I almost can't believe I'm writing this, but... all the animation work for my short film is now complete! I even started working a little on the credits tonight. As explained in the post below, there is still work to be done, and many more weeks will go by before a final product can be revealed. But this is a huge milestone, and I'm very excited to have gotten this far. [4/14/08]

I've made tremendous progress on my little film, and only two shots remain. One is an establishing shot which should be fairly easy since no new animation needs to be created -- though I do need to do a bunch of new modeling to make it happen. The other shot could be tougher, as it features a character walking. I'm not sure exactly how I'm going to do it though. There is a chance I can reuse a walk cycle, place the character on a path, and pretty much be done. But I'm not counting on being that lucky. We'll see how it works out when I start experimenting with it. Either way; I'm starting to think it's not unrealistic to expect all animation to be completed in a couple of weeks!

The actual rendering of the animation will still take my computer many more weeks, as certain scenes are rendering very slowly (over an hour per frame). Then there are post production tweaks, sound design, music, titles, etc. But for some reason I'm not really worried about any of that. One worry at a time, I guess. [4/10/08]

I'm working now on the animation of the last few shots of my film. These shots are quick in terms of time on screen, but not so quick in terms of production. A lot of information needs to be packed into a few seconds, and it needs to look good and make sense. Right now I feel like it's falling a little short on both counts, but hopefully I'll be able to come up with some good solutions... [3/31/08]

The many light tests paid off. I finally figured out the scene and it's now ready to render, even if it probably will need some post production effects. I also finished a couple of other shots, and feel like I'm making significant progress! I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. [3/3/08]

Tonight I've been troubleshooting a lighting effect in a pivotal scene of my animation. It's a rather boring task that requires trial and error, note-taking and patience. After 17 tests, it seems like I am finally getting somewhere, although it's hard to say until I've seen the little test animation that's currently rendering...

Speaking of rendering, I am still letting my computer "crunch the numbers" on my completed scenes while I am at work or otherwise away from my computer. It's actually going a little faster than I had feared, and several scenes are ready for post-production. I need to get organized to get a better feel for what's actually done and what's still to be rendered and or tweaked. The scene I am rendering at off hours now is the most complex yet. It is taking an average of 1 hour and 12 minutes per frame, which means one second of animation takes well over 30 hours to render. But some scenes have been taking more like 15-20 minutes per frame, which is not too shabby considering the look I'm going for (it looks very simple but behind the scenes it's a bit more complicated, especially in terms of lighting). [2/28/08]

While I'm still working on animating shots for my short film, I have started final production renders for some of the completed scenes. Rendering will take many weeks, so I'm starting the process now and letting my computer crunch while I sleep and go to work. It's exciting to see actual frames completed! [2/5/08]

I've made an amazing amount of progress in the last few days. I went back and tweaked a couple of earlier scenes, including completely fixing a problem in my character's walk cycle. Then I animated two difficult shots (two stages of the same scene, I guess you could say) and I'm well on my way to getting a third shot taken care of. None of these things are rendered yet, but that requires no significant effort, only time.

Meanwhile, I'm also having a productive song-writing period! I composed a pretty piano-based melody, and I'm working on two new guitar-based melodies as well. And that's on top of a new song I just finished. I'll have to get around to updating my music section soon. [1/30/08]

I think I'm skipping the shot of the feet touching the ground that I mentioned in my last post, because it would interrupt the flow between two other shots. I have yet to do the necessary tweaks to prior scenes, but I've gotten a great start on the pivotal "acion" shots of the film. I use that word cautiously because, honestly, this short film has no action in the Schwarzenegger sense. [1/22/08]

In my latest rough edit of the animated short, I am now up to about 1:06. I'm currently rendering a second or two more to add on to that. Then the next shot to animate is some feet moving from a bed to the ground. Once that shot is completed, the next one will actually have some degree of action. Everything up until now has been about establishing a mood.

But before I get to the action, I may well tweak a couple of the scenes I already have. There are some rough spots. But I'm determined to not get too caught up in that, I'd rather finish my little film than abandon it because I obsessed over details most people won't care about even half as much as I do. [1/3/08]

Happy holidays! Thought I'd pop in and offer a little status report on my projects. First, when it comes to music, I've scrapped one of the songs I recently wrote about. But instead, I wrote another one and have finished recording it. The track is called "gone" and will be posted here in early 2008. I also started work on a strange organ-based number, but it's too early to say if that's going to go anywhere.

As for my animated short, things are going quite well these days. I'm back in the saddle and have now created approximately 58 seconds of almost-ready scenes. Currently I'm animating another 10 second sequence, and I'd say I'm more than halfway into my narrative -- even though not much of anything happens in the 58 seconds I have... [12/23/07]