Day -1

The day before I start the 10x10 movie (10 minute short in 10 days). I'd set aside this day for setup and getting things organized, but now it's here, I don't think there's really a lot of setup to do.

I was going to publicize this a bit more, but I'm not so sure now - there isn't much to see; I don't have any pictures. I did look into doing some more formal planning, Gantt charts, critical paths, estimating times, but the more I think about it, the more I think maintaining these plans would add overhead. I have a loose idea in my head of how the time is going to go and I think things may change as I start work on the project, so I'd end up with a choice of junking the original plans or adding even more overhead trying to make new plans.

That's not to say I'm going to lack discipline, or constantly be aware of the deadline. I think one of the dangers when I start work is that I'll spend too much time on stuff that doesn't contribute a great deal to the final movie. For this reason, I'll probably forgo concept art, storyboards, a formal script. Instead what I plan to do is to go as quickly as possible to an animatic - a short animated "thumbnail" movie. It will look like crap, but it will give a sense of what works and what doesn't, together with timings.

I hope to have that mostly with a settled story, script, models, and rigging by the end of this weekend, then use the following week to polish it into the movie itself. The final weekend will be for final renders and fixes.