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Animation Mentor:
How did you come up with the concept for your short film?
Matt Wessel:
The concept pretty much comes directly from real life. This is usually how I spend my days at home alone. I am often tasked with one or two simple chores and will do all I can to put it off. I am normally not doing things as productive as bishop is in this film, though. I am usually playing video games or building models.
Animation Mentor:
What important lessons did you learn from making your short film?
Matt Wessel:
Keep your concepts simple. This piece got out of hand with ideas and I had to trim a few scenes out to keep it from getting long-winded. It can be hard not to include everything you think of in a film.
Animation Mentor:
How long did it take to complete your film?
Matt Wessel:
I took the full 6 months of class 5 and 6 and I am still not done. I am a little limited in my hardware resources at this point, so nice play-blasts are about the best I can do for final renders. I plan to eventually move my Maya license to my big computer for a final render.
Animation Mentor:
How much planning was put into your short film? Did planning help make the process easier?
Matt Wessel:
A lot of planning was put into this. I bounced story ideas off of colleagues for weeks before my pitch to my mentor. I drew thumbnails and layouts many, many times for a few different ideas. The planning period really takes the stress out of what to do when you get to the animation stage.
Animation Mentor:
Do you mind sharing some of the pre-production work with us with a little explanation of what we’re looking at.
Matt Wessel:
I have the storyboard, animatic, layout, rough animation and final animation included here. The story was quite clear to me from the start as I spent a lot of time on the details before I got to the storyboard phase. I try to work out rough thumbs and fairly final layouts in my storyboards so I get a pretty good feel for what the film will be like in its final state.
The Animatic is a really important stage for me. This is where I work out the length of the whole film and rough out the duration of each shot. This allows me to plan my animation stage in terms of scenes need, characters needed for each scene, and what props and sets I might need to find or construct. I put the sound effects over the animatic to give a better sense of movement and story progression over the still frames.
My Layout is when I work through where exactly the characters will be moving through frame and roughly how long they will take to get there. This is a step I did not normally take before AM and it really changed the way I work. This step really allowed me a lot more freedom in directing my scenes as I was not married to any animation that I was not ultimately happy with. I was able to try a lot of different things before settling on a final layout.
I wanted to show some of the rough animation that I did leading up to the final piece to illustrate how much more polished the animation became near the end, but also to show how similar it is in look and feel to the final piece. This was something that I was quite surprised with as my past projects always looked drastically different at completion than they did at the beginning. The new way I have of working now really shows the results of very copious planning and working out all the “kinks” before getting to animation. I can’t stress enough how important it is to me to NOT start animation on scenes to soon.
The “final” film is 98% there (it’ll never be done) and is here for all to enjoy.
Animation Mentor:
What obstacles, if any, did you experience during the creation of your short film? How did you work your way around them?
Matt Wessel:
Sleep becomes an unnecessary diversion when finishing a short film under deadline. There were lots of 3 am bedtimes. I also suffered a lot of frustration and self doubt that came and went as I made small strides forward. There were times when I just hated Bishops face for a week or so, but I hammered on regardless. I knew the final result would be something special. I still suffer from a lot of doubt about whether the film is good or not. I like the story and the animation, but I think every animator struggles with wanting to tweak something “just a little more”
Animation Mentor:
Tell how your Animation Mentor experience helped you in creating your short film.
Matt Wessel:
Without AM, I would have no short film and no shot at a major studio, now, I feel that when the timing is right for me, I will have a good chance to get into my dream career. Not a lot of people can say that. Animation Mentor is not only the best school. I have ever been a part of, it is one of the best groups of people I have ever had the privilege of spending time with.. I continue to Tutor at the school and I animate often,. I have a short film that I can show to friends and family or send to studios. I would not have been able to do any of that without the AM team. I can’t point to one specific thing that AM did for me while creating this film. The whole package was the key to my small success with the completion of Feed Milton.
Thanks AM!
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