'Bear' Animation Week 4

Those eagle-eyed of you will have noticed that I didn’t post one of these on Saturday like I have been doing each week since this project started, because I knew this week I would only be animating for two full days, therefore wanted to group this week with last week. The reason why? I am heading to Cardiff Animation Festival and I am extremely excited!!! I honestly can’t wait to be in a cinema again watching loadsss of short films with fellow animators and having (hopefully) a brilliant time meeting lots of new people and surrounding myself with all things animation over the course of the next four days. And also getting to see my film ‘04111311’ on a big screen with a proper sound system and an audience- exciting stuff.

But, before all the fun begins, let me enlighten you with how ‘Bear’ is going. This week I completed eight shots and made good headway on a further two. So I matched last weeks efforts.

I’m still really enjoying it, though it is a big film- it feels like it gets bigger and bigger the more I complete! Sometimes it feels like I’m making really good progress because I’m getting a lot finished, though other times it feels like will this even be complete within two years (hyperbole, of course, but sometimes that’s just the way I’m feeling).

I’ve just got to keep chipping away at it (in which I am) and even though I do have some internal deadlines, I don’t want to burn myself out or overwork myself for some dates which are essentially arbitrary. So I’m not going to panic yet- if I find myself ‘slacking’, then I will have a strong word with myself, but if I’m doing between 6-8 hours of it a day (like currently), then I’m not going to be complaining. It will get done when it gets done and the last thing I want to do is compromise the animation for the sake of an arbitrary deadline. I appreciate these things are good to have as they keep you on track, but again, I don’t want to break myself (or let other aspects of my life suffer) over something which isn’t ‘real’. It’s also extremely hard to judge how long things might take before starting a project, especially if it’s on a scale I’ve not worked at before.

I’ve actually got a special treat this week- yes, it’s another clip! I thought before starting animating, I’d be posting clips more frequently, but I actually want to keep most of it back, at least until I make a trailer/ teaser when it gets to that stage. So these will be quite sporadic, but they will be here when I post them!

Peace xo