Wrap-up from Pre-Production I (Winter 2012): PROS & CONS

During the last hour of the Pre-production class, we discussed as a group what everyone felt were the best and worst parts of the first 11 weeks.  Here they are, distilled as best as possible from pages and pages of notes that were madly scribbled into multiple sketchbooks that morning: 

STRENGTHS

+Having the 11 people broken into smaller teams of 4-5 with 1 leader worked well keeping everyone on task

+We kept personal drama to a minimum, even when we were panicking.

+LOTS of reference (footage, photographs, peers, instructors)

+Time management: We sectioned out huge chunks of pre-production time for our animators to throw together character designs, practice 12 principles of animation drills with more experienced peers, get some refresher lessons perspective/anatomy, and even a couple crash-courses in toonboom (since not everyone had worked with that program before).


+Saturday night check-in was a good idea:  Our class was on Wednesday, so we had everyone check-in by Saturday night at midnight with whatever progress they had made on their tasks for the week.  That way we knew if anyone was running into problems with enough time to fix the issue before the next class. 

WEAKNESSES
--Make sure leadership knows how to be clear about their instructions.  Make itemized lists if you must, but make sure EVERYONE knows what their task is for each week so nobody can be confused about what they should be doing and what's being done by someone else.

--Trying to make sure everyone was happy/friends with leadership ate up a lot of time, which resulted in less time working on the production, which resulted in missing deadlines, which is NOT. GOOD.

--Everyone had to learn that once class began, the feedback leaders gave wasn't personal, it was all for the sake of the production.  Feedback, positive and negative, is necessary for progress.  Accept it and give it in the most professional manner possible.