Nearing the Home Stretch

Before Spring Break, we did our second animatic pass. This pass, we wanted to have our animation to the rough pass; we had almost every shot to the rough level. (Just to clarify, for animation passes, the first one is blocking, the second is rough, then the last one is the polish pass.) Being at the rough pass was an accomplishment with all our struggles through the process of the whole short film.

We got a lot of critiques during the animatic pass, and now we are ready to work on those. I am honestly a little intimidated, but I am ready for the challenge. I think a lot of the changes were camera and effect based, but I had a bunch that wanted me to change the beats of my shots. Some parts were going too fast, others were too slow, and I was honestly a little surprised because I had not really gotten any of that feedback before. It is a little frustrating because I submit my scenes after every major update to the SyncSketch, and I had nothing. Hopefully, my teammates will be more willing to tell me now or to know what to look for. Part of what I am going to do in the next week is adjust the timing for my shots and get those down.

I have a lot on my plate coming up in terms of animating. There isn't a whole lot of time left, but I'm going to have to make it work. I really hope that it doesn't mess up my other classes. The other classes have been giving me a relentless amount of work, so I might end up working fewer hours at Starbucks to try to help.

I am super excited to be going into the polish pass. I can't wait to work on the expressions and the little bits of body language. It is one of my favorite parts of animating, so it is something big keeping me going.