Thursday, November 02, 2006

AND SO IT BEGINS...

Hit 1,929 words yesterday as I started writing my NaNoWrimo motivated novel. So that's clear of the 1,667 daily minimum in order to hit the target of 50,000 words in one month. For those that don't think they have the time.... it took me a little over an hour to hit that word count. My working day was divided into two currently running projects; Grimmwood and development work on Biteneck Beatniks, they presently take half a working day each (in a couple of days the Animex trailer will take the place of the Grimmwood work for a few weeks). So I fit the novel writing around it by hitting the keys for an hour at about 10am (till 11... I'd already been working on Grimmwood at this point, animated a 360 camera spin through woodland), and then coming back to it (not to work over what I'd already written but to add some more) at the end of the day for about twenty minutes. A busy day, but nothing timetabling didn't sort out. I managed to fit in an hours exercise (a half hour brisk walk followed by half an hour on the dumbbells). The weirdest thing though that I found having a structured target like that each day made me really motivated and organized about everything else I was doing that day (including the exercise). I suppose the key reason for this is because I'm doing it for myself.

The sequence I'm currently animating in Grimmwood involves a pursuit through woodland. So I built a 3D set in Swift3D of all the trees, with dangling leaves, flowers and fallen leaves on the forest floor and animated a stand in for Red Hood and a few wolves (which will be animated over in 2D. Currently 'dressing' the set as it were by going in and ensuring all elements are the right colours, that gradient's shift with camera pans etc. It's quite a laboured process, but I'm really enjoying doing it. Each day I run off a quicktime to see what it looks like. All the while I'm developing a working process so it's taking longer than it normally would do as I explore more time effective ways of doing things. Slowly, but most definitely surely.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

sounds like a full plate is still
leaving you hungry:)

that's great that your are able to balance your many tasks, and still enjoy them.

Jo Bling said...

Still love to proportion the time but it's nigh impossible with a host of deadlines, a one month old and a 15 month old at your ankles! :-D Glad you're cracking on, fella, and ENJOYING it most of all!