Some comments on our production process:
Scheduling
The scheduling was very difficult, primarily because the production
process was also a learning process for the students and was a need
for space to experiment. As such, we found it difficult to predict
how long tasks would take to complete. This is the first thing that
should be established once an animation team has been assembled.
Team leaders should define their own deadlines (with the parameters
of the production schedule), making it imperative that they have
the experience that will allow them to do this confidently.
Specialization
We would have benefited from a greater degree of specialization.
This, however, is unlikely in a novice level, one-year course. The
range of specializations takes time to come to terms with and it
is unreasonable to expect any student to lock down their options
completely within five months. Also, our current, local animation
industry is not geared to accommodate highly specialized animators.
Animators with a broader knowledge base are more productive in the
boutique style of studio that currently dominates our industry.
Performance Animation
The use of the SABC2 motion capture suite was key in allowing us
to complete five minutes of character animation in two months. There
is absolutely no way we could have accomplished this with key frame
animation. It also allowed us to draw on the skills of highly trained
performers. This collaboration was enormously beneficial, creating
a real-time interactive element to the otherwise exceptionally slow
animation process. Moreover, having contributors who were divorced
from the technical side of the process introduced a fresh stream
of creativity to the development of the characters. The digital
puppets became enablers for the performances of the theatre artists.
The downside of our use of performance animation
was that we implemented it way too late in our production schedule.
We should have integrated it from the start and used it as a quick
and easy tool for mapping out the flow of the animation.
Animatics
A storyboard for an animated scene is essential. An animatic (animated
storyboard using crude, unshaded characters and sets with basic
animation to block out shots) is just as important. We should have
focused on creating an animatic of the scene before worrying about
the rendered look of anything. We created animatics for the short
action sequences that were tremendously useful and we should have
done this for the whole scene. This would have allowed us to evaluate
our animation, camera moves and flow and make changes before committing
to any labour-intensive refinement.
Sound
We struggled a bit with our audio post-production, primarily because
it was left until the final stages of production. We recorded our
voice track very late. It subsequently became evident that this
was completely the wrong way round to do this. The voice track is
the foundation on which the entire animation is built and if I could
change one thing about our production process, I would finalize
the voice track before even switching on a computer.
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