The End

Week 14 has come and gone and yes my animation was completed and handed in.
When I say completed, I mean it was ready for submission but it may be months or even years before I think it's ready. I now understand the reason why George Lucas keeps changing Star Wars other then the money.

In all the excitement of finally handing in this animation and being able to sleep properly again I overlooked the fact that there was one last production report to write and here it is.

Production Report 3:

Apparently in the past it is around this time that students look back and lament that they did not stick to their pipelines, I will not do that because my pipeline was incorrect from the start and I have not bothered to look at it since I wrote it nearly 6 months ago. I had no idea how to write a production pipeline because I had never attempted a production of this size so I could not possibly begin to understand the process. I could only guess how long things would take and didn't take into consideration other assignments and elements of the production that would assessed earlier on such as the sound design. So I did not stick to my production pipeline which ids probably a good thing now I am more prepared to write up a more successful pipeline next and hopefully I'll stick to it.

This whole project has been a great exercise in what not to do, which I think is the point and I have learnt many lessons:

1. Technology has been my greatest enemy and one the first things I do before I return next year is buy a new computer with plenty of RAM, I'm sick of slow computers killing off the most precious resource I have; time. 
2. Time has been been a precious resource as far as this course is concerned 14 weeks is not a lot of time to make an animation it's even less time when you have to  factor in the fact that this isn't the only project you have to work on. I had two other classes designed to distract me, one of which I think was just put there to was my time. My ability to make the best use of my time is still one thing I've yet master but in the final weeks of this semester I spent my time before and after class using the school computers, if I hadn't I might never had finished in time.
3. One thing I underestimated was that colouring takes a long time.
4.  Two days is not enough time to work on the sound effects, I know this is obvious but I wish I had worked on putting together sound throughout the semester and not save it for the last week or two. next year I plan on hunting for sound or recording my own during the preproduction phase that way I can animate to the sound rathe then to try and modify the sound to sync up with the animation.
5. I need to keep an eye on the timing of the animation of my shots, the timing kept changing between animatic, pecil tests and final animation. This made it difficult for timing with the music when certrain musical cues had to sync up with the animation, but I had made shots shorter and were now out of sync.

Overall I acheived the look I had wanted for my animation but there are things I would go back and change; there were a few shots that I couldn't get done in time which was frustrating becasue they were only short and yet I still couldn't get them finished in time, I don't think the lack of them affects the story but their inclusion would have made it better. Other changes I would make would be the sound effects; they were rushed together in two days and the slow computers meant that I couldn't get the audio to sync up like I would have wanted. One other thing I would have liked to do would have to add texture to the characters to give them a more oraganic look, less digital.

I think in the end I have been a little too hard on myself, I have acheived something quite impressive and ambitious for my first production, I got the look I was going for and with only a few minor tweaks it could look rather professional.

Finally I would like to thank my friend Matt Serpell for doing the music for my animation, I knlow he found this project just as stressful as I did and I'm extremely greatful for his work and extremelty happy with how it turned out. I hope he hasn't been put off from this because I hope to work with him again in the future.