Bothered Bot! It's in the can!

After an absolutely insane weekend--yesterday at about 3:15pm(45 min. before the deadline) I turned in my film! And now that I suddenly have actual free-time, this blog is definitely in need of an update! It was pretty intense over the past few days, no all-nighters, but I was feeling pretty fatigued yesterday after 4 days of 3-4 hours of sleep a night. However, it was absolutely worth it and now my third year film is done! Since yesterday, I've been nit-picking it to death, and have gone through a roller coaster of emotions, but after a full-night's sleep and some serious time away from the computer screen, I watched it a couple of times and can actually say that overall, I'm pretty happy with it. I achieved the one thing I set out to do---give myself as much time as possible to just animate. I definitely feel like I was able to give many scenes a lot of attention which I really haven't been able to do before. It has always been painful to be so short on time that I can't revisit a scene and fix the animation. And because I've been able to animate/re-animate a number of scenes, I actually had a ton of fun on this film. Never really felt like "work" until the absolute end...when I was suddenly on a schedule of working from 8 in the morning until 3 or even 4 am the next day to get everything done in time(no animating obviously. Just post-production and duking it out in the battlefield that was After Effects). Oddly enough, this morning, after sleeping a glorious 9 hours, the last few days really only feel like one, big, looooong, day--all the chaotic events, are just a blur to me. I'm still trying to get my days straight. haha. Anyways, I'll be posting my film online sometime over the weekend(probably Sunday because Saturday is going to be jam-packed with Open Show style fun) and until then, here's quick cellphone snapped, photo of my computer screen as I wrapped up my film yesterday afternoon:

The top blue line is the video while all that bottom craziness indicates where all the sound is. Not on screen is the soundtrack which was just one line below all that stuff.

At this time though, I really wanted to acknowledge everyone that was right there by my side helping me throughout this year. I can't thank everyone enough for all their input and invaluable contributions. This film wouldn't have come together without them. Having my friends, teachers, and even my family swoop in and save the day was amazing. Another good thing were the people who'd give me a good kick in the butt to make sure every scene lived up to its own potential. Always felt very motivated/inspired after a critique. I'm not too sure how many of these guys read this blog, but regardless, here's the list of everyone who made sure this film could, "be all it can be":

Thank you everyone!

Alright, I'm off to go catch-up on life for a little bit before I start focusing on a portfolio/demo reel for the upcoming Job Fair.

Coming into the home-stretch!

The past few weeks have flown by and everyone is suddenly facing the terrifying prospect that--10 whole days remain until films are due! Time to break out the IV's of caffeine, kiss sleep goodbye, and hunker down for this last stretch! Probably have "Final Countdown" on a constant loop as well. :P

Last weekend was my final pass on animation. The one aspect I'm very happy about is how much I've been able to refine the animation. It has been really nice being able to finish large segments of the film, receive tons of great feedback from classmates/teachers, and then go back and actually have the time to address the changes. However, with the deadline coming up fast I had to put my foot down at some point and "lock" all animation/camera work---still need to tweak a few things, but the latest version of my film is leagues stronger then 4 weeks ago. Presently, I'm getting ready for post-production and getting all of my scenes ready for the magical realm of After Effects. I should be finished with compositing by Thursday/Friday and next weekend is all about the sound effects/soundtrack---and that Monday, I turn-in the finished product by 4pm(omg. Sooooo close!)!Knock on wood though. While some areas of this film have gone rather smoothly, I've certainly hit some obstacles and encountered some just plain weird events that have probably taken a few years off my life---like file corruption, computers crashing, losing several hours of work(happened last Saturday!), etc. Being this close to the finish line, I'm very paranoid, but at the same time, numb to the whole computer crashing on me biz. But overall, this year's Crunch-time is an improvement over the craziness of last year. Not having an epic film has certainly helped reduce the chaos. Any who, here's a photo from my day:

So how does this relate to a 2d film? Well, it kind of doesn't. Some major changes occurred over Winter Break--and the number one change is, this year it's a 3D film for me. Not a hybrid like last year. 98% of it is all Maya--some of the special effects were done in Flash(the final 2%). Most of my classmates know about the change, but I haven't posted too much, so I'll just announce it now and get into more details about what brought about this change after April 26th. Anyways, the above image is how I spent my morning--- I took over 4 computers(yep. PC lab) and for the good part of today, rendered out the majority of my film. Okay, back to work, still have a couple hours left before I go to bed.