swan-song-production-blog

[swan-song-production-blog]

Here I am, two days later regurgitating what I had word vomited out onto kitchen checks at work and hadn't had time to get posted here yet...

Life is funny, isn't it? The struggle on this project is mainly within myself. The sweet spot that spawned it: a well of emotions unpleasant and necessary to find my way. Climbing out of them was the inspiration for making this in the first place. As my life moves forward, it grows, with each day better than the last. I wouldn't say I am complacent or settled in contentment. A better observation would be slightly afloat in euphoric moments and I need to reel myself in and focus.

Now that I have been letting myself enjoy my life, I need to find the balance. Attending the Detroit International Festival of Animation on Saturday rekindled my fire (not that it had been extinguished, just dimmed) to get this back on track. Seeing the films that people had poured their hearts into displayed on a theatrical scale and triggering responses out of the audience! The laughs and reactions... That is the goal: Connect with the audience through the film.

I'm charting my way through the dark while blind at times, but each journey is unique to itself. I'll never be exactly here again, so I'll treasure each step for what it is. As far as preparing for next semester, I finally was in a position to order an external SSD portable drive, so hopefully it will help with productivity and workflow as far as Adobe program's project files are concerned. No more broken file paths when trying to work on different devices! It should arrive on Thursday. I never know how to do things the "correct" way, but I will find "my" way.

By now the drive is here, because it is now Thursday. Let's try to get everything moved onto it and test it out, since this is where this project is going to live for the next year.

[swan-song-production-blog]

Production may have to shift off of the kitchen checks. Work doesn’t seem to be ordering them anymore. I could probably try to find some cheap pads online, but at that point��I dunno. I should be more structured in this, but this project is very much something that will not be forced. Every leap it has made has occurred in a moment of darkness where I turned to an informal outlet with no expectations and let the pen bleed onto the paper. Not worrying about erasing or making anatomy perfect. Letting every line give form to emotion. Not worrying about “getting it right” the first time. I can bang my head against the wall, but this project very much will find its own way and I just have to be paying attention when it tells me where it is going. Assignment turn ins want a schedule, a script and a production book. The schedule would be a lie or wishful thinking. I have never taken on a project like this before. Anything I put in that schedule is a guess and a generous one at that. A script…I know the general flow, but I also know stuff will change. Professional? Nope. Very much nope. I am aware that if this were a project being pitched in the industry, this would die faster than gossip travels in a small town. But this ISN’T. This is important because, this is an opportunity for me to learn how I approach something like this. This is a personal piece that I am attempting to squish into an assignment for a grade. This is for me, to prove to myself that I can do it. This is for everyone else, to serve whatever purpose they need it to for themselves.

[swan-song-production-blog]

Second Leg

This project that started off as emotional spills onto the kitchen checks at work has surprised me at how it has flourished. There is still much work to do, but I feel as if ever since it blossomed into the concept for my junior film, it has taken on a life of its own and I am merely a vessel for its journey. I am excited to see where it goes and at the same time, I hold a sliver of fear rooted in uncertainty. But that’s okay. In what has been rendered so far, I have already learned so much about myself as a person and an artist. That “aha” moment when everything suddenly flows like water for a fraction of a second. My goal for this film is fairly simple: to actually complete it within the given deadline (or fight like hell trying and finish anyway after the fact) and more importantly, to hopefully resonate with at least one other person that sees it and give to them what so much art out there has given me. I’ve got 17 weeks to go from a rough animatic to fully experimentally animated. Even simple can sometimes seem like a tall order, but I’m ready to see where this path will lead and what version of myself will come out the other side.