Well this blog's dead anyway

If anyone's interested, this is the animation that landed me the job. :I

Finito!

Well, that's phase one completed. I actually finished and sent off the last episode just over twelve hours ago but I needed to catch up on sleep before I could be bothered signing onto Blogspot.

This thing has been hell to animate on top of the pressure of a 50-credit-point semester at university. I'm still wondering how I managed that. I am one man and so far I have animated TWENTY MINUTES AND FORTY SIX SECONDS of Okki the Octopus.

If no one gives me an award for this I am going to invent one and give it to myself.

The client didn't like the look of Coach Eel so I gave him a facelift. I'm glad they pulled me up on it as the new Coach Eel not only looks better but is also much more expressive and smoothly animated.



In other news, I am finally onto the last of eight episodes of Okki the Octopus which should hopefully be finished in a few hours. It is by far the longest episode, but thankfully it is not that complicated compared to an episode like Okki's Game where there is a lot of action and everyone is wearing a soccer uniform. Tiny little technical perks like that can ramp production time for a two and a half minute animation (about the length of Okki's Game) to the same amount of production time as a longer but simpler episode such as the final episode, Okki the Team Player. It utilises many pre-established backgrounds and characters from previous episodes, though the episode itself goes for three minutes and twenty seconds.

Upon completion of this final episode, phase one of the project - which will constitute my WIL Project for university - will be totally complete. From there I will be moving into the 'feedback' stage where rather than producing entirely new material, I will be refining and making changes to episodes as per the client's request.




The last two episodes have both called for small-role characters who nonetheless appear a few times during the animation. Every time I must make a new set of parts it adds hours to production time, but the end result is usually quite satisfying.

Okki - Complications and progress

Medical problems have been seriously halting up production lately. I wanted to have all eight episodes finished by the 17th of May, but on the 16th I suffered a major burn to my abdomen. I was unfit for work until Thursday that week. On the following Saturday, a tooth-filling in the front of my mouth fell out, exposing one of my frontmost teeth's nerves to the air! I couldn't get to a dentist's until the next day, so I spent Saturday in agony. Sunday was spent travelling to and from a dentist's on the other side of Brisbane. At least now I know the value of working in medical emergencies into buffer time for a project's schedule.

Currently I am in the final three weeks of my semester, so the completion of Okki is absolutely imperative. I have given Andrew Spark the worst case scenario that they will be completed by the end of the month and the best case scenario of having them done by Wednesday - we'll just have to wait and see.

Home Stretch

Well, this is it! Okki is officially due by the 17th. That's a week from now.

I am currently working on a few episodes at once and right now I am close to finishing Okki Meets the New Kid.

Don't choke!

Update

Just about done on another episode, specifically episode 3-2, "Okki Meets His Match". This episode was a pain as it was mostly dialogue, though the jellyfish bully was loads of fun to draw.

The final due date for the remaining five episodes is May 17th. Here goes nothing!

The intended date of completion for Okki has been pushed back while I sort out some 'house issues'. The new plan is to get the animation proper for at least seven of the episodes, preferably all eight, totally completed by the end of this week. The voice acting has all been done, but the rest of the month will be devoted to David Williams' sound design and my musical composition. The project may not be going as quickly as I initially planned but things are coming to a head.