot do justice by explanation. To understand the church and Rev. Golderer I recommend attending a service whether you are religious or not. Continue reading »
This update is the first weekly update on my short film “Relax.” Whether I will update once a week remains to be seen, but setting the goal is a good start.
Above is the construction of first shot from the film. The film will open on a black screen with the sounds of the city in the background then cut up from black to the main character stepping forward. The image shows the first and second steps in the process, layout and rough animation.
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It is a tradition around here that I redesign my website every couple of months because I can’t stand whatever insane overly complex design I come up with for more than a week or two. I update the ugly, usually dark, page for a month and then give up. But this time I am trying something different. I stripped down the site to the bare essentials. Also I changed the location of the site as staying with wjkrape.com would have been a bad idea. Having a SEO friendly url isn’t too tricky when you have a unique name. If you can have your firstnamelastname.com do so.
Much of the old content is unavailable, it’ll be fixed as I go, but more importantly I’ll be adding a significant amount of content related to my animated short in development, “Relax.”
I made this simple site to host all my thoughts on my upcoming film(s hopefully.) Not everything I post in the coming weeks will be well written but it will feature some smashing images.
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The sanctuary, at capacity.
