Project Review

It has been a long eight months or so, but this project has come together to create something truly inspiring. Few problems presented themselves over the weeks, and they were resolved with minimal sacrifice to the finished product. One such issue early on was the fact that this animation could not exceed one minute. This meant cutting out roughly one half of the story I intended to create. Gone was the sub plot with the greedy walrus and the robot looking over an icy hill to admire the aurora Borealis, recovering his memory in the process. Such exposition was mercilessly trimmed for the one minute limit. The irony being that even with the trim, the final animation clocks in at just over two minutes. This was the only real problem from the pre-production segment of the project, as naturally the majority of woes came from the production stage.

At the beginning of the production phase, I was hit with glandular fever. This played havoc with the animation. Despite this setback, I did not stop working on it. I managed to model my set and fully rig and texture the robot within a week. While this still put me behind, I wasn't under the impression I was in any serious peril of not finishing in time. With assistance from Chris, Li and Jack over various conflicts that came up, I quickly caught up with everyone else. What was first a plan to cut down on the visual aspect of the project to meet the deadline, became a promising looking animation in its own right. My choices to hide a lot of the action and have minimal sound was helpful in allowing me to concentrate on more important issues. Lighting, for example plagued my mind as a difficult hump to overcome as I was completely inexperienced in that aspect of Maya. Regardless, the lighting was completed much sooner than expected - within minutes, in fact. At this point production was about finished and post-production began.

Perhaps the less stressful point of the animation. The relaxed nature of the post-production phase, due to my knowledge in all of the required software, allowed me time to assist Steve in his post as well. In addition to voice acting for both Steve and Marcus, I was able to mix the sound, edit and burn the dvds for both of their projects. All that time, still working on my own project and making excellent strides along the way. My comp work, for example, was completed within a few hours, with assistance from Darren. At this point, the project was just about complete and I felt less compelled to worry if anything were to go wrong.

And now, after a long year, the major animation is now complete. Suffice to say, it wasn't nearly the hell I expected it to be. I learned so much in this time that any would-be problems that may have occurred would have posed little problem to me. It was a great project to work on, as was Steve's and Marcus'. My only hope now is that the masses will enjoy it as much as I have producing it.