OK, so...?

This Saturday I'm making a film in 15hours and entering it in a film festival.

Am I a sucker for punishment or am I actually nuts. I think to be a good animator one needs to be both. Being borderline alcoholic probably helps too, at least that what the SImpsons tells us and TV never lies. I know because they said so on TV one time.

At 8am, we, (The various counterparts within McFoolin Animation) get given a mystery object and a quote. Both of which must feature in a film that has to be finished and edited by 11pm. Sounds like a blast. WOO!...

Now WHAT!?

You can watch ELIMINATE DR SANDWICH at http://207.36.233.66/b_files/DrSandwich.mpg courtesy of www.pugamation.com

This site is made by Belinda Bohlken, who helped out with the musical score for the film

In hindsight my very original pitch and script is almost EXACTLY what I ended up with as a final version. Anyone wanting to point out how ironic that is should go to www.getstuffed.org/shutthehellup.

I LIKE my film. After the hamburgers stopped chasing me in my sleep, demanding that I change their dialogue, and I hadn't watched my film for a month or so I sat and watched it again and again and again and I'm really happy to watch it still. I vaguely remember saying to Matt Riley, "Yes Matt, I'm still updating my blog...' but more importantly, that I wished I could erase my memory of ever having made that film so I could look at it with totally unbiased eyes and a fresh point of view.

I'd have a few pointers that I'd write down and email to myself...

• The pacing of the movie DIES almost instantly when DS arrives home and is suprised by his party guests. There is too much dialogue here with not enough action and the whole piece just slows down.

• There's only so many hours you can work in a row, for so many days, before you realise you've aged about 10 years overnight and you look like a garbageman

• If the script had been written more simply right from the beginning, more detail could have been applied to the polished linework I imagined it having when I first thought of the idea.

• You've erased your memory, it's in that file on your hard drive labelled PLEASE DONT TRASH

Then when I had my memory back, I'd make a few notes like

• I think the visual style I designed, although not as polished as I'd have liked, worked well.

• Giant Robots are cool.

• 6 minutes of hand drawn, full colour animation including lipsynched dialogue, soundtrack and hundreds of foley effects is REALLY REALLY HARD. I'm proud of my film and I'm looking forward to the next one. I've learned as much about what NOT to do when making an animated film as I have about what you SHOULD do.

Next time I'll be more logical in my approach to what I can achieve in the time I'm given. I won't be foolish and try to make a movie in less than 20 hours and then enter it in a film festival. That would just be CRAZY!

I was right...

I quote myself from August 16, 2004... "Someday I'll look back on this project and think one of 2 things… 1) WOW, that was a job well done… or 2) WOW that job would have been much easier to get done well if I didn't always insist on making my stories so damn complicated.

I was almost totally right. How FREAKIN annoying!!!! That was MEANT to be funny. You know... like if I'd said, wouldn't it be FUNNY if I made a 6 minute cartoon that was so damn complicated that I'd need to write 23 versions of the script, make 19 detailed and different animatics in order to nearly go blind by drawing almost 7500 drawings, then scanning about 3200 of them, then colouring them all in (individually), so I could composite them in a bunch of software I don't really know how to use. Course, that would only take me literally 20 - 22 hours a day for several months, so I thought "HEY!... Let's make this interesting, I'll write 6 minutes of dialogue (trimmed down from 9 mins), requiring voice talent to audition and be available for several recording sessions each!"

No problem!... while I'm at it, I'll drink about 2 litres of coffee every day, spend all my waking hours wondering why I can't sleep and then have nightmares about talking hamburgers. If I follow this plan EXACTLY, I should get this done easily. I might even go to fiji for a week, just for laughs...

In the end I was torn between calling the film. "ELIMINATE DR SANDWICH" or "How I became a strange jittery hermit like guy and all I have to show for it is this lousy cartoon..." The first one was easier to say in one breath, so I stuck with it.

I awoke the morning after the screening on the sound booth floor, in only my australia flag boxer shorts, still very drunk. Several hours later, when I was sure no-one had any photos of me in my severely alcohol induced slumber, I started talking out loud to myself. I WAS trying to talk to other people, but as I wasn't making any sense, nobody was really listening. The world seemed very strange that day. The last inklings of 18 weeks of blood, sweat, tears and coffee faded quietly into my head. I took a breath and thought... "Ah crap, I don't think I've written in my blog since August'