#69 = Some reflections for the semester

At the end of the course, which means the time for the pre-production of the film is almost coming to the end. This semester was so far great, it's challenging, fun but also exhausting. 

The first thing that came to my mind is I miss the opportunity to think about my film in the summer really makes me falls behind the schedule a little bit. That does not mean I have not thought about any ideas in the summer, just when I got too much time, the ideas usually go unrealistic and too ambitious. After struggling with two options (love-comedy and ordinary days of two characters), I pick the second one, and decide to go with the story I am working on right now: a story of an ultra hero and a monster. 

After the pitch, I had spent much time on the storyboard. It is similar to the love-comedy one I had mentioned before, I found it was difficult to "fill in" the missing part, I lost a bit because I cannot think of anything to make the film keep on processing. Without any other choice, I decided to write a full script for the film. A script is usually unnecessary in my previous project, however, I feel I really need more support to boost my imagination, especially I am now dealing with a 6-8 minutes film. I spend over two, to three weeks working on it, it took much time in the time I left this semester, at some point, I even think that's a stupid idea to write a script. However, when it was completed, I know that, yes, I am confident to move on the storyboard now, with some text sources as supporting, it is much easier to create an image in my mind, but when I am very motivated, bad things happen.  My iMac's SSD burnt out.

Well, it wasn't the worst case, luckily I had backed up most of the important files and most of them are also already uploaded on OneDrive, the main problem is I lose access to the tool I had used to. I had to switch to iPad to do my drawings. The profiles had completely changed and it has slowed my pace. I was quite depressed for a moment and I cannot even be comfortable doing any digital drawing like I had been betrayed by my tool. I switch to pencil and paper to do the storyboard, only for a very short period, it was very sketchy and rough, but it did kick me off back to work again. (The pdf of that was on OneDrive>Submission>Blogs, 9 pages in total.) And at that moment, with two extra sources (rough storyboard and the text script), I manage to explore more angles of shots, especially compared to my previous work, which I feel looks a bit "flat".

I feel the animatics have many spaces for improvement, when pulling the image from the storyboard to something actually moving, it was very simple to find out that some shots just does not look appealing. The first issue I spotted in this version I really focused in the centre, it was not bad but it sometimes feel boring and looked like I am just playing safe. I believe a could make some tweaks in the composition and staging to make it looks more interesting. The second issue is the timing, perhaps because I have not animated for a really long time, I cannot make fast pace scene looks great in tempo, that's something I have to fix in the coming week. 

I do try to do some voice effects for the film. I only did it for the first minute. It sounds really stupid, and possible very uncomfortable and unpleasant to hear, even I feel the same way, no matter during recording or editing. However, it makes me see the timing issue in the film, you really have to read the dialogue aloud instead of counting it in your head. The first minute already let me see many problems in the animatics, some scenes are really going too fast. (That's the reason I made a translation for all dialogue into Japanese in advance, they may not be perfect, but I really have to speak it aloud to feel does it sound right, from the timing aspect and the emotional aspect.

I want to start on the rough animation in the late-December, as the schedule is tight. (From rough calculating I got to draw 200 frames a week starting from late February.), although my iMac is dead, I am still going to use Tvpaint to continue this project. So next semester I am very likely to need to back to the studio with my dongle at least 3-4 times a week.