Updog - Part 07 (Tuna Fish Meltdown)

There is no joy in toddville.

Taking two days off work this week, I slogged it out on this piece for three days straight. And I’m talking about three good 14 hour days with my but in my chair and no distractions. Things did not go well and, as it stands, I hate it.

An innocent little comment from my mentor Jason about having Beige really pop up at “Up” and down at “Dog” dissolved a day of that time. He had a concern about a double dip when coffee pot was set down and before he popped up in the arc to shift his weight onto his hand (about frame 80.) I didn’t necessarily agree with him that it was an issue. But I figure it’s good to practice incorporating feedback that you aren’t 100% on board with, because I’m sure that is a weekly (if not a daily) occurrence at the big picture houses. This week, I tried to incorporate it.

Unfortunately, my keys were no longer neatly aligned on the same frames. There were a lot of offset keys in the spine and neck and head and arms and all of that. So changing it proved to be hugely difficult. It seemed such a small thing at first glance, but it wound up kicking me in the butt and then the shin and then laughing at my haircut.

I got it to this point, but there is still a bump when he sets down the pot and the weight isn’t working for me at all. The “or” line got rushed to make time for the new physics of the thing. And there is a strange floating settle after he lands that I didn’t have time to remove.

Basically, it felt like everything I touched this week turned to poo. My confidence is completely shot. I’m consumed with thoughts like, “well maybe my last shot turning out half way decent was just a fluke. Maybe I don’t really know what I’m doing at all.” But then try to slap that part of me in the face and yell at me to snap out of it. And then the other side slaps the other part and screeches about how he can't get it like he wants it no matter how much snapping he does. Then a big sissy fight erupts in my brain. Much imaginary hair is pulled. Many mental vases are thrown to the floor. And then a lot of fetal ball crying by everyone involved.

Ahem. Focus on the positive.

I put in a ton of time as well on the body mechanics at the end with Greeny taking small side steps and Beige pulling away. It’s sorta-kinda working.

As it stands, I’m happy with about 25% of it at this point. I like how Beige smacks the shoulder and I got a little reaction to that in Greeny. When Beige comes up and snorts, that’s pretty good as well.

It’s obvious to me now that to make the close up shot and the following shot to work right, I’m going to need to pad the frames coming in and out again, which means that I need to go to the audio source and give it a minor edit. I think there is plenty of background office noise to not cause a problem. When I asked about this, I found out that animators ask for this sort of thing all the time from the sound departments.

In fact, there is an interesting thing on the “Corpse Bride” dvd where it shows the audio clips they used edited all together with their original video reference of the voice talent. You can see that they rarely take three words in a row as they were read. Every word is edited together practically.

But I digress. I only have one more week to beat this beast into shape. How I wish that I had gone for a subtle acting piece at this point! I’d love to only be worried about brows and eyelids and cheeks instead of contacts and body mechanics. Hindsight is annoying.

I can do it. I can. I can DO it. I CAN do it.

Can't I?