Final Semester Blog Post 6 - Crunch Time, Animation Struggles, and Time Management Panic

It seems that I have once again not managed to get my blog post in on time, and for that I am really truly sorry. I always seem to remember the day after it is due. Maybe that's because my Fridays are always insanely busy?? I barely have enough time to eat on Fridays, honestly, so it's not all that surprising. Either way, I am going to try and continue to get these done and turned in on time.

As one of the main animators of our group, I feel like I'm letting my team down a bit. I have been working non stop and trying so very hard to get as much animation done in the time I have as possible. But instead of getting it all done like I wanted to, I've ended up moving a lot slower than I want to. I'm trying so so very hard, but I have another class which has some homework I also have to work on, and I try to give as much time to my animation as I can, but I also have to eat and sleep. It's just. . .a struggle. And it's stressing me out quite a bit. My teammates keep reassuring me that it's okay and I should just keep doing my best, but I don't know how I feel about that, especially considering we've started working on our final renders. I'm being crushed under the weight of a comparitively low number of animation scenes compared to a lot of the others.

And I feel like I'm not doing enough just because I'm not staying up till 3 am trying to work on stuff every night. But I know if I tried to do that I would just end up with some very very shitty work, or not get much work done at all. Even knowing that logically, I still can't help but feel like I'm behind simply because I'm not putting things like sleep on the backburner as much as many of the others are. I'm just worried I'm not doing enough. . .I'm still trying very hard though!! And I mean that!! I take snacks to the lab and stay for hours trying to get things finished. I just wish I was faster at animating things. But I'll keep pushing through and try to do my best as good as I can. And I mean that.

We've been doing a lot of render tests, and renders in general, and I'm looking forward to seeing how those will turn out, but that being said, I don't think I'll be the biggest help when it comes to that side of things. I'm mostly trying to get my animation done, as you can see above, but Isabel and plenty of the others have been working on those, and if they need my help they'll ask. Otherwise, I trust them to know what needs to be rendered when and how. I'll just leave that up to them. Same with textures. They're almost done, and I'm so so proud of all those who've been working on that stuff. It's impressive. Everyone is doing their own thing and doing a good job at it!! And Sam's lights are phenomenal, as always. I'm never worried about the lights. He makes them look so good.

All and all, we've hit crunch mode and the panic button, so we're all running around like chickens with our heads cut off trying to get everything done in time for our screening. I'm excited and terrified in equal measure. It's great. So much conflicting sensations in my body. We'll get through it though. We always do. I believe in us.