Wacom, We have a Problem...

In good story telling, the main character(s) struggle against a conflict(s) which they must overcome to continue and complete their journey. Throughout the course of the story, the audience follows along to witness how the character(s) will solve certain situations and that surface. 

In real life many things can go wrong while working on a project which, in the end, actually makes the process more interesting; however, at the time, it's a pain in the aesthetic. In fact, this week we've had some highs and lows. 

Beginning with the low, my tablet stylus (aka the pen) has somehow managed to escape. I have been using a Wacom Bamboo tablet with a stylus throughout this project and this week, after using it somewhere else and upon returning home, I discovered the pen was gone. I retraced my footsteps, racked my brain, looked everywhere, even considered putting up "LOST STYLUS" signs in my neighborhood. 

Well, I thought, it would be easy find a new stylus; so, I went to BestBuy to get a new stylus and resume my animation work. Time has been my only drawback when working on this project, but now, without this pen, all drawn animation has come to a stop and time is ticking on.

As it turns out, when Wacom makes a tablet, it makes a stylus pen that only works with that tablet. You can't use a new pen model to replace an older one. And so, my only solution was to buy the older pen off of Ebay for the tablet I already have. I'm now waiting for it to arrive any day. I didn't think things would get any worse.

And then, the sound files disappeared from our After Effects file...

HAVE WE BEEN CURSED BY A GYPSY!?

I managed to track down all the sound files and put them back into the correct folder. I am now in the process of working on other scenes that don't require any drawing work. 

Luckily, there have been some good things that have happened like seeing some CG work being done which will be used at the very beginning of the film. Adrian Bolio is working modelling a city in Maya which we will combine with my animation to it later. 

Basic building shapes in gray.

Beginning to place the buildings together.

And then seeing this made my day...

While Adrian is busy adding more building to the city skyline, we got to listen to the original music being done by Marcello De Francisco.

There always something magical that occurs when you put music to animation, especially if someone like Marcello is scoring it. We gave him a rough animatic a few weeks ago and this week we got to hear the results. We added the music to our animatic and it added so much to the scenes we have so far. We can't wait to share it with you, but until then, here is a link to Marcello's music samples.  

Our deadline is rapidly approaching and originally we wanted to have everything done by Oct 25th, but now our revised deadline is November 21st. Greg and I will be attending this year's CTN Expo and hope to meet anyone who might be reading this blog and wants to see our first webisode as much as we do. Now if only that pen would arrive...