Downs and Ups

Spring Break is over, and I am SO glad it is.

Don't get me wrong, I love the concept of Spring Break. It's a point in the semester where the sun is supposed to shine, giving us a hint of summer to come. We call get to relax and sleep in for a week or so, catch up with friends, go to a party or to, and generally recharge our batteries - ready to return to school refreshed and prepared the the last month of hard work.

It never works out that way though.

I started off by getting sick for a week. Then my wife used my computer, and just like the last two times when she used my computer, my primary hard drive failed taking just about everything with it. So, while coughing my lungs out, I had the incredibly enjoyable experience of spending two and a half days rebuilding my computer and reinstalling all the programs I needed to get back to work on this animation.

I bet you were wondering when I was going to get to talking about Fleeting, weren't you?

Yes, by Thursday of last week I was once again back up and running and trying to animate. I say "trying" because I spent the next four days screaming at Maya because I couldn't get these ndynamics and dynamics to work in the three scenes I needed to get done (with being sick and the computer crash I had long forgot about getting shot 021 animated - that will happen this weekend).

By Monday morning I was fit to be tied.

Fortunately, Sarah came through. She introduced me to preset materials in ncloth, and worked out the bugs that had been vexing me. Also, for unknown reasons, the dynamics component of the shots mysteriously started to work. By late afternoon on Monday, I had most of the shots ready to render, and Tuesday I did just that I also completed and hand drawn animation of a glass of wine spilling to complete shot 015.

Bloody hell I'm tired.

Oh, and I'm Valedictorian of my graduating class. Did I mention that? So, downs turn into ups and hopefully the trend will continue. Must hard work lies ahead, but I'm fairly certain I can get it all done on time. Until next time, stay tuned...