Five to Midnight

There has always been something evocative about a clock whose hands are closing in on midnight - at least for me anyway. Maybe it's because I grew up during the height of the Cold War and remember the iconic imagery of the doomsday clock on the cover the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. Perhaps it's because I was one of the first of my friends to run down to the comicbook store and buy the first issues of The Watchman, again recalling the vivid imagery of a clock whose hands crept closer and closer to midnight. Maybe it's just that I'm getting older and grumpier now and I'm not feeling like I fit in with my "peers" or with society in general - like my time on this planet is coming to an end.

Or, maybe I just like clocks.

In any event, this semester is coming to an end. All of us will be delivering our last goals for the semester, and next week there will be a simple wrap up of the project reviewing how far we've come during the course of the past fifteen weeks. I've got to finish off all of the initial animation on the clocks, the 3D background for the warehouse sequence, fix up some of the 2D animation from that same sequence, and bundle the whole thing up to ship off to Elliott so that he can get to work on the soundtrack - oh, and he gleefully accepted the project saying that he initially wanted to do a take of the Batman soundtracks for this short animation. I'm not exactly sure what he means by that, but I'm sure it's going to be interesting.

So, what else can I say?

I like to think that I've come a long way on this project, from having nothing but an idea in my head at the start of the semester to having a fully developed animatic with a complete set of rough animation in it. Looking forward, next semester will be interesting, and I do mean that in terms of a Chinese curse ("May you live in interesting times"). Cleaning up and colorizing the animation will take a lot of time, but I really need to spend time - perhaps over the semester break - to lock down much better sound effects. Beyond that is the 3D shots and animation of the warehouse, they need to be spot on or it will ruin the film. I still have other special effects shots to do as well, like the shaking of the train and the background imagery moving by in the same sequence.

Plenty to worry about.

But for right now, it's time to deal with the things that are immediately at hand. I'll put a scratch coat of plaster on everything for next week and give it a chance to dry before coming back to it. I'm tired and I've got other things to deal with. I'm hopeful that I can come back to this project refreshed and ready to go next semester. We'll see. Stay tuned...