How I feel (Hayley Warner)

Unfortunately I think I over complicated my point about the background. I just personally never saw the point of those trees painted delicately on the background board. I painted a black background it was done, and a waste of time as James’ went and painted a new background with the trees. Yes it is very pretty and a work of art and I do take back what I said about the patterns as it was proven once the camera got it in focus it did add more depth, I was proven wrong and I’m very sorry.

Though the point remains what is there a point of having a background with pretty trees painted on it when we already had backgrounds and I believe we are missing two sets, don’t have a fully operational team of armatures raring to go and probably will not have all of Jordan’s requirements for character spins ready for Monday morning. Basically James time I feel could have been better spent whenever he was painting that doing more important things first then going back and doing nice touches like that if there was time later. Not everything can be perfect and of Harry Hausen quality. I believe we’ve been given insufficient time and guidance from the teachers to achieve anything of that level, but we still seem to be aiming for it, but if we hadn’t we probably would be animating by now. That is just my personal opinion.

As for the armatures I think there is a world of pain ahead. I’m ignorant of what to do with the feet, Ben’s ideas for those are the best I’ve heard. My only suggestion would have been those magnetic footed armatures I mentioned at the start of the project (see near beginning of blog) but that’s much outdated as the budget and Adam C advised against it. I tried to do a spin on Neil and I had to pin his feet onto the disk, but the clay heads are too heavy for the wires he falls over every five minutes. I’ve noticed this to with Grace’s completed armature but the head wasn’t glued on at the time so it came off when I saw her animating with it. This sounds bad but I think we need something of ping pong ball weight to fix that instead of a clay head or the rigs idea, but we don’t currently have any rigs and smiley faces on ping pong balls I admit isn’t very appealing.

I have done half a spin for Neil however the batteries on the camera died in the stop motion room and I don’t know how to charge or change it so it will have to be done on Monday as I don’t have an SLR here. I would have borrowed one from the uni, but it was coming to chuck out time at 8.00pm when I thought of that so I missed the boat.

I think the best thing to do would be to get Adam C to have a look or Jordan and ask them how to fix the problem with the resources we have available to us. I have emailed Jordan already about Neil’s weight problem but have yet to receive a reply. To be honest as a group I think so far we’ve done an amazing job considering we were handed an empty room with a table in to begin with, had to resource everything at our own cost so far (I will say own until and if we are reimbursed) and I think as a whole we haven’t been given any credit for the amount of running around Southampton and time consuming buying things is without a car. I think for next year’s stop motion group a little welcome pack should be in there at the universities expense with some wire and wire cutters etc so people can get started straight away. The 3D max people don’t have to go and buy and install 3D max onto the university computers, the need of tools and physical objects to make our sets is our equivalent of software. Ben pointed out the university had a tool cupboard all along, where we informed of this by the uni no.

I do feel annoyed when Adam C came in to complain about the mess. I do agree that room has been in a horrendous state and health and safety could have a field day. I am only annoyed because the uni couldn’t provide a dust pan and broom even when I asked a cleaner and tried to find a cleaning cupboard it seemed to fall on deaf ears and Adam C said for me to go to ASDA and buy one and add it to the budget so I did. That took 10 minutes to cross the roads to get over there, 4 minutes to go find them in the shop, 10 to queue and another 10 to walk back because of all the traffic lights. So that’s 34 minutes wasted getting a broom and dustpan and £2.74 more that even with receipts I have the feeling I will never see again (I think I must have spent over £20 now altogether David has them written on the budget sheet) on something that could have been provided by the uni in five seconds had anyone truly helped me, when I walked round saying where’s the cleaner cupboard etc. Am I over reacting or does anyone else feel incredibly frustrated by such things?