February 26th,
Pre-production has been going full-steam ahead. There have been many roadblocks and victories since the last posting. The gant chart has me into the second week of animation but actual progress is about three weeks behind that.
As stated I finished Jenna and inserted the dialogue and submitted the Pre-visualization deliverables. Then over Christmas break, an illness, winter break, several snow days and countless evenings, the New Beetle (Jenna's car), the truck, the cab and the cabbie were completed. With the purchase of the Set Up Machine and much experimentation (about two weeks worth) I figured out how to rig the cabbie. This took about 11 weeks time.
Truth be told, I experienced a paralysis of sorts for about five weeks. The pressure of achieving my lifelong ambition within 18 weeks time was more daunting than I wanted to admit. I found myself playing Mario Golf on my sons game cube to unwind more than actually working. With encouragement from friends and much prayer I jumped back into the fray motivated by having work to show David on a weekly basis.
Tomorrow I ask how to do blend shapes on rigs (ordering and workflow). Then I have to make some decisions about backgrounds. Hopefully I can build 6th Ave and have the girls rigged with mouths ready for animation in two weeks time. So by the week of 3/11 I can animate and start rendering, which will put me back on schedule. However this only leaves me with two weeks for animation and rendering. I am thinking however that this is "doable".
I also have to re-mix the sound so I need to catch up with Mike Cushney to get Benita Raphan's contact for the sound studio. Worst case scenario, I'll work in one of my friends sound studios or maybe even get some time at Z-100 in NYC and record the sound there.
Lastly there will be the compositing and editing which if I can keep that at a week I will be done by the week of 4/8 and hopefully have time for tweaks.
I will also resume weekly postings as I need entries for my production journal.