I've been doing quite a bit of animation in the last few weeks-- there's nothing like starting a new animated short to remind me just how time-consuming animation can be. I've got most of the voices recorded but am trying to find another actor to voice Lee since my first VA dropped out.
Since I have about a month to finalize 5 minutes of animation (Or, y'know, make it good enough to present), I'm trying to find ways to simplify my workload. Using photographs as background helps, as well as doing shading during the compositing phase in After Effects.
I've animated the more human figures (Grim Reaper, Scott in human form) and while I've gotten their body motion to look passable, I'd like to record some reference video or get some pictures of a person in specific poses just to have something to reference when cleaning up the animation. I'll probably ask my roommate to help me out with this as long as he doesn't mind being a stand-in for the personification of death.
Festivals have also been on my mind since the discussion about filmfreeway and withoutabox in the other week's class. Recently there was a post on Cartoonbrew listing several animation-focused festivals with submissions ending in May, so I'm considering submitting Ghost Buds to those festivals as well as more on withoutabox.
