More animation…

But mostly drawing, for this segment.  I like the color scheme I ended up using, and also the peculiar type alignment (which I think is legible… then again, I know what everything says).  I am, once again, very hungry, and shall go eat dinner and then work some more.

I love animation

Especially when I compare it to coding things that refuse to work!  I’m almost halfway through the chorus—I finally got to animate my favorite image so far (the planets)!  I’m delighted with what I have so far.  FYI: the last two frames, if you see them at all, are rough sketches of the next animated bit, which I have yet to photograph.  I need to tell the audio to stop before the movie loops back on itself, or find another way to avoid the layered out-of-sync audio tracks!  I am going to eat dinner before I implode, then get back to work

IT WORKS! sort of

Well, I finally got my class to make a dotted mask!  The sizes and arrangement of the circles are both off, but I am VERY HAPPY that my idea actually works!  Here are examples of the Processing video (what my Flash swf should look like) and the Flash video (what it actually looks like: the pink/orange is the upper video layer, the blue is the lower/hidden layer).  Here’s what the Flash looked like before I found a very important error in my code.  Curiously, the dots don’t show up immediately upon launch of the test video, and they erratically vanish for long periods of time… this my be due to “beats” caused by slightly different frame rates between Flash and Processing (i.e. treat the frame rates as regular standing waves of slightly different period; when you sum them, the resultant wave oscillates in amplitude; for reference that makes more sense than my haphazard explanation, look in Wikipedia; I was never good at harmonics in physics).

UPDATE: Now what I really need to figure out is how to make what essentially works on my computer also essentially work on the internet…

UPDATE: after many failures, I managed to sign my Processing applet, but even after accepting the certificate, all I get is a white square.  I have no idea what the problem is!  As a test, I exported Andy Best‘s BubbleGame, signed the jar file, uploaded it, accepted the certificate, and still no video, so at least I don’t think it’s my code alone that’s the problem.  Trouble is, I have no idea what the problem is!  If it was my code, I could compare mine with Best’s and have a chance of finding a solution, but as it is… I am flummoxed.  Also, I am rather stuck as to testing my Flash with a Processing file on the Internet so long as the internet Processing file fails to function.  Well, I will go and eat dinner and return to this problem later.

UPDATE: Back after dinner, I decided to make a Processing sketch without any of the socket code, just in case that was my problem, but no dice; ProcessingNoSocket doesn’t run just as well as Processing2FlashJavaApplet doesn’t run.  Andy Best commented that OpenCV doesn’t work in applets, so it may indeed be my code that is at issue.  Thanks for your input, Andy!  Now to strip down ProcessingNoSocket to the barest bones of video…  To save time, I exported and signed the Getting Started with Video example, and even that doesn’t run…  I wonder if it’s my signature method (I followed the method from Processing Hacks, creating a new alias and keystore, then using jarsigner on the .jar files), but I can’t see where I deviated from it.

Classy, yet complicated

Well, I got Flash and Processing talking from within AS files (make a separate Actionscript Class file with all the code in it, and name it the name of your class; your main Flash file will have no “actions” but instead be of the same document type as the AS file; it’s much neater).  It took a while (I ran into tons of errors and eventually winnowed my code down to one file to avoid static type errors), and I still need to get the masking property to work, but all in all I’m pleased with myself for figuring out all of the errors!

Animation again, schedule blues

I finished animating the remainder of line six of the poem, and will soon be starting on the chorus (most likely after dinner tonight).  Animation progress so far can be seen here, with tinny audio (the nice audio is here, and I hope to stream it in the final).  I’m looking forward to having parts of the upcoming poem already animated (particularly the rotoscoped rotating self among planets and the white-on-black rotoscoped silhouette).

In other news, I registered for classes this morning.  So far I’m taking 5 credits, but I need to find 7 more in order to keep various scholarships and financial aid (contingent on me being enrolled in 12 credit hours worth of classes).  Urgh.  I may have to find out if I should take some credits of HC Thesis or something, so that I have work time for it (similar to what I’m doing this term).  I’m trying to decide whether to take a 10am class, on the grounds that it will force me to get up and be productive, or a 2pm class on the grounds that I’ll never risk missing a class due to not sleeping well and the ensuing migraine.  It’s “chance and determinism in the physical world” versus “global climate change,” and on a purely topical basis, the former wins hands down.

UPDATE: Went back and fixed/fiddled with some things that had been bothering me, mainly the second line’s head-turn roto and the fourth line’s eye.  Finalized a few transitions, sorted all the library items in flash into folders (yay! I can find things without looking through the whole list now!), and made way for the chorus.  Animation progress is here.  And now to bed!

Timing is key…

I realized that I’d been putting off working on the animation because I wanted to address the issue of timing my classmates brought up last friday: namely, I restored the master tempo to its original 120 bpm, and fixed minor timings in word animations (see the current version with crappy built-in audio here, but turn your volume down—it’s loud).  The music, up until tonight, wasn’t finished.  So, I sat myself down in GarageBand and finished recording everything.  I re-recorded the melody and baseline, determined the bridge and intro, and modified and finished the descant.  All told, it’s three tracks of piano some spliced together, and it plays very loudly instead of very quietly, which I consider a moderate improvement.  I wish I could make it sound like it does in my thoughts—I hear amazing sounds in my head but can’t get them out into daylight.  I’m satisfied with it but not enchanted.  I’m not sure I have the skill with keyboard-driven software instruments to enchant myself.  Volunteers?  No, seriously, I would love a cover of this.  I’d also love a new sewing machine, digital slr camera, and a sexy red foreign sports car, for the record.  And a kitten.

Code-wise, I’m looking at ways to combine all the circles into one MovieClip object, which I can then use as a mask.  I’m also trying to make things work with classes and packages, as it’s much cleaner.  I’m not sure where I want to put the socket (in its own class, with methods to talk to other classes; or in the main class).  I’ve discovered that, no matter the screen size or the number of circles, the flash implementation of the processing app starts to slow way down.  Ugh.  Distressing, particularly as I’m not sure if I can find an alternative.  I need to find out how to make Processing and Flash talk over the web, not just over my computer’s local ports.  That could be difficult.

I’m reading “Postmodern media culture” by Jonathan Bignell, which is turning out to be an interesting and informative read.  I’m also beginning to panic about getting everything done by the end of this term, but I’ll just keep working, staying up later and forcing myself to get up earlier as the term progresses.  I keep thinking, “I can do this, I can do this, I will not melt into a puddle of ectoplasm and stain the peculiar blue tiled carpet in my room…”  I went to Fencing, but my right ankle (specifically, the muscle/tendon that runs along the outside of the shinbone and serves to lifts your foot up/flex it toward your leg) burns when I try to step forward.  Having decided that I should not keep stressing it when it hurts so much, I skipped out after footwork, showered, ate dinner, and got to work.  Whee.  People were playing video games in the lounge as I went by, and later they watched a movie (The Devil Wears Prada).  If I’m not careful, I’ll pick up another fun book, and then where will I be?

Oh, children, children…

And parents.  Spent this afternoon (took a break around dinner, see below) and evening learning about parent-child relationships, event listeners, and classes in general.  I have decided to never again use timeline navigation for anything but animation… the class-based movie-clip stage method that Jody Hall explains so well in this tutorial is so slick and easy that I think even a beginner in both Flash and OOP (object-oriented programming) could understand and apply it.  I wish I’d read Hall’s work years ago—it’d've saved me loads of sweat and tears!  As it is, I find myself wanting to make an application (I did make one (Mac and PC) as a follow-along to the timeline tutorial), but I’ll be good and stick to my circles and animation!  I’ve been trying to devise an overall gameplan of how to structure the animation/underlayer/mask elements (and, later, how to incorperate Processing or run it alongside).  Thoughts: run animation on top of underlayer on the main timeline/screen, run mask over both.  Required: figure out how to run the two movieClips from ActionScript not timeline, figure out how to mask through AS, resolve circle animation issues, figure out how to use the circles as a mask through AS.  I can do this, I think… I can, I think I can, I think I can…  Three weeks, two papers, one animation and code problem.  Plus finals.

Other news: I biked to 5th St for falafel again (I’m getting mileage out of that twenty’s change, mum, thanks!) and went to see Whip It at the David Minor Theater; why they named it “minor” is a mystery to me, as I got my ID checked upon entrance, although I imbibed of no spirits.  Oh, and I finished Forty Thousand in Gehenna.  It was amazing, as all of Cherryh’s books seem to be.  Also amazing is my ability to partition off my brain from the panic that really ought to consume it this close to the end of the term.  Then again, my über-fast research/writing skills have never yet failed me, so it’s logical that my brain not panic, having never had a blow-up caused by failure to meet deadlines.  A child who has never been electrocuted can’t truly fear a live wire, right?  (I wouldn’t know; I stuck tweezers into an outlet when I was two, and that wasn’t my last encounter with high-voltage electricity; I’ve had four or so, to date: tweezer outlet, variable power source exposed alligator clip, light switch with exposed wiring, electric fence—with the back of my hand, of course!  Also, ask my mother about the things I used to eat/put in my mouth—paint, some strange orange chemical I found on a tree, sap my older sister told me was honey, any manner of household cleaning products, soap… the response from Poison Control to my mum’s repeated calls came to be, “What’s she eaten now?”)  Long tangent that was, eh?

UPDATE: I’m going to bed as soon as I post this , I swear (today’s migraine is getting nasty and I’m actually kind of tired, no thanks to my insomnia, and sleep and meds will do wonders for both), but I just had to do this now—I fixed everything but the radius problem on the flash end (big circles get too big), and here it is!  Plus the Processing apps in Mac and Windows.  You need to run the Processing app first, then the swf, and hope that the socket connection between them works!  If not, here’s the code for both.  And here are pictures at 320×240 and 640×480 of sample flash video feed, as the socket seems to be unhappy.  Methinks I must route it through the web or something…

Also, a small increase in stage size leads to a HUGE lag in animation… Will need to figure out how to work with or around this.  But, all in all, I’m VERY pleased with the progress made today.