On track so far

I'm making progress with the "Soulmates in Peril" video. Although the Dungeons of Desire prop didn't work out since it was made for more still images and wasn't very animation friendly. I switched to demons as the villains and used a more illustrated frame of reference having them jump in and out of a book. I finished the scene where Belle is summoned to kidnap one of the soulmates and she twirls up out of a blackened rose and grabs the gal then twirls back down to escape.

Next I'll have a chase where the guy is after Belle to rescue the gal, that's always thrilling and romantic. I was thinking that if I shot some live footage on the Butte Campus of the guy asking someone if they had seen Belle that would be really cool to composite the animation with it. I could composite some other landscape scenes that they could chase across also.



I still have to come up with an ending though. I figure it'll have to be a showdown with the demon over the Purple Rose, that'll force a choice between saving the gal and giving up the powers to those with evil intentions. I want to have it come down to something like in The Mummy Returns where Evie risks her life for her man and the other gal decides to leave her guy to save her own life

I can use the greed for the Purple Rose against them. The difference between the Heroes and the Villains is that the hero will sacrifice themselves for the greater good and the Villains will betray each other for selfish purposes.

So when the demon is trying to blackmail him to give up the Purple Rose in order to save her, he chooses his love for her instead of the risk of what could happen if they Rose fell into the wrong hands.

But when the demon gets it then Belle will betray him in order to grab the power of the Rose. That will give her the opportunity to defeat Belle and for him get the Purple Rose back.

That's the kind of thing I had in mind to show the love beween the soulmates, since people who care about each other can cooperate better and use teamwork to accomplish things they couldn't on their own. Selfish people are only concerned with themselves and compete with others to make sure everyone else loses while only they win.

It's a good example of the Atman Project that the Heroes will choose ego death to transcend the substitute sacrifice and go beyond the boundaries for those they love to include a greater realm. The Villains will hold onto the solid ego and choose defeat rather than let go of the selfish desires of the symbolic substute.

So after they chase across the live footage they can arrive back at the Demon Altar, where Belle has the gal strapped to the table for a sacrifice and the Demon has a knife at her throat. The demon demands the Purple Rose and the guy demands that they let her go before he gives it to them. The demon releases her and he hands the Rose over to him. Belle runs a sword through the Demon to grab the Rose and then the gal grabs a spear to fight Belle and defeats her while the guy grabs the Rose back.

A day late and a dollar short

I didn't make it again before the semester started, I only got the part at the Temple with Zakita written before I hit the wall of Writers Block. I'm not sure now if I'll have enough time to finish Chapter 4 with all the workload I've got now.

Dan seems serious this time with all the assignments and projects for the Mural and Portfolio classes. It's probably a good thing since I really need to make more progress on getting a more professional looking portfolio together than employers will take seriously. Plus getting an opportunity to get my work displayed on something that will get noticed like walls, doors and billboards is a good way to impress people that would hire me. I have to do some research on where a good place to put a mural is in Oroville, a building or something. So all that is going to take a lot of time, effort and energy and I'm not sure I'll have any to spare.

In addition I have to do all the videos which will take even more time. I have some ideas for the 1st one that I'm getting together. I wanted to take more care in getting the storyboard more detailed with a more complex story that includes more elements like motion graphics, live footage and 3D animation, integrated in a better way.

I wanted to do a romantic comedy as something for our anniversary and valentines day so I've been thinking of something along those lines. I saw this video on YouTube that looked pretty funny.




I liked the sense of adventure and thrills it had in it, I was thinking I could do something like that with our soulmates from the Because you Loved Me video jumping in and out of comic books. That way it would be like that video Are you Real? I saw that was mixing different frames of reference between video games, live footage and virtual reality.

I could have the soulmates battling in a 2D comic book setting with motion graphic sound effect balloons, then in live footage of a movie and in a video game setting, maybe even a pirate scene where they dance the tango to Hernando's Hideaway like in this video.



Maybe they can pull a Tron and go into a computer circuit board or do something with a NASA rocket. I still need to think of a good plot for them to follow, but that's a good framework of the storyline to at least let me get started on the storyboard for it.

I could use that Dungeons of Desire room and have the Spider gal as the villian. She covets the The Purple Rose of Cairo that the soulmates have since it has mystical powers. She sends some of her guards of her guards to steal it and when they can't find it, they kidnap one of the soulmates and the other has to rescue her. That leads to the chase across the frames of reference.

I had another idea that would make a good PSA, I could do different lyrics and situations to the tune of Because I got High like in this video





I could do something like the assembly robots getting high or the Playboy Bunnies getting high and a few other things to go along with the song which would make a good PSA. I still have to do that Capitalists Gone Wild video also.

In the home stretch

I think I'm going to make it hopefully since I'm to the part at temple where Chris and Minerva meet the monk named Zakita and I only have to write the parts at the Boardwalk and the Kiva Retreat before next Monday. I got the music video up on YouTube, it doesn't match the music as well as Moulin Rouge but it gets the idea across since I already put a lot of effort into synching the clips with Love Medley using the Squall and Rinoa footage.



I wanted to have Zakita mention the The Tibetan Book of the Dead so that Minerva can hear about how the Involution and Evolution of consciousness described in the Bardo Thodol fit in with Eros and Thanatos so that Minerva could find out about how another part of her assignments fit in with the place she finds herself and the formula Eros less than Thanatos equals Involution greater than Evolution. I'll work in some verses fron the book that Zakita tries to explain contacting other states of consciousness.

The All-Good Father, and the All-Good Mother, the Great Ancestors of all the Buddhas:
Samata-Bhadra, the Divine Father and the Divine Mother these two, also
will come to shine. These forty-two perfectly endowed deities, issuing from within thy heart, being the product of thine own pure love, will come to shine. Know them.

O nobly-born, these realms are not come from somewhere outside thyself. They come from within the four divisions of thy heart, which, including its centre, make the five directions. They issue from within there, and whine upon thee. The deities, too, are not come from somewhere else: they exist from eternity within the faculties of thine own intellect. Know them to be of that nature.

O nobly-born, if thou hast not understood the above at this moment, through the influence of karma, thou wilt have the impression that thou art either ascending, or moving along on a level, or going downwards. Thereupon, meditate upon the Compassionate One.

O nobly-born, now the signs and characteristics of the place of birth will come. Recognize them. In observing the place of birth, choose the continent too. If one is to be born as a deva, delightful temples built of various precious metals also will be seen. One may enter therein; so enter therein.

Plus the suggestion that they try Kundalini yoga to give Chris the idea of trying it at the Kiva Retreat. But it need the part where Minerva gets depressed at her failure to contact Odin at the temple and Chris takes her to the Boardwalk to cheer her up.

After the concert on the sand, Chris could take Minerva to the Cocoanut Grove Santa Cruz: Grand Ballroom and show her how romantic ballroom dancing can be when people are in tune with each other. That will give Minerva pause when she talks to Odin. Chris can find out about the 8-Circuit Model to show how it fits with another part of her cases for the GAB and how he complements her talents to get the job done better.

Might be making some progress

Even though I've been having some trouble with the Current TV web site it seems some others have been also with errors in uploading and files going MIA. I mailed mine in on CD and hopefully that will help with the video conversion problems I was having too. If they haven't got it up on the web page by tomorrow I'll send them another email asking if they got it in the mail since I sent it a week ago.

I finished the video for the Revver Film School and it has some of the features I was going for, I did some of the animation frame by frame in Flash and exported it as an avi then did some of the objects in Illustrator and pasted them into Flash to export them. I did some text to speech with Deskbot and recorded the wav file and loaded it into Mimic for lip synching and animated more frames in Poser to put them all together with animated text from Title Decko and motion effects from Adobe Premiere.



I liked some of the advanced techniques I was able to use in it, but I probably still need to work on storyboarding it to integrate them better and make the story it tells more interesting. Although I am making a lot of progress with doing that in my novel "An Angel's Destiny" the resolution of the animated comic on Revver is a lot better and the sound effects help the story.

Chapter 1



Chapter 2



Chapter 3



I'm working on Chapter 4 now and I've got the music video for YouTube done and up to the 4th scene in Flash for the animated comic. I still need to write the text of the rest of the chapter but hopefully since I'm almost over my cold it'll be easier. I've only got 10 more days left to finish this chapter before it gets busy again in the next semester and I don't want to get delayed again like I did last summer.

Using the hot tub as a connecting theme is a good one since it's something that Minerva is familiar with because she used it in Elysium. It helps her relax and focus, so in situations where she's stressed it'll help her think. Chris can notice this and contribute by taking her to the Kiva Retreat to help her get in contact with Odin by providing a harmonius place for her to gather her energies and get the best reception.

Hopefully some new steps in the New Year

I've been developing more skills in being able to make graphics in Adobe Illustrator, export the pieces in Macromedia Flash add the animation to make motion graphics and export them as avi so I can use them in Adobe Premiere and add them to video tracks that I can put on web pages, YouTube and Revver

That might be part of connecting the dots as Steve Jobs says, but I do need some more stuff to put it all together, like a comprehensive idea. I could practice some more with that Revver Film School thing about the Future and see if I can put something more complex for that together. It would help with the process of storyboarding the idea to assemble all the elements to see if I can can cope with something more complex and blend some of the style of Peter Max that I was trying to show Dan last semester..



I have been admiring the quality and the humor of Happy Slip's videos and I figure maybe I can take some cues from her ideas to help improve my videos next semester by combining more techniques of motion graphics, titles and 3D animation with video camera footage to go with my commercials and hopefully they would have a better chance of getting on Current TV. That is part of what Time Magazine meant by YOU being the Person Of the Year was the Viewer Created TV concept that Current TV provides. I did get that T-Mobile commercial together




It would help a lot if it had lip-synching but there are ways around it with voice over, it just takes more care to set up in the storyboard and planning the shots better.