Production notes
“...and I’m spent!”
Animation is finally finished!!! Well, the bulk of it anyway. I’ve completed enough character animation for the film to work, ideal for the test screening. Someone with no prior knowledge of the film should be able to watch it from start to finish and understand exactly what’s going on, even though all the finishing touches still remain undone. If any part of the film is not clear, I should have enough time to make improvements...
The 90 seconds of animation I had left to do since my last post turned into about 110 seconds. That may not seem like a big difference, but on average I spend about 40 hours animating 10-15 seconds. Interestingly, as animators become more experienced, they don’t seem to spend any less time on a sequence, but rather improve the quality of their work instead. Of course, this depends entirely on the nature of the production, but it says a lot about the ethos of the animator.
I might be exhausted by the long animation job that’s now behind me, but I’m excited by future animation jobs, particularly my next film. There are always going to be unforseen problems and changes in direction, but with the experience I’ve gained on “Gus” I’ll be far more prepared. One thing I’ll definitely spend more time on are the character rigs.
When I made the character rigs for “Gus”, the film I had in mind was very different to the one I have now. I’ve been constantly challenged by creating animation that the rigs were never meant to handle. It’s common practice for an animator to request more control of their rigs from the rigging department, but there is so much I simply didn’t expect my rigs to need. I’ve been trying hard to make the most of them, and make only the smallest rigging changes necessary to get the result I’m looking for.