Animation Mentor Newsletter





	Animation Mentor: How did you come up with the concept for your short film? Isaac Hingley: Well let's see, the first thing I did was a brainstorming exercise. I went into a room where I could relax alone and feel free from distractions. I brought a pencil and a notebook with me and anytime something (i.e. plot, character, or even an incomplete thought) popped into my head I wrote it down no matter how silly or incoherent it might be. Before long, I had a few pages of random thoughts. I put the pages away for a bit to let the ideas subconsciously percolate. After a few days passed I brought the pages out again to try and make sense of them. I matched things up that seemed like they worked well together. After that I had about a page of usable ideas. I set that aside for another day and then whittled it down some more by only keeping ideas that sounded like they would be fun to work on and that I could relate to. This is a very important step because I was going to spend at least 6 months on this so it really needed to be something that interested me. I also pitched the ideas to family, classmates, friends, and anyone else that would listen to see which ones they most enjoyed and identified with. I finally narrowed things down to three ideas that I would have been happy to do. Then I pitched my top three ideas in our weekly Q&A to get some more input from my mentor and classmates. I mulled it over for another week, and finally narrowed it down to my favorite idea. I pitched it again to my mentor just to be sure. Animation Mentor: What important lessons did you learn from making your short film? Isaac Hingley: • Setting goals and deadlines and sticking to them is essential to finish a project like this in a reasonable amount of time. • I learned to be realistic about what I could accomplish within the deadlines. It seemed really easy to get in over my head when I wasn't honest with myself about what I could realistically accomplish within the timeframe. • PLAN, PLAN, PLAN. It was hard to know how to go forward without a good plan. • I had to be firm enough to stick with my plan but be flexible enough to revise my plan if something wasn't working. • Feedback is crucial to the success of any animation project. Bouncing my ideas off of my peers was really helpful here. I found that they are a very important and abundant resource for a fresh perspective. But at the same time I tried not to veer too far away from my original idea. Often when I veered too far away it became hard for me to relate the story and the characters to my life experiences. • When tech problems happened (and they certainly did happen) I found it most helpful to take a deep breath, be patient and work through them step by step. Also, when all else failed I went to the pros. Animation Mentor support staff ROCKS!!! :-) • Whenever I hit a wall in the creative or production process I would get up and step away from what I was working on. I would take a short walk or find something else to take my mind off of whatever the issue was for a few minutes. I found that when I got back to it I was often looking at it with fresher eyes. Animation Mentor: How long did it take to complete your film? Isaac Hingley: Approximately nine months. -3 months in class 5 for preproduction -3 months in class 6 for animation -and about another 3 months for final animation tweaks/polishing, texturing, lighting, rendering, music composition, final sound mix, and final edit. Animation Mentor: How much planning was put into your short film? Did planning help make the process easier? Isaac Hingley: The first three months during class 5 were devoted to deciding on an idea, storyboarding, creating an animatic, and finally a 3D layout. Throughout this time there were tons of brainstorming sessions, camera angle and cut changes, etc. My mentor and fellow classmates were extremely helpful in the planning process and it was definitely a team effort. The structure and deadlines of the Animation Mentor program were really helpful to keep me on task and moving forward so that the film could actually be finished within the deadlines. By the end of this time, I really felt like I had a pretty good handle on where I was going with the story into production. Planning certainly played a big role in the process and made the whole thing possible in a reasonable amount of time. Animation Mentor: Do you mind sharing some of the pre-production work with us with a little explanation of what we’re looking at. Isaac Hingley: The 2D animatic was a very difficult part of the process for me to get through. Drawing is definitely not my strongest point. Creating the storyboards for this animatic was tough at best, but I managed to make it through and I feel like I was able to convey the story points that I wanted to get across with my drawings. When moving from the 2D animatic into the 3D layout phase I found that the perspective in my drawings and my inconsistency in volume didn't transfer quite as easily as I had hoped it would into the 3D world. So I needed to make some staging adjustments accordingly. Animation Mentor: What obstacles, if any, did you experience during the creation of your short film? How did you work your way around them? Isaac Hingley: One very challenging thing was having to change mentors between the planning (class 5) and production (class 6) stages because each mentor provides a completely different take on things. It can be, and was, very helpful getting a fresh perspective on the story, but it also takes a bit of time to get on the same page with one another and to get your new mentor to buy in on the idea. I imagine that it is probably somewhat similar to switching directors in the middle of a production. In this situation I just bit the bullet and took things in stride – maintaining flexibility. Also, my new mentor was realistic about the situation, and tried not to make too many drastic story changes unless he felt they were unavoidable and focused his feedback primarily on acting notes. I was also very challenged by how to approach the effect for the punch splashes without using liquid dynamics. I learned how to light and render as well while in production. For this, I found that my fellow Animation Mentor students were a vast knowledge bank. I couldn't have made it as far as I did in these areas, within the deadlines, without their specific and plentiful advice. Probably the most difficult thing to overcome while making this film, and in my Animation Mentor experience as a whole, was time management. It was really tough to manage working full-time, going to school full-time, spending time with my beautiful wife and amazing son and my family, and having something that vaguely resembles a social life on top of that. Needless to say my plate was pretty full. I never could have made it through this whole life changing process without the endless support and encouragement that my whole family selflessly offered. Please see the answer to the second question for some of the ways I approached this problem. It was also very helpful to have my animation workstation on a laptop. That way I was much more mobile and if, for example, a family trip came up, I could bring my work along and animate through it. As for when I animated, most of my animation time took place from the evening to the wee hours of the morning while my wife and son where sleeping. I found that this was when I could get the most uninterrupted and solid work done. Of course this meant that I was able to get only a few (and in some cases zero) hours of sleep at night. Caffeine, cat naps, and trying to eat the healthiest diet I could came in handy here. Animation Mentor: Tell how your Animation Mentor experience helped you in creating your short film. Isaac Hingley: Without a doubt Animation Mentor provided me with the solid foundation and beyond in the animation principles, story and film techniques necessary to complete a project like this. The Animation Mentor support staff was super helpful, positive, and quick to sort out tech issues with rigs and such. The Animation Mentor community of mentors and students were all amazing and willing to help out with feedback, solutions to issues, and encouragement along the way. It really is hard to put into words how vital the entire Animation Mentor experience was to my success in creating this film! Animation Mentor IS AWESOME!!