Partner Projects

With only three work days to devlop our partner projects, every minute counts. Today was our second day at SUAD working with our partners, and everyone is feeling the pressure. Yu Zhouren (Jared) and were hoping to get all the still photos shot for our stop-motion animation. We spent most of the morning trying to set up a stage. The wire figure was almost completely lost in the busy background paintings I made. We decided to shoot the wire figure on a blue-screen and superimpose the backgrounds so we could control the relative size, lightness and darkness of foreground and background. Of course, with more flexibility comes more complexity. By the time we got the lighting and backdrop worked out it was after lunch. With the bus leaving at 5pm I was only able to shoot a couple of actions.
The other big chalenge was working with computers when all the menus are in Chinese. It took me a while but I finally figured out how to change the menus from Chinese to English on the macintosh towers. The computer lab had an impressive selection of hardware - mostly Mac Pro towers with dual xeon processors. Final Cut Pro moved along at a healthy clip.
The animation studio and photography room were also impressive, offering some very nice equipment. The big hurdle was not being familiar with any of it, and overcoming the language barrier. Edwin and Ying helped out a lot, as well as several of the Chinese students who spoke English. Without them we would have worked it out, but gathering all the equipment we needed was much easier with their help.
At times I fealt foolish trying to form long winded sentences through an translator, when a few quick hand gestures would have sufficed. Oh well.
The online translator was interesting. More than half the time it screwed up grammar and verb conjugations, but at least it was entertaining.
At lunch I busted out my new fountain pen and asked for help filling it with ink. Being the ignorant american that I am, I had no idea how a fountain pen works. Evidently, every chinese student knows how to use one, so there was no shortage of assistance. Initially, I used the ink I had for brush painting to fuill my pen and apparently that was a bad idea. Now I've got the rigth ink, but the damage may be irreversible. Se la vie. For three bucks, I think I can afford another one. Tomorrow is another big work day. If everything goes perfectly, we might actually finish our project in time!