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Too Close to the Sun
To Animate or To Not?
The time to graduate from college was nearing. As I rounded the corner into the final stretch of my degree, I found myself falling short of both credit hours... and desires for what Mechionic could do. In the end, I decided "I could do a rough animated short film! What could go wrong!" The answer was many things. But the biggest enemy of every artistic project is, and was, time.
Storyboarding
For the first few weeks of this project, I bounced around exactly how long this "final cut" should be. As well as questioned things like "how polished do I want to make this? Do I make it longer, more similar to a full pilot episode? Or do I make it a more polished short film-length animatic/colored storyboard?" And I think in the end, I ended up going through nearly seven different story plans and scripts before I finally landed on the one I'd make in the end.
GDC and the Final Days
By the time I had finally gotten through a completely sketched first round, I had worked out the script that I (as the voice actor) would follow, however timing felt off. It was also at this time, that I attended GDC with my character designs in hand, and was offered a great amount of feedback on my designs, most notably, Harlynn's. She was pointed out that none of the West African inspiration really came through in her design, so rather than large gold bands, I adjusted her to have gold-dipped beading, larger earrings, and most importantly, a "monarch" shaped hairstyle! It was also at this point that I had decided I would fully polish this project into a hyper-short film that told a "trailer-ized" version of events from the original story I wrote, resulting in a project I can confidently show and be proud of.