Updog - Part 06 (With Miles To Go Before I Sleep)

Even though I put in work on this piece, I couldn’t tell you why it’s any better at all. I’m not sure that it is. My only consolation is that I didn’t have a ton of time to put in this past week.

What I DID do is I eliminated the intersecting and got a little more weight on his hand lean, although currently it feels too abrupt. The “or” arc is feeling better but it still needs to be reworked.

I included Greeny looking down at the hand before we go to the close up shot, again big thanks to Jason. A killer suggestion in that too, because now I have more time to show Greeny’s reaction to Beige because I don’t have to have that extra beat for him to look at the hand and get angry. Now the close up starts angry.

I got the arcs on his head and hand right before the shoulder slap to work much better. Before Beige’s hand was passing right through Greeny’s face. Geometrically, this move wouldn’t work in real life, but in real life, peoples heads aren’t the size of beach balls either, so I’m willing to cheat it a bit.

Also thinking back to one of our recent lectures, I wanted to add in a touch of anticipation for some dialogue, so I added the slight head shake before “nothing.” Of course, as it stands, it’s not very slight at all. I will have to tone it down a touch.

All of a sudden I feel super stressed out about how much I have left to do on this piece before the end of the term in two weeks. Somehow, I have gotten way behind without realizing it. On my last piece, I had three weeks to concentrate on the face alone. But now I have to add the phoneme shapes, get the weight and arcs working all correctly, and get the face polish to the level of my last piece. Yikes! The crazy thing is, I'm no further behind most people in my class. In fact, most people are worse off than me. But everyone is saying "don't worry." But I'm worried.

I, like many of my fellow students, at times feel burnt out on this crazy schedule, which involves work and school and family. Currently, AM takes about 20 to 30 hours of my time a week in lectures and homework. I have been so very inactive on the forums and fellow AM'ers workspaces leaving comments. I'm just too strapped for time. I’m very jealous of those that don’t have to hold down a full time job while working at AM as well. If I have any regrets about my AM experience, its that somehow I didn’t secure enough cash so I could go through school and not have to work. I know it will all be worth it in the end. I’ve already learned more in the past year than I would have thought possible.

So stiff upper lip and all that. Now get back to work.