Manage your dots.

I love learning new things...and I like applying the new things that I learned, but sometimes, learning is painful.

take for example, Speed Graphs in AE.

Sunday we got our lesson, and i meticulously went through the lesson, wrote down notes, and watched all the stuff they gave us.  I tried to just passively absorb the information, and not think about it too much.

A few  hours into work the next day, I get on the class fb page, and a couple of people have already posted their work. And it's amazingly awesome stuff.
The bittersweet kicks in... no way i can do anything like that.

I lugged my work computer home, set it up, and got started.

I watched some of the video again, read over my notes, watched the brilliant student work, and got excited. I can do this.

It became clear about 2 hours in, and a stack of cheese slices, that I was in trouble.

AFter grabbing a handful of candy corn, and a hot tea, i decided to play with the cat for a few minutes. After all, they were waiting patiently in the room. An by patiently, i mean they were getting into the trash, meowing loudly and digging into a box of their toys. I even tried to fix one of Neo's little automated toys. He sat there, this time really patiently, and meowed a few times when i got up to get batteries.  Unfortunately, it didn't work, and we both abandoned the project..Ok i digress. 

After trying several iterations of the project, i had such a huge mess on my hands, I finally gave up and went to bed, exhausted.

4:30am alarm and i dragged my lazy butt out of bed to get ready for work.  While showering, i started thinking about the project and what i should do.

I got into work an extra 20 mins early so i could try out my idea.

Instead of jumping in with all the bells and whistles, I decided to start very simply with one small path and see if i could grasp the concept of the speed graph.  

It worked. Suddenly, i started 'seeing' what the instructor was talking about.
Here's the facts..mass is neither created nor lost.  Which means, in this case, that 24 frames per second, with a keyframe on 1 and 24, means that there are a finite amount of frames that action has to happen. AE is awesome in that it does all the tweening between keyframes, but you can manipulate hte timeing. See, I always thought that if you wanted something to go faster, you keyframed less keyframes. But you can meddle with the speed with the spacing of the keyframes.  I know this wont make much sense to most people, but the gist of it is..once i broke it down, i could SEE the speed.  The instructor joked that a lot of this class is like the matrix...you will see through the code. He was right. I had to start small, and build up from there. 

This class is cool but it's very fast paced and hard.  You're expected to infer what you need to...and not be spoonfed. I dig that about it. You have to figure it out.

So getting back to the speed graph...between two keyframes are dots that disignate each frame.  By maniupating the graph, you an slew the keyframes spacing, by watching out the frame dots are clustered.

Suddenly it hit me. "Manage my dots"!!!  I pulled up last nights project where i had dug myself into a deep well.  I could see what i did wrong, and was able to fix it.

This is pretty empowering. Not only was able to get the homework done, I did it w/o crying and feeling totally helpless..and hopeless.  THe final verdict of course, is to see what the TA's and colleagues think.  

Anyway, here's to small victories. 

Clear Skies  Peeps!