So it’s been around twelve months since I animated the first scenes in CG for the film. I’m pleased to say I have now animated the whole film and I’m in the final phase of animation. This means I’m looking at every shot and working on polishing things a little more. This sounds like a lot of work but isn’t really, I’ve done the first third in the last two weeks. Hoping to keep up with that pace in the coming weeks so I can write out the final animation and begin rendering shots.

Now I have the whole film animated I’ve also been looking at the edit. I’ve been pretty ruthless over the production period with cutting shots or story stuff that has felt unnecessary. I’m pretty much there with the edit now and I’m really close to getting the film into post production. Long gaps between updates I know but I’ll try and update a little more when I get into the post production stage.

So 2012 is upoun us, sorry I’m a little late but I had a really busy December and January. All that time was spent on production work, but over the last couple of weeks I’ve been able to catch up with the film a little. The Mayans may have predicted the end of the world, my prediction for 2012 is a little less dramatic i’d say. I don’t like to tempt fate but it looks like this will be the year I finish my film.

This year marks 5 years since I began with the idea of making a short film, I’m sure I’ll document this process in the future so I’ll leave the explanations till then. I now have 65% of the film animated, I also have the other 35% in layout so I just need to start blocking in the animation for that. I’m sure it’ll be another 3 to 4 months before I finish animating, I’ll then spend a month or so polishing parts that need it.

That will be a good time to start gathering stuff together on a dedicated site, then begin the next stage of both the production and the promotion of the film. Again I’m not thinking too much about it yet but I’m aware of  it now animation is closer to finishing up. Of course this could all go out of the window, it really depends on production work so I’ll keep you updated!!

I can’t beleive it’s been 2 months since my last post. October was pretty busy production work wise, although I still managed to get 50 seconds of the film animated. Even while I was doing production work I managed to finish some other animation studies I had started earlier in the year as well. Everything pretty much stopped at the end of that month, even for someone as obsessed with animation as I am. Somethings are more important so I had to take a break for a few weeks. I’ve slowly started to get back into the flow of things so i thought I’d do a quick update.

I’ve done a diagram to help me see where I am with the animation, It’s pretty self explanatory but having it laid out visually really helps. I’m hoping to get the 10% that is in progress and the other 35% into layout by Christmas. I think animating 55% of the film since late May is further than I ever thought I would be, progress has been steady and I hope to carry that on into next year. Doing something like this can be both exciting and  totally frustrating. I may talk a little in the future about how it feels doing a solo project like this over 5 years. I’ll do another update sooner this time I’m sure, so until then.

Been a while again but I’m pretty close to the 3 minute mark for animation.  I’ve actually done 2 minutes and 50 seconds no harm rounding up the number though for a more catchy title. Anyway that takes me really close to the halfway point, I punched in the numbers on a web based percentage calculator and I was surprised to see I’m up to 45% complete on the animation. It really doesn’t look that way on my edit timeline, seems less when you see it visually but the fancy web site isn’t wrong.

I’ve had a few weeks away from the film since my last post, mainly small amounts of production work and a break with the family to London. I do seem to have kept up with a steady pace pretty well though. I’m happy just posting every month or so for now as I’m concentrating fully on getting the animation done. I’m aware I’ll need to promote what I’ve been doing a lot more in the future, although I’ll feel a lot more comfortable doing this with all the animation done. When I get to that point I can start to show the art direction I have developed for the film and all the development I’ve done to get to that point. I still have 55% to go though so I’ll not get ahead of myself just yet!

Posts are lacking again mainly because I’m right in the thick of animating. I have about a third of the film animated fully now and I’m up to the half way point in blocking. Summer is usually a little quiet for production work so I’ve been using this time to get the film done. I’ve had some production work on lately so I’ve been back to evenings and weekends which slows things down a little. Hoping to be at the half way mark soon which will be another big milestone for me.

It’s difficult to gauge how long shots will take, CG has lots of positives but that comes at a price, which is usually time. The simpliest shots to draw out can take an age to get right in CG. Any interactions or just simple things like picking things up, can really bog down the flow of  animating a scene. This makes some shots go quicker than others so I don’t worry too much about how quick I’m getting through it. I just keep my eye on the bigger picture, making it easy to see where time needs to be spent polishing. I’m hoping my next post will be at the halfway point so I’d best crack on!!

I’ve been animating pretty solid for the last 2 weeks. I had a few things crop up with the rigs that I needed to add but that only slowed me down in the first couple of weeks. I have been working hard on my animation workflow over the last few years and the drawn stuff I do seems to have helped also. I guess I have got through the first minute of animation pretty quick, I’m working at 12 frames a second which helps a little but there were a lot of mechanics to work out so a minute in 2 weeks is pretty good going.

Not sure i’ll keep up with that pace!!  I’ll also leave the polish for a final pass over the whole film were I think it needs it. I can definately feel a shift in my focus now to get this finished. I did so much planning and preparation for this,  I can really feel it starting to pay off in terms of getting this through production.

Absense from my blog usually means I’m being productive, so the lack of posts can be seen as a good thing. Anyway I’ve been getting my pipeline ready to begin animation production on my short film. All that needs to be done has been, and I can now begin the fun part of making a short. I’ve spent so long developing this now it’s great to see the progress I’ve made this year, it’s easy to begin something like this but it’s another thing actually finishing it. I’ve made big steps towards seeing this story come to life I’ll now get my head down and animate the 117 shots in the film, wish me luck!

Fell off the radar there for a while. Not sure why exactly,  I did want to get finished up on the animation study I’ve been working on. So I’ve  had my head down doing this in my spare time. It’s close now maybe just one more pass over it. It can be strange coming to the end of a project, I never feel like it’s been that successful. That said  I also know when it’s time to finish it and move on. I do this all the time on work stuff just seems to take longer to get to that point on personal projects.

I found the audio for this study so long ago now. It really dictated the character design for me although this was around 6 years ago, I’m sure I would’nt design him like that now. Better to get this finished up and move on, I’ll get it up on my site when it’s all done.