The patience of Walt
My journey to create an animated short.
As a child in school, I doodled flip book cartoons in the corner of my text books instead of listening to lectures. Here is an older yet more mod version of my childhood drawings…
I watch all the documentaries. I study design books. Analyze digital and analogue media.
And now, in my best role ever, I lead content creation for HR Innovate.
In my deepest moments of delusional grandeur, I dream of operating a Recruiting content farm on par with Haus of Gaga.
Corporate Social Responsibility
At the outset, I sat with our team and we hammered out an operational framework defining who we are and what we do. A framework to drive decision making that is always on message and agreeable with our Vision of how we do business.
To that end, we defined parameters around Corporate Social Responsibility. A friend asked recently what that means and I bottomed lined it as — We’re not just trying to make money, we are nice people too. I failed to mention that when I say we — I don’t always include me lol.
Together, we selected Unique Smiles as the local non profit we wanted to promote and support the best way we know how.
In December, 2018 we were approached and agreed to assist in creating a children's video to help spread their message. The feedback had been that the video they had were too adult for the little ones. A former elementary teacher myself, and a cartoon enthusiast — I jumped at the opportunity.
Always create a threat with your move
Rule #1 in Chess: Always create a threat with your move.
We had the script written by a professional content writer and vetted by the board— which was no easy task. I got our favorite graphic designer to mock up some artwork and took a colleague into the best recording studio in Cyprus to record the audio of the final script. I felt like it was all going to plan.
I am a fan of open source applications (read free). And after plowing through several video editing programs over the past decade had settled on OpenShot. It’s free and versatile enough. In the meantime, I mocked up this seven second short to shop around — a look what I can do moment — really.
“Do or do not. There is no try.” ~Yoda
With all of the pieces in place, there was only one task left at hand. The animation. I was excited because I felt like the hardest part, navigating the partner waters, was behind me. All that was left was up to me.
Day 1
The first night, while my wife watched television, I happily plugged away at the keyboard, with one ear on the animation audio and the other listening for jokes on tv. It was a real treat.
Day 2
I could tell that this task was larger than I had initially imagined and put in a few hours at work as well as the evening
Days 3 & 4
I sat down and plugged in early in the morning on a Saturday. Determined to put out a quality work. Surrounded by my favorite items; music, internet, dogs and soda — I zeroed in.
After 12+hours on Saturday I was only halfway in. Another 12+ on Sunday and still not there. My wife was visibly agitated with me.
Day 5
5am and I am back at it. Plugging and plucking until about 2 in the afternoon, it was ready. I called my team to watch the debut.
“Why does the little boy speaking have a woman’s voice?”
I watched the debut in horror. I had butchered the animation and the images. — and time was up. I sent the video out to be vetted, but I knew in my heart it wasn’t there.
Day 6
Shook. I took the day off from animation. Also, I have a 60+ hour a week job and my work there is beginning to suffer. I quietly repeat to myself…
Wu-Tang is for the children.
Day 7
I spoke to Bobby at the studio. There had been a critical error in the audio that we needed to fix and I asked if we could toon/tune the voice. He obliged. Zara from the design house sent me new animations to work from.
Days 8 & 9
My software gave up on me. I lost more versions of the video in fatal errors than I care to recall. I removed the software and reinstalled it. I moved from the laptop to my high powered iMac and back. I was beginning to feel ill. I just couldn’t make any meaningful forward progress. I began looking for and downloading new video editing software but quickly realized it was too late in the game to learn a new program and output anything like a quality product.
Day 10
I made a few executive decisions. I decided to cut over 50% of the animation I had initially planned as the work is so delicate and getting it wrong by .02 of a second can significantly break the project. The second major decision I made was to animate around 5 seconds at a time and publish it to .mp4, then to import the animated file and either work on the next 5 seconds or a 2nd or 3rd editing layer.
Day 11
Now I am moving again. Forward progress. I’ve had to make peace with my animation decisions. Another full days work.
Day 12
Gotta add the credits.
Final Release
In the end, we produced a video that was accepted by the board. Hopefully, it will help our little ones find meaning in a complicated subject.
A lot was learned in the process, not the least of which is that I won’t be diving head first into another animation project without an animator who has the patience of Walt.
I think I just needed to write this all out to put a button on the project.
