"Stumped" | Short Film

Here it is! After months of work and two semesters at animation school (SVAD), hours upon hours and a last minute all-nighter, my short film Stumped is complete! I'm going to take some time to talk a little bit about the process and how I feel after completing my first CG short film project.   It has been a rollercoaster ride to get this project to where it is now. I definitely had my fair share of problems, but with some help from the internet and insightful professors, I've managed to actually produce something I think is enjoyable to watch. I managed a few laughs from a crowd of a few hundred laughed when it was shown at my school's End Of Year show, and that was satisfying.
I've learned so much between the last two semesters, and probably more this semester than I ever have. My head has been repeatedly exploding while learning all the different aspects of what it takes to make a short film in CG: modeling, texturing, rigging, animation, lighting & rendering...There's just so much to know and so little time. Lucky for me, I love learning about everything animation related so that kinda falls into place nicely. I really did have a lot of fun creating this project. It's hard to believe that my very ugly storyboard & character design sketches actually turned into this. In fact, I really didn't have a character design and was behind a little because I changed my story idea a month into school. This project could have been gunslinging meerkats or robot dogs, but instead I chose this story.  A boy struggling to chop wood.
I distinctly remember this one moment I had a few days before our projects were due. I had just finished animation around 100 frames or so and thought I was finished with my final shot. Then my good friend 'Aloonatunes' pointed out that my animation was reading weirdly; the character just held onto the axe and floated for a good five seconds. I thought it was amusing, she thought it was weird. My professor eavesdropped on our discussion. After watching the animation, he promptly told me that I had overcomplicated things (as usual), and that the action could be much simpler. He drew out some thumbnails and showed me a better way to do things. I sighed. Here I thought I was done and now I had to redo five seconds of animation with mere days to finish. I briefly considered ignoring his suggestions and keeping the work I had already done. Instead, I determined I would re-animate the shot, if it meant making my short better. That shot turned into one of my favorite (if not my best animated) shot of the film-- when the snow falls on Roth. I remember after the discouragement faded, I actually smiled to myself as I began animating Roth again. I was feeling real joy bringing this digital marionette to life. I think that was the most memorable moment and most valuable lesson I learned. Now I can't get enough. I want to make more.
I realized that if I enjoyed the process of making the art, then that joy and experience was more valuable than the art itself. Sure it feels great to have finished Stumped. Sure it feels great to be done with another semester of school. Sure it feels great to be congratulated by classmates and professors. But really, I've realized that this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. I want to work on creating things that other people can enjoy. I want to enjoy the work I'm doing. I get a high from taking something, making it, then making it better. Sometimes it can be a real struggle to sit there and work on the same thing over and over--animate, playblast, check the motion, fix it, add detail, repeat. But in the long it's that drive to achieve excellence and that feeling of knowing good work has been done that wrangles me into this newfound love of animation.
That's not to say that Stumped doesn't have its issues. After working on this project for months, and looking at it now, there are definitely issues I can see that I would fix. There were problems before it was finished that I wish I could have fixed. My environment is relatively simple, most objects don't even have textures on them, the big tree texture is pretty bad, most of the modeling is fairly rudimentary, my lighting could have been better, and I barely color corrected (some shots are way too overexposed). I pulled an all-nighter doing the sound design & music the morning before the project was due. It was worth it (I'm slightly proud of my axe hit noises!). Even so, despite all the problems I can see now, and the ones I'll be able to see with 5 years of experience from now, I managed to do what I set out to do: convey a story through a CG medium.
  And I think that is a wonderful thing.
  I hope you enjoy watching Stumped as much I enjoyed making it.
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