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.

Wrap-up from Pre-Production I (Winter 2012): THE TEAM

Eleven.  That was our lucky number.  Eleven weeks in a quarter.  Eleven students working on the production.
 
Our #1 priority during the first few weeks of class was establishing lines of communication. The VERY first item of business on our first day of class was collecting everyone's contact information and availability for the quarter.  We also created a facebook group as well as a public dropbox.com folder.  We cannot stress enough how important this was to the success of the first eleven weeks of class.

As mentioned previously, our team was primarily split into a 2D team and a 3D team.  Then a hierarchy of leadership was decided: one director (in charge of the vision of the commercial), two producers (in charge of keeping the production on schedule), one 2D animation leader (to ensure quality and continuity), and one 3D animation leader (also for quality and continuity).

Every week, everyone (including leadership) had tasks assigned to them.  Every week, we did weekly reviews and feedback, both as a group and one-on-one.  (Production work and character designs are being compiled into our art book that will be available as a PDF upon completion of the project.)

Some of our roles have changed slightly since we have moved into the final stages of production.  Our texture artists have evolved into colorists, our 3D asset creators into compositors and sound editors.  All in all, the project is moving along well, and at a pace much faster than we anticipated.  We've got high hopes, but we're trying to keep it mostly under our hats (for now.)

Wrap-up from Pre-Production I (Winter 2012): THE PROJECT

Our client is the in-school, student-run cafe called Muse.  The Muse wants a commercial that they can play on the school monitors to draw in more business.  They gave us complete artistic freedom to portray Muse as a place of creativity for the culinary students who work there as well as the customers who frequent it. 

The talent in the room was pretty evenly split into 2D and 3D animators, so we meshed everyone's skills to create a commercial with a cel-shaded 3D environment and 2D characters inhabiting said environment.  There was a little hesitation when we started about how well everything would come together in the end, but so far, it's looking pretty good.