My animated short film is now completely rendered! I've spent the last few hours editing, and have a decent rough laid out already. I did discover a bizarre problem with one of my shots, which may necessitate a full or partial re-render. Beyond that, everything is looking as planned. I'll need to lighten up some of the shots in post-production, but that was expected. All in all, this is a happy day! [7/17/08]

A lot is going on around here, even if I've been quiet about it on this website. The rendering of my short film is nearing an end. I am currently rendering the second to last scene. Once every frame of the animation is rendered, I can begin the editing and post-production process, which I expect will be a much faster process than all the work I've done up until now. [7/1/08]

The short film rendering is going quite well. 14 shots are rendered, and 7 remain. My other animation project is quickly progressing too. The core parts of the set is built, and the characters are done except for the arms. I'm also working on a couple of new songs. I really should get around to updating my music page, as I actually have several good songs recorded. Stay tuned... [5/28/08]

The rendering of my animated short is a long process. Whenever I'm asleep or at work, my computer is chugging along. Some scenes are rendering at 1 frame per hour or worse. The last couple of shots have only taken 10-15 minutes an hour, which has been nice to see, as the light at the end of the tunnel at least becomes imaginable. About half of the film's shots are rendered now, and I think the second half will go a little faster. Some of the remaining shots are not as long. So, there is progress to report, but it's still to early to give an estimate as to when the thing will be done.

Meanwhile, I have started work on my next animated project, which I'll discuss more later. For now I'll just say that I am making very quick progress on it, and that you are likely to see the results of this new effort only a couple of months after the first project is released. [5/11/08]

I almost can't believe I'm writing this, but... all the animation work for my short film is now complete! I even started working a little on the credits tonight. As explained in the post below, there is still work to be done, and many more weeks will go by before a final product can be revealed. But this is a huge milestone, and I'm very excited to have gotten this far. [4/14/08]

I've made tremendous progress on my little film, and only two shots remain. One is an establishing shot which should be fairly easy since no new animation needs to be created -- though I do need to do a bunch of new modeling to make it happen. The other shot could be tougher, as it features a character walking. I'm not sure exactly how I'm going to do it though. There is a chance I can reuse a walk cycle, place the character on a path, and pretty much be done. But I'm not counting on being that lucky. We'll see how it works out when I start experimenting with it. Either way; I'm starting to think it's not unrealistic to expect all animation to be completed in a couple of weeks!

The actual rendering of the animation will still take my computer many more weeks, as certain scenes are rendering very slowly (over an hour per frame). Then there are post production tweaks, sound design, music, titles, etc. But for some reason I'm not really worried about any of that. One worry at a time, I guess. [4/10/08]

I'm working now on the animation of the last few shots of my film. These shots are quick in terms of time on screen, but not so quick in terms of production. A lot of information needs to be packed into a few seconds, and it needs to look good and make sense. Right now I feel like it's falling a little short on both counts, but hopefully I'll be able to come up with some good solutions... [3/31/08]

The many light tests paid off. I finally figured out the scene and it's now ready to render, even if it probably will need some post production effects. I also finished a couple of other shots, and feel like I'm making significant progress! I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. [3/3/08]

Tonight I've been troubleshooting a lighting effect in a pivotal scene of my animation. It's a rather boring task that requires trial and error, note-taking and patience. After 17 tests, it seems like I am finally getting somewhere, although it's hard to say until I've seen the little test animation that's currently rendering...

Speaking of rendering, I am still letting my computer "crunch the numbers" on my completed scenes while I am at work or otherwise away from my computer. It's actually going a little faster than I had feared, and several scenes are ready for post-production. I need to get organized to get a better feel for what's actually done and what's still to be rendered and or tweaked. The scene I am rendering at off hours now is the most complex yet. It is taking an average of 1 hour and 12 minutes per frame, which means one second of animation takes well over 30 hours to render. But some scenes have been taking more like 15-20 minutes per frame, which is not too shabby considering the look I'm going for (it looks very simple but behind the scenes it's a bit more complicated, especially in terms of lighting). [2/28/08]

While I'm still working on animating shots for my short film, I have started final production renders for some of the completed scenes. Rendering will take many weeks, so I'm starting the process now and letting my computer crunch while I sleep and go to work. It's exciting to see actual frames completed! [2/5/08]