Monday, February 27, 2012

Milestone 04- The Resons That Drive Me and What I'm up Against

The reason I have to do this is because I’m ridiculously ambitious and I actually want to complete what seems to be too much. When I was eight years old, I watched Toy Story, Antz, and A Bugs Life, and I realized that animation was a job field that I could become a part of some day. I said “I want to do THAT when I grow up,” (THAT meaning I wanted to be part of creating something new and something that was out of this world!) As I grew older, I began to realize that Pixar, Disney, and Dream Works happened to be the most coveted/competitive jobs in the animation field. I realize that I’m ambitious, but I’m still going for it.

When I graduated high school, I wanted to go to Savannah College of Art and Design for Animation. At the time, they were 3rd best in the country for that major. I got accepted, but didn’t have the funds. It was (at the time) the most devastating thing I’d ever gone through (not being able to go; because, that meant I probably wasn’t going to ever get to the animation studios of my dreams). Now I’m a senior in college and I’m realizing I’m venerable to the same let down that I faced back in 2008. I told myself that there’s only three months left of college and that that’s a short enough time that I can survive going ALL OUT.

People doubt my ability. Sure I have an ambitious film to accomplish this semester. I told myself that I’m not going to let anything stop me. My older brother has asked me what I’d do if I DO get hired at Disney right out of college, but aren’t experienced enough to keep my job there. My dad has made comments that make me wonder if I'm good enough, and he's said I need to cut my film in order to pass senior year.

I’m sick of this uphill battle against what used to be my support group. I think they might be starting to convince me that I actually can’t accomplish this. I’m starting to just want to prove to myself that I can do it to keep my child hood dream alive. I need to do this! Against all odds I WILL NOT CUT MY FILM, unless it’s the last effort I make before failure. I need to prove to them that I can do this. I need to re-prove to myself that “I got this,” as I keep telling myself.
If I have this film at the end of this semester, it will be the strongest driving force behind all I do for the rest of my life.
It’s not easy going “uphill” against what others keep telling me. I’d like to prove to everybody that no matter what, I’m unstoppable and when I set my mind to something that’s important to me, then nobody can tell me I’m not good enough to make it.

I GOT THIS!

I will complete this film by the end of the semester. I’m still racing the clock (which tends to go alarmingly fast), but I will win in the end.

I didn’t make my milestone that I had set at the very beginning, but I’m adjusting to the facts. I think I’m going to cut the inking phase of my Production schedule and clean up my pencil drawings instead. Then I’m going to color the entire film over the two weeks I would have been inking. I also split my film up into individual characters that need animating per shot, instead of just splitting my schedule up into Shots that need animating. Originally I had my schedule composed of just shots that needed animating, and then I’d get frustrated when some shots had three characters.

One more battle against time was that I was working 15-25 hours at my part time job over the weekends. This was preventing me from putting in the hours I needed on my film, and also causing me MUCH more stress. As of Friday the 24th, I asked for fewer hours so that I could focus more on my film.

I feel that I’m making appropriate adjustments to the problems I’m experiencing/foreseeing, and I WILL accomplish the film I had envisioned at the beginning of the semester.

As far as week 4’s milestone, I didn’t accomplish it. But seeing as how much I faced, I think I’m making the right decisions to overcome the obstacles at hand.

Monday, February 20, 2012

Milestone 03- The Catch Up Plan

This week I had scene 6 and 7 to do from last week. Then Try to accomplish all of the inbetweens for scene 1 and 2. It took me through Sunday night to get finished with scene 6 and 7. That only left me with two days to animate all the inbetweens for two scenes. I obviously couldn’t do it. I think that would have been imposable to pull off. I managed to get all of scene 1 done though, and one shot from scene 2.


I have to think of a way to save time and get caught up. I went through my film, listing each shot, and each character in each shot. Then I made a “Catch Up Plan”, scheduling a day to day list of stuff I had to get done. There are about 5 to 6 characters on each day that I have to animate. This is still ridiculously ambitious, so I gave myself 4 days into March that I could use for catching up to the “Catch Up Plan.” I also decided to eliminate Phase 4 from my Production Process. I feel that the pencil tests were taking quite a while to accomplish, and if I could cut any of the pencil tests it was for the inbetweens. So I’ll go from inbetweens to final drawings, then if I need to pencil test at that point I will.

From Monday the 6th to the end of Tuesday the 14th, I worked 55 and a half hour. Though I didn’t make my Milestone 3 check point, I’m closing the gap from how far behind I fell on week 2.

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Milestone 02- Unanticipated Difficulties

This week I had to deal with some unanticipated difficulties. My Mile stone for week two was to complete phase one and two of my “Production Process” for the second half of my film (which included scene 5, 6, and 7). Due to my lack of sleep (I suspect) I began getting sick. A cold had taken over me completely. As a result I wasn’t able to stay up as late working, and I didn’t work as adequately as if I was healthy.

On top of a very strong cold, I hadn’t anticipated how difficult Scene 5 would be. Scene 5 had a lot of quick shots (because that’s when a lot of the action starts to pick up), so I figured that the quick shots would have less key frames to complete. Though I had less frames to draw, due to the complexity of the perspective and the character design of the cat, it took me much longer to draw each cell. My final outcome for the week was only finishing Scene 5. This left me with most of Scene 6, and all of Scene 7 to do the following week.

Because I was sick, I tried to get more sleep to overcome the cold as quickly as I could. I was hoping that by sleeping and getting over the cold, I could work better and faster as soon as I became healthy. So, I fell short of Mile Stone 02.

Hypothetically that was a good plan. For the neighboring Mile Stone (03) I would have to do all the inbetweens for Scenes 1 and 2. A lot of work had been done on the inbetweens last semester, so I was confident that I’d be able to make up enough work to complete mile stone 03. As I’m partially into that week now, I’m noticing that Scene 6, and 7 (which was from Mile Stone 02) is also quite tricky. So we’ll have to see where I’m at by Mile Stone 03.

I feel that the Key Frames are the most important to get right, so I don’t mind taking a bit longer on the Key Frames and sacrificing time on my inbetweens; however, the cold has certainly set me back more than I anticipated. I might have to readjust my schedule (but I refuse to cut anything from my film at this point)

Fighting the clock, the potential threat of losing any of my shots is keeping me going strong into week 3.

MILESTONE 2: NOT Complete… By the end of Monday, February 6th, I had put in 39 and a half hour. It wasn’t enough unfortunately. I’m putting my best foot forth to catch up.

Sunday, February 5, 2012

Milestone 01- Getting Started

Getting started I had to: figure out a production process pipeline, I had to get organized, so production will run smoothly, and I had to get started immediately on actual production.

My “Process” will consist of 11 different phases to complete each shot: Key Frames, Pencil Test 01, Inbetweens, Pencil Test 02, Final Drawings of the characters over their construction lines, Pencil Test 03, INK the drawings/ clean up, Scan/Capture the final image into the computer, Color (if I have time), Composite, FINAL Composition. I broke the film down into 7 different Scenes, consisting of about 63 shots, so that I can focus on each part and not get overwhelmed with how big the entire film is.

Milestone 01: I have to be really aggressive with my weekly goals if I’m going to complete the film in such a short amount of time. So for Week one, my Milestone was to complete the first and second phase of my “process” for the first half of my film (Scene 1-4). The keys are REALLY crucial to have right, because if they aren’t right then the whole action of the shot gets screwed up. So a lot of time goes into figuring out these key frames. After I have them drawn out, I go to the pencil test station and time out each shot. For every empty frame in the program Flip Book, I insert an empty sheet of animation paper between the Key drawings. That way I know how many Inbetweens I have to draw when that phase of the process comes around.

The schedule IS the most essential ingredient to creating this film and completing it on time. I generally devote one entire day to creating the schedule in a logical order. When I’m making the schedule I think about the “Process” and what I need to do sequentially for other parts to work down the pipeline. I consider the scenes that I broke the film down into, and the difficulty of each scene. Then I try to consider how fatigued I’ll be as it gets deeper into the schedule. If I anticipate a lot of weeks before a break from school, I start out the first few weeks with more ambitious Scenes, then as the weeks go on, I lax up with some easier Scenes. Sticking to this schedule is dire if I’m going to complete the film as I want it.

MILESTONE 1: Complete. I was actually ahead of schedule up until Monday January 30th. I took advantage of the first week, and the fact that I didn’t have any competing home work from my other classes. Then the sleep deprivation started to get to me and I began to get a really bad cold. As of Tuesday, January 31st, I had put in 66 and a half hours.