Update

I thought it was about time to check in with a progress report, and I’m gonna do it wearing my multiple hats like I did with the first post.

Producer

I think we’ve got a great foundation to move forward. We’ve recently set up a Huddle account for online meetings and communications about the film’s production (because our schedules keep us too busy to meet at the same time) and we’ve got a solid membership of our test audience on Facebook. I think that these tools are going to be very useful moving forward. We’re also moving forward in our fundraising efforts. We’re chugging along and we’ll keep you informed on how things go.

Director / Writer

We’re in the process of hammering out the treatment. Once everyone thinks that its working as a film, we’ll run it by our test audience, and yes, the test audience will contribute to the film’s production from beginning to end… which is kinda cool. Based on their input and suggestions, we will make any necessary revisions and then move forward with a script and storyboards. We won’t reveal much of that on this blog, but we will share snippets with everyone as we go forward.

Animator

We’ve gotten some mixed reactions from the teaser trailer. Some has been really good, and some has been really bad… but that’s okay, because in the book “The Art of the Start”, he says that we need to “catalyze passion” and apparently we are. Maybe it would help if we explained what you’re looking at…

That trailer was designed and animated with Macromedia Flash MX and edited with Windows Movie Maker on my little Sony Vaio laptop, with no Wacom products at all. It’s actual production (not including creating the animatic) lasted two weeks because we had to hit the deadline of Day in the Park (and the trailer was finished the night before the event). We didn’t have the full 2 weeks because of our day jobs, an emergency trip to the hospital and a birthday party. You’re looking at roughly 14-16 hours of work, from beginning creating the character rigs through to editing the thing together.

Now, imagine if we had a computer that could actually run Flash efficiently, a Cintiq, After Effects, Pro Tools and ample production time… and hopefully soon, you won’t have to. -L