The best laid schemes of mice and men......

As the title suggests, my animation schedule has not gone to plan. But this is not time for panic, I still have over a week to go and over half the animation complete my main hurdle has been technology; as I sat down to work on Saturday morning I opened up Photoshop only to be informed that my licence has expired or not working or something stupid, so I used this as an excuse to upgrade to CS6. Except CS6 is having some issue or another with my computer so onto CS4! With all this stupid running around to have working software I have lost two precious days of work.

All this pain aside the running comp has been updated with several new shots. Most of these shots still need a few minor tweaks.


I really wish computers could feel fear and pain, then I wouldn't have so many problems.

Week 10 is over, time for another Progress Report

Wow week 10 is over, now only 4 weeks to go. I told myself I would gauge how worried I should by the amount of work I have accomplished by week 10, so lets see:

The following shots have been finished save for the colouring and the odd frame or two added or taken where necessary. I also have the backgrounds completed for all of those shots, these are being added to the running comp as we speak.

• The messenger riding towards camera through the valley on horse
• The messenger entering the geisha house and being greeted by the host
• The ninja trying convince the messenger that he's a geisha
• The POV shot the ninja running into and trying to escape from the big guy
• The ninja being dragged off by the big guy

I am currently working on the shot of the messenger walking away with the geisha's. So far I'm happy with the walk cycle of the messenger but not so much with the geisha's but I've got the movement worked out so I know what I'm doing.

The other shots for the geisha house include some new stuff where the ninja will make one last attempt to kill the messenger with a blow pipe, this will be the next shot I work on as it will be the longest shot left in the geisha house.

As for my sound design; the current sound on the running comp will be tweaked but will remain as a placeholder for the sound design assessment. It's not perfect and not what it will sound like in the end but it is too early for completed sound design so my current sound will be used as reference for timing.

I've sat down with Matt and we've worked out what instruments are to be used and at what point and what the mood of each shot is. I'm feeling pretty confident that the music for this will rock.

So should I be worried? I don't think I should panic just yet, but there is no time to relax anything could happen. With the flood of unnecessary distractions that plagued this production a few weeks ago now gone it should be easier to focus on the animation that and this stage is far more enjoyable.

So the plan now is get the third scene finished by the end of next week and start work on the second scene.