Production notes
2004: In the beginning
I came up with the idea for "Gus" in May 2003 and began working on the film in early 2004 as my final year project at university.
The various stages of film production (development, pre-production, production and post-production) often overlap, but within the structure of my course their boundaries became significantly blurred! A mix of development and pre-production dominated the first few months. Dozens of treatments and beat-scripts were written, while characters and environments were being designed. As an animated short with no dialogue, a traditional script wasn't essential, so when the story seemed to be working on paper and the character designs were finalised, production began. Storyboards and story reels were developed concurrently with character modelling and rigging. These characters were my first attempt at bona-fide CG characters, and the learning curve was steep!
The second semester was soon upon me, and my inexperience quickly exposed how useless my production schedule was. Too many unforseen problems had me falling far behind. By this time the story reel was complete and seemed to be working, the character rigs were complete, but not without their limitations, and I was left with next to no time for everything else, including the most important part... animation!
The film I wanted to make was simply too ambitious for one mere mortal over two semesters, especially with my experience, or lack thereof. The end result was only a "teaser" - the first two shots of the film, which served as a pretty good premise. Upon graduation, the project was shelved while I pursued other projects.