Frustrating

I didn’t get round to getting more RAM. Instead I learnt a bit about Quicktime Pro that I was persuaded to buy and download to make uploading my animations a bit better. So I splashed out £20 and got the registration key. Everything was fine and I was rendering my animations so much better than before. Then I had to add sound – what did they mean by saying “add the audio clip and it will stretch to fit, or I can mess about with frame lengths.” Excuse me, I have mapped out the whole video for lip synch – a programme should fit in with me not that other way round. Maybe I haven’t found that magic button yet – I’ll keep looking.

So I went back to my Ulead, and checked out a few more options. I found the render by frame that kept everything sharper (whoopee), but if I want to show it on the net, I still needed the QT Pro. It didn’t like that version of AVI and wouldn’t include the sound. This is now hair tearing out time. Finally I got a version out and uploaded to photobucket that didn’t totally reek. The best version is still on my website (all bits here are orphaned from other links).

Sorry, I've deleted the video.

Computer problem

I’ve chopped the scene down to nearly 5 seconds (4 18/25ths to be exact). The whole thing is very complicated with loads of vectors and I think I need more RAM on my computer. I only have 1Gb and it sounds as if my computer is struggling to keep up. It was using over 200Mb of memory usage when saving a section just over a second. This is the reason I’ve split the scene into 9 sections with a frame overlap. I will have to split them even further when I start turning the scene around. Maybe a trip down to the computer shop tomorrow is called for. It would be much better if I could get the whole scene on one take.

Some actual animation

Well, a bit of it. It's not quite right yet. The lip movement on "upside" is not clear enough, the expression as he grows is awful and it looks like he's waddling towards the camera. I haven't put any background people in yet, changed his head position or made him blink.Also, the background needs to be stretched, the flag fluttering and the foreground extended. In the final version the background with all the people except my main character will be turning upside down. This is part of one of the more complicated scenes and will be a whole eight seconds.

Sorry, I've deleted the video

Legal Stuff

Today I’m more interested in the legality of things. The song I’m animating is one that my husband co-wrote many moons ago. Gosh! He even had a minor hit in 1979 (got to 11 and 3 appearances on TOTP)) and we get about 60p a year from the song, but it might have been £1.20 if he hadn’t signed away 50% of the publishing rights early on – that’s a whole pint of milk!

Now the song I’m interested was a ‘B’ side of their third single that sank even further than their second (43 in the chart), and then the band broke up.

The thing is we don’t know what the publishing rights were on the songs that weren’t a hit, and how long the contract was in force. Paperwork was never a strong point for my husband (read non-existent). I eat legalese for breakfast and still have problems finding out the nitty-gritty. Mechanical rights are fine because we’re using an old demo tape recorded in a flat; it’s not that far off the studio version and needed a bit of cleaning up. The master tapes are lost – the album didn’t include the song after being double baked.

It doesn’t help that my husband won’t talk to his ex-manager, who was also owner of the publishing house. Check out his Youtube account (http://www.youtube.com/user/lovedupbritgit) and you might understand why.

I contacted PRS who told me to contact MPA. I did that on 27 February, and have just reminded them that I haven’t had a reply from them yet.

An eighth may be better than nothing, but I want my husband to get a quarter if I make it a hit. Is it too much to ask?

Today I Posted

Doesn’t look like I’m going to die from over-blogging soon.

I’ve done a few more illustrations of my colleagues and one of them thinks her hair is too grey. It’s an odd colour, but I thought I’d got it right. I did a more blonde version for her, because I’m nice and I like her and I want to do a better shot of her because she has the most gorgeous eyes.

Work

Okay I haven’t updated in a couple of days – sorry. Life and actually doing paying work, family, and working on my animation does take a fair bit of my time. Not that I’m complaining. Sometimes a few elements of each can collide.

I persuaded a few colleagues to pose for me. This has meant I’ve been working on rendering them all weekend - so many black trousers being worn. This is a bit of a problem. With lighter stuff, I can change the colour and leave the shading in tact, but when it’s all black, it doesn’t give much room for manoeuvre. Maybe when they’ve seen what I’ve done, some peacocks will want to come out to play.

The small person always says, "But I'm only little!"