The first semester is nearly over, week 12 is finished and everything is due in at the end of week 13 and I'm finally starting to panic, which is about time. I need this panic and stress to focus me. Now is the time to take a moment to reflect on the project and see where I am with it.
Let's start with the script; I'm pretty happy with the script, it took a while to get down and has changed a lot from my initial idea but I'm surprisingly happy with it. I thought I'd never change much from my first idea.
Next the storyboards; all the artwork for the storyboards are complete I just need to finish filling out all the shot information on them, I'm about half way through so I'm not concerned. I know this is a part component of the process but it is a tedious one. The artwork went through various revisions from the littlest tweaks to complete re-draw but 70% of the shots didn't change from my initial thumbnail sketches which is great.
I guess the next part is the animatic. This year I planned out my storyboards so that they could be easily used in the animatic. Because I would be using the storyboard panels for several purposes (animatic, layout, backgrounds, character poses) I decided to make the image twice has big as they needed to be. This allowed me to keep the quality of the shots if I needed to zoom in on a particular or have characters walk towards camera for the animatic. It also allowed me to reposition depth of the composition of a shot without losing quality. The greatest drawback of course is that big files mean slow computers, just opening or saving the photoshop file would take several minutes. When it came to making the animatic in After Effects every PC I had access to would crash almost instantly, so it was off to the Mac labs. Working on the Macs meant that I would have to either stay longer at school or work during class times. But all those complaints aside the animatic is edited together I just need to work on a scratch track and render it off.
Speaking of sound I've yet to contact Matt Serpell to see if he'll do the music for my animation again this year. I hope that he agrees to do it I don't have a backup plan if he won't.
The video block is something I don't think I'll ever get right, I didn't like my shots from last year and I'm not that fond on them this year. The stuff I shot this year was better and I can get more reference from it than the footage form last year. For now it's good enough for submission and I'll shoot more throughout next semester. I think I might try and get down to the studio to shoot the reference, the white walls will allow me to see the silhouettes of the performance and the better lighting will also help. This is not something that can be shot in a couple of hours, I'd need a full day to work on it.
One area I'm not having issues with is the character designs, I've been working on them for a few years. I've got the look for Grace and her brother (he needs a name) I've also worked out the look for Grace and her bear when in the fantasy land. The turnarounds for Grace, fantasy Grace and her brother have been completed.
I have been rather lazy when it comes to my file backup plan, I've only backed up twice so far. Considering I paid for more space on Dropbox I should be using it more often. I think I need to be more paranoid about losing everything that might encourage me to backup more often.
So with pre production coming to an end how do I feel about my progress? The panic and stress is starting to set in but I think I can pull this off without too much hassle. Of course when all my pre production stuff is finished and handed in it means I'll start getting the production underway. I hope to use the break to get backgrounds and pencil testing done.
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