Have you ever spent hours, days, weeks, even months on a project - something that originally was thought to only take a few weeks or so to complete?

Have you ever invested MONTHS of hard work in a media project, only to look at how little was really accomplished after all the effort... not to mention, it's STILL far from complete?

Do you ask yourself why?

Well, basically, I just need to rant for a bit. Please move along and don't waste your time if you don't care for ranting I just need to blow off some artistic steam

Back in February, I got an old 80's song stuck in my head at work. It happens all the time - no big deal. The next day, it was still in there... and then again the day after that.

I started talking to co-workers about this classic 80's pop song - some of them (the other 30-somethings) remembered the song fondly, and the kind of funky (at the time) video for it, which featured the band performing in a very jittery and shaky way. Some of the 20-somethings had no memory of the video and no one could find it on the internet, so I figured I'd recreate the jittery video effect on my own to show them - as a quick gag video.

I spent about two or three hours total (over a two day period) to record myself doing a silly dance bit (to be rendered in stop motion) and the lip-synch for one verse of the song - to show the jittery effect.

Already I had spent more time than expected - I thought I'd shoot one day, edit the video the next day, and tie it all up on the third day to show the guys at work. Yeah - that's all - a quick gag project to get a chuckle from the guys at work, nothing more.

Ok, two days shooting, then the third day capturing and *starting* to edit. Cool! I had started to recreate the silly looking jittery effect featured in the original 1986 video that was in heavy rotation on MTV at the time! But this effect was taking longer than expected, so I spent another day on doing the jittery effect (now 4 days over original target).

Great - I've got the jittery-look working well! Um... sort of. Something wasn't right... some internet searches took place, and I learned I had timed the jitter effect wrong! DOH! I had to do the entire jitter effect all over AGAIN! No my knowledge, there are no video editing applications that allow one to do this jitter effect by applying an existing filter or routine. So I had to do the jitter effect all over again - manually. Of course, I utilized a 3rd party macro utility to speed up the process, but it still took a little while.

Ok, this time the jitter effect looked right - I had the timing correct. Now to do the stop motion dance part in the beginning! Well, the damn stop motion dance took longer than expected too. I think I spent a few days doing it, then several days after tweaking it and altering some of the sequences in the brief stop motion dance sequence.

So - there I am doing a stop motion dance in my living room, followed by my silly jittery-motion lip-synch headshot to the first verse of the song... BORING!

It needs some strange background visuals during the headshot portion. So I took a couple of days to shoot some odd things around the house, and applied some visual filters to them to make them look more unnatural and odd, and WHAM! I've got... dumb cheesy background crap behind me. BUT it's just to show the guys at work, right? Doesn't matter how dumb it looks... only I look really dumb too! So I applied some visual filtering to my face - MUCH better! Now I look a little cooler... with dumb background visuals. Man - how boring is this?

I can do so much more with this... yes, I HAVE that knowledge!

By now, a few weeks had gone by. As soon as I started playing with the original and very basic composite imagery, I expected it to take a few weeks, but now I had all kinds of strange things running through my head - animations, weird scenes, abstract retro-CGI, more stop motion with CLAY this time!

Don't beat your self up cause it's not finished Todd. Any great work of art takes time. It took Michelangelo four years to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling. There's been projects that I've spent alot of time on that I thought would never be finished. I've had had many battles with the dreaded enemy known as artist block. It strikes with no warning and can desimate the mightiest of ideas and projects. Don't give into it's evil attempts of creative blockage! Fight the block!

Try this out. Go find a quiet distraction free spot and just day dream and think for an hour or two. Jot down any idea, image, or thought that enters your mind no matter how crazy or random it may seem, and sortta build off of it from there. Just let your mind clear and wander for a bit.

I'd usally give up if took too long. I like to design Games and Game ideas.

Todd You deserve an award for longest post writer
At least it's fun to read unlike textbook droneing (chemistry...Grrrrr)

Haaaaaaa!

You guys rock!

You know - I was just having a down moment last night, after looking at my incomplete video project. Feeling angry and down, I started typing the rant you all read. I actually get like that about projects a LOT, but usually don't rant publicly like that - usually a producer friend of mine will just get a long angry e-mail from me about my lack of progress in current projects. For some reason, I posted this one here at The Sector.

Felt good getting it out. Got to let out steam sometimes to clear up the mind

This morning, as I was waking up... I couldn't believe I had ranted like that on TRON-Sector and planned to edit out most of the guts in my post. I felt it was inappropriate for this TRON forum and didn't actually think anyone would read such a long, rambling post anyway.

So, after my morning exercise and a shower - I'll just edit it down to a small shell of what it ended up being, or maybe just ask a mod to remove the thread.

When I finally hit TRON-Sector this morning - I was surprised to see responses - and even shared stories!

You guys are great! Thanks a lot for that!

Really - the frustration in my initial posting was not just because of this one project - I've actually had several failed projects over the last year and it was just getting to me.

In the last year, I've had 5 projects fail (if I count current project). So I've just been a little irritated. My humble website really NEEDS some NEW content!

Oh well.

I wanted to thank you guys for the positive feedback you offered, and for sharing your experiences.

Harpo989 - I too have a lot of SW related video material, mostly just visual FX demos and stuff. Very little of which I ever showed anyone. Funny to hear you've been there too, only to scrap your stuff as well Getting clean matte FX is VERY tricky business!

Sketch - I know any great work takes time, but this is no Sistine Chapel If I were wrapped up in some epic work, I would allow myself a little more slack. But this is really just a short, corny video - fun, but nothing spectacular When (if ever) complete - it will (I hope) make people smile, but I doubt it will blow them away Not when compared to the modern artistic wonders people "in the industry" put out.

You're right, Sketch and Kamui, I MUST fight my creative blockage! Like I said - I have walked away from this project for weeks at a time before. In fact, my general pattern is work for a few days or a week, then not touch it for at LEAST two or three weeks before even looking at it again. Though I've has a span of about 6 months on this project already, I've probably only worked on it for about 40 or 50 days in those 6 months... that's still a lot though.

Funny thing - I'm off work this week, and don't really have any new ideas on how to finish this! All this time I finally have and NOTHING is coming out of me, in terms of creativity. I'm probably just trying to recharge and catch up on all the energy I loose at work. No 40 hour work weeks for me - I'm in the 50+ hours a week crowd! BLAH!

Oh well. It will get finished when it gets finished I guess. As irritated as I can get with the project, it already has been a very good learning experience as I had had to teach myself some new tricks and learn some (very basic) 3D animation skills (which I've never tried before).

Thanks again for your positive words all! VERY much appreciated!

Oh, and codywithacdc - if there ever was a "Longest Post Writer Award" - I believe it ALREADY has my name on me When it comes to my artistic interests - I just LOVE to ramble on and on and on and on and on and...

Addendum: I typed this post BEFORE seeing kmon's post. So you’ve been wrapped up for 6 months too, eh? Sounds very cool. I do hope you share when you're done with it

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Bah! Distractions can be good. Matter of fact, some of my BEST ideas came from distractions, or sleeping, or going out for my morning walk, or even in the shower. Seriously, it's weird how these kinds things pop up!

In any event, the idea may be there stareing you in the face and you don't really even realise it. I find that all you need is one break and then you see it.

Best of luck to you! I hope you get over your artists' block. and yes.... sometimes rants bring out the best in people....

End of Line.

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I think I'm, oddly, the first to ask... but what song is it???!! I'm dying to know. Sorry if its mentioned above and I just didn't see it.

I've lost patience with Dedit for Tron 2.0 a few times. I learn, learn, learn and try to apply, apply, apply -- but applying sometimes goes very slowly. For making levels with Dedit, I actually have high aspirations for what I *could* and *want* to build, but due to time constraints and distractions, etc. I keep losing interest. Thus, Dedit projects get started, but not finished.

TheReelTodd Wrote: Prankster bit Wrote:...incidentally, i dug around on his site and i actually found the said 7 second clip. i think it looks pretty cool... Hey - thanks man! I really didn't expect anyone to actually go looking for that - you must have been really curious. The whole video is similar - just "Mr. Jitterhead" in the foreground, and odd, abstract things taking place in the background... odd and abstract things that just happen to take a loooooooooong time to bring to life! And there's the stop-motion dance in the beginning... and the singing clay-duo who join in for the chorus... and we can’t forget the giant robotic arm with the electrifying claw! It's supposed to look kind of retro - like something that might have been considered a "break-through video" on MTV back in the day. Remember those? Break through videos? Ahh - the memories Traahn - the song's name? I'm sorry for doing this... but I have to be a little evil It's the 1986 song by a popular singing duo with an oriental sounding name, but they're just two British folks, and not oriental at all. The music video they produced for this song featured a cool and "jittery" motion and I've heard that this video actually caused seizures in some who have epilepsy when they watched it! This video was surely "on the edge of oblivion and all the world is Babylon" Ok - know it now? As for Dedit - it sounds like you also do battle in your creative endeavors. Do you stick it out? Or scrap it? I keep walking away from this video project... only to come back to it thinking I've invested too much time to just walk away... not to mention there are a couple of cool things in it I do want to eventually show people

I think I know that band you are talking about...I thought they were Australian? I usually find my time being taken up and never being able to finish my projects too Todd. Its like my time gets sucked away somewhere...probably into some computer somewhere . I just recently got tasked to make 3 VCDs (all the same images) for my Mom's friends because "I'm the talented one in the family." And she will only trust me with her school reunion pix. So I sympathise with ya.
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Well, I had to plug the lyrics into Google to find the answer , but yeah, I know the song (now!) I guess I only knew about 8 words from that song... bet you can't guess which 8!

i don't know what's worse: the fact that you made a video replica of their video, or that I own the CD with that song on it. Hmmm... LOL

That group happens to have a different song that happens to be one of my all time favorites of the 80s... could it be something about dance hall days? hehehe

As for my creative endeavors, I usually stick it out until I'm satisfied with what i have. Recently I've been trying to learn new things, like Flash. So I'll mess around with it for a while, try the tutorials, read a little bit, mess around with it some more... give it up for a short while... delve into it again, review some of the old things, learn some new things... repeat... until I have a pretty good understanding of it. When I first opened up Flash, I though "no way will I ever figure this out." A bit later and I can now look at several Flash animations on the web and envision in my mind how they did those things behind-the-scenes. It's pretty neat.

I started an oil painting a couple years ago, but haven't done anything with it since because I like drawing or Photoshopping better. Immediate results. Mixing colors, applying paints and waiting for them to dry, etc. is tedious. I envision myself making some finished paintings some day. For me, I don't mind learning bits and pieces here and there or leaving things incomplete for a while; I have an overwhelming feeling inside that it will all come around in the end.

Now, if I'm doing work for someone else, then that's a different story. I like to get those things done and out of the way asap.

Ah, for gawds sake it's Wang Chung and Everybody Have Fun Tonight.

I love Wang Chung. Don't judge them by that song, they are far better if you go deeper into their library of tunes.

Fool And His Money
The World In Which We Live
To Live And Die In LA
Wake Up Stop Dreaming
Snakedance

They have some great tunes in their catalog.

Just to let you know Todd, I looked in your site and found the video. looks pretty good to me. I like it!

so, yes... Getting a clean matte is a pain...of course, I'm working on a project soon that will be all composited. well, it should be interesting.order abortion pill morning after pill price where to buy abortion pillabortion pills online abortion questions cytotec abortion