May Review Update

I have updated Undercover ASSignment to include the new scene build and Miranda model. At least, all but a few exceptions. It was an incredibly tedious process because the movie is broken up into so many different save files. I had to update each save one at a time. As such, I have skipped scenes 1 and 2 for now. SFM can only copy to one clip at a time, and scenes 1 and 2 are broken up into about 20 different clips each. That's more work than the rest of the movie combined. Additionally, there are some slight differences to the Miranda model, which means editing the animation will be very tedious too. To preserve my sanity, I'm going to update them later when the rest of the movie is in better shape. Otherwise, I'd probably burnout before getting to anything else. Scenes 3-16 have all been updated with the new scene build and the new model.

With all the updates, I've also reviewed all scenes of the movie. 

Scenes 1 and 2: The only scenes I've animated so far. They're quite good but could really use the updated model. They'll be very tedious to update. Additionally, I'm not sure I like their pacing to start the movie.

Scene 3: A little bit awkward because I starting making changes to this scene when I wanted to start the scenebuild revamp. It'll need the audio fixed.

Scenes 4 and 5: Rather awkwardly cut in terms of pacing. I'll need to make some changes.

Scenes 6-16: Up to this point, I was a bit down on the review process, but the rest of the movie from here on out was really solid. Most of it was really well cut in terms of audio. There are only some more general criticisms I have.

From my last revision, scenes 10 and 11 were meant to be entirely cut, but I want to keep them in some capacity. Scene 13 was also cut really short, so I restored some of that audio as well. These restorations brought the movie back up to around 21 minutes though, and that's not including any intro.

I want to hit around 16 minutes, so that the movie is either that length, or it will be around 20 minutes once a longer intro is included. I've been thinking about a new revision to trim the movie down and edit the pacing. Mainly, I think the pacing could be sped up, there's a lot of redundancy with the krogan scenes, and there could be more alien variety in the later scenes.

I've made a lot of notes about changes. Honestly, I could probably make a whole post about the movie's pacing. I think it makes sense to actually edit the movie and talk about it more for when I work on the rest of it though. For now, I have a draft that would shorten the movie to 17 minutes.

June should be a month of experimentation. It'll be nice to work on some other animations without the pressure of the movie. I'll have time to solidify plans for the movie. Until then, I'll try out other projects and build up to it.