Jeff Lew
11-08-2007, 05:17 PM
Hi everyone,
Thanks for the overwhelmingly great response! All this makes me more confident about the movie's success. There's still a lot of work to be done, cause I'm not anywhere close to where I want to be in terms of my goals, but yes, thank you for the great start.
Let me address some of the questions. First my wife. Yes, she is absolutely incredible. She's been so supportive ever since we met and when I first started doing animation like 12 years ago. She has just as big a part of this movie as I do. She was pretty much the executive producer on the movie. She asked me how long I thought it would take to make the movie. I told her 5 years, and then she told me, "Do it in 4."
Hahah, but yeah, she created a schedule for me to try to accomplish. That really really helped.
4 years with no job? well, I did pick up some side gigs here and there. They were all short 2 month gigs. My animation DVD helped a little early on. I gotta tell you, the biggest drain on my bank account was not the software or hardware, it was the cost of living, especially in the Bay Area! Man, am I stupid or what?! But yeah, rent, food, health insurance. My wife is also not employed after our son was born. But we kinda figured our bank account would dry up in the fall of 2007 and whether I finished the movie or not, I have to go back to work. So the fall 2007 was my real deadline. And that's why I announced it now. Also, it doesn't hurt to have 0% interest credit cards, which my business is running on right now. :thumbsup:
Let's see, DVD, release plans: Too many things have to happen right now. I'm still waiting on a few things, but like I did with this announcement, I'll announce the release after it happens. Too many things can go wrong, so I don't want to go into details right now. It would be premature. I have the Jay-Z mentality now. "Let your s*** bubble quietly and then you blow."
Software. Man, I spent a lot of money on software. I thought hardware was going to cost me more, but it was the software that used up a lot of the budget. So I'm just going to list the softwares I used and that's it, cause I feel like I already paid them enough. No need for me to do any extra advertising. So here's the list: Maya, Final Render, Vegas, Photoshop, Syntheyes, Acid Pro, Audition, Particle Illusion, Vue. I don't know if I'm forgeting anyone. I appologize if I am. But while I'm at it, I really have to give a special thanks to Feeling Software for Nima and also to AGEIA for their PhysX engine.
So that brings me to questions about production. I used every shortcut imaginable. Anywhere where I can cut the corner, I did. If a shot was too hard and if I could do it an easier way and not hurt the story, then I changed the shot or just cut it. It was all about efficiency and getting things done. It wasn't about perfecting. I used a lot of stock models for stuff like props and sets and I also used stock motion capture where I could, and also a lot of stock textures. I really had to think like a stingy producer.
In terms of pipeline, my whole mentality was, I tried to offload as much work as I could to the computer. I mean computers and electricity are cheap compared to manpower. I rendered everything in camera and tried to reduce the compositing work in post. I didn't care if the renders took longer, as long as it reduced my time in front of the computer. I created mel scripts to automate a lot of repetative stuff. I mean, I wanted to do the least amount of work possible, which is still a lot.
In terms of how many people worked on this movie. I would say I did 90% of the work. I had actors do the voices and like I said earlier, Von did the bulk of the character designs. I used stock assets where I could. The rest was all me. But it was all me, not because I am a pompus egotistical arrogant fool. Trust me, I much rather not do the work than work. I did a lot on my own because I didn't have the funds to hire other people nor the management. If I am successful on this movie, I will definitely be hiring help for the next one. That is for sure!
But yeah, I was excited about this movie about a year ago. Now I am a beat down, battle-hardened old man. So thank you guys for all your positive feedback!
Jeff Lew