It has been ages since the last update. A lot of university work has been done since I last posted. Plus we’ve started up a little business (zombster.com.au).

Things are moving around on the website as I set up the site as a portfolio. Please do not be alarmed.

Soon all of this university work will be done and I will be much happier. I’m sick of the bureaucracy of the university and welcome change.

My final year is picking up. Mightily busy at the moment. I have a 30-minute presentation next week in which I have to pitch a hypothetical TV animated series with complete Series Bible and Budget Plan. We don’t have budget constraints so very little number crunching. (I even managed to give myself a $150k…) I’m a bit worried about filling up 30 minutes. I’m fine with 15 minutes, but I feel 30 minutes is a bit extreme. (Real pitches are only meant to be 5 minutes anyway so what gives?)

Our final year project is coming along, a bit slower than I would have liked, but lecturers love to give assignments. I’m a bit peeved because the Maya scene of my fish model corrupted during transfer. Never bodes well. (Self Promotion: We have a blog for the production of the project! Down the Line)

Meanwhile outside of my studies I’m having needs to work on my personal projects, but forced to put them aside for now. It always happens towards the end of each semester. Never when I have free time. Also, Kithal is looking to start a business and as much as I want to help him, I don’t think I have the mental capacity for it at the moment.

Keeping an eye out for a lot of productions at the moment. There are a lot of interesting new television series in the works. Also there’s an abnormally large number of animated features coming out in the next twelve months. As happy as this makes me, I worry about the quality.

This is the first week of the last year of the Animation course I’m taking and we all get the wonderful pleasure of working on Animation projects that we the students develop ourselves. Basically the first few weeks of these semester we will be pitching our ideas and then narrowing them down to a few worthy of development. Then the development begins where we write and refine the scripts, develop the Animation bibles (model sheets of characters, environment and props), draw up storyboards and developing a plan of tackling sound design.

I’m not getting within 20 feet of the sound design. I can’t design sound save my life. Probably why I quit my music career way back before it could manifest into a horrible monster of doom, one probably seen in Angel: After the Fall.

Which is why we work in teams! Everyone works according to their skill sets and goals for the future. And that is my problem at the moment. I know Modeling and 3D Animation are a couple of my skill sets, but I also have to figure out what I can do that not many other people can do. What makes my skills special above and beyond the norm. Can’t do a cartwheel so that’s out. My mixed NY/Texan/Australian accent at the moment would make for a very strange voice actor.

I’ll think of something. I also have to hide the fact that I already wrote the script for my pitch, which is dialogue-less, if it should get chosen. Apparently I’m not meant to have a script until like week 5, according to their insanely stupid schedule. Apparently we’re not meant to even animate until next semester, which I find absolutely idiotic. Animation is so key to this project, I don’t see how we can afford to ignore it for that long.

Yes, my stress levels will go up exponentially over this year. I’m hoping for good things to come out of this.

Meanwhile, I’m keeping my eye on the development of Dollhouse. I know nothing is going to be leaked, but it’s kind of fun knowing that across the ocean great minds are meeting to develop what I know will be awesome. (Well, it’s guaranteed to be better than Heroes season 2 so that’s a start.) Yes, I’m a fangirl. But so is most of my Animation group… at least the ones that are girls (even some of the questionable ones). The rest of them are fanboys. We all have our weaknesses. Mine just happens to be one with plot.

I recently wrote a short for my Scriptwriting course that is absolutely silly and inane. A drugged man thinks he’s Little Red Riding Hood. And yes, hilarity ensues. I wasn’t actually going to write the piece, but my lecturer during the second week of tutorials asked us to talk about what ideas I had. I started with “Well, I have two ideas. One is…” and you know I never got around to talking about the second? I’m sort of glad about that because I was internally torn about what that piece would encompass. Add in laughter from my cohorts at the concept and I decided to conquer the beast.

Comedy writing, so I’ve been told, is far much more difficult to write than drama as jokes need placement. My lecturer was already freaking because I had to write two stories to be able to tell the one story in the space of a short film and distrusts animators with scriptwriting. He reminded me that I needed to keep the important elements of the Grimms’ tale in there. He had no idea how to even approach it, yet for me it flowed naturally. If you look at the tale and break it down to the essentials it actually gives you a nice structure. I followed that structure, fleshing out parts to show the reality of the moments. When it reached the script workshop group, my lecturer was actually quite surprised at how well it worked. And you know, I do feel quite confident about the script. It’s not very often I feel confident about my structure.

So now that it is summer in Australia, I have until March to come up with a proposal for our final year projects. This is something I feel strongly about and need to take time to develop. I want as little dialogue as possible since we have absolutely no budget. Yet at the same time it needs to be creative, inventive and original in the span of less than 5 minutes. Jane Espenson mentioned on her blog how writing shorts take just as much time as writing 40 minute scripts. I agree. With the limited amount of time, every word counts, whether they be inside or out of the script. So to develop a proposal for a project that will not only have to reflect me, but will reflect my cohorts if they decide to support it, will require every ounce of creative energy. Kithal’s too.

He can’t escape my babblings.

The community engagement project I’m working on is suddenly taking a huge turn into something with great potential. It’s something I just cannot say no to, especially when I’m already playing a huge role. How it will all pan out I cannot say. Nor can I give away juicy details. You’ll just have to wait patiently.

Maybe this project won’t be so bad after all.

For now, I have to make sure I don’t fall behind on any other projects.