Back on Track

Dear Patreon,

once again I'm sad that I haven't been able to write more updates as of late. It's not that nothing has been happening - quite the opposite!

When I left off last there had been a lot of trouble and delay causing me worries, and unfortunately they didn't come to an end at the time of writing. Slowly but surely however I've been working on turning each and every one of those bad things into something good, and I'm pretty proud to have succeeded in that. 

One example is my computer, which I got back from repair more broken than when I left it. It took me two weeks with Apple support testing every nook and cranny of my computer to prove that it was a hardware error, but at long last I managed to erase any doubt, resulting in Apple paying for the following repair, and the expenses for the previous one being refunded. I still had to pay all of the transport expenses, but on the positive hand my computer has pretty much had all of it's hardware changed as if it was brand new -- and all of the new pieces have two more years of warranty! More than anything it just feels good to work on a stable piece of hardware now.

There has been a lot of work for me for the past month to make up for some of October's expenses. Among others I've been working at the awesome studio, Nørlum  (known for their co-productions on Song of the Sea and Long Way North), and doing some cool freelance work for UniquePublications.

On top of that we just started our big project of the year at The Animation Workshop, which turned out to be more hectic than first anticipated. I think I made 5 animatics in 5 days to please the crowds-- I may upload a couple of them in an upcoming post with  some more WIP work from that.

Anyhow, Tales of Zale- how's that going? Well as you can tell my hands have been a bit tied these days, but you know things have still been moving forward! I had gotten a bit ahead of things with the animation, so there's still been some stuff for other project members to work on in terms of clean-up and coloring. In addition I've had one particular animator cast for one of the characters in this upcoming episode, and I've been working on directing some background design. Moving forward I am sending out the animatic to a couple of test viewers, and making some final adjustments before locking the timing down further. I hope to soon be able to send some things off to the sound mixer and the composer for the project.

There's not very long left till Christmas vacation and I very much hope to be able to write more at this time. I've just got a couple of assignments left to sort out in the coming two weeks and then I'll be free to get on with things!

Happy December in the meanwhile!

- Sif

(PS. Above is a WIP vertical slice from Tales of Zale Episode 3)