Reality Check

Above is my original Production Schedule as I planned it last semester during PreVis. Based on its progression, I am behind schedule, as I am finishing week 2 of the semester and should have completed shots 1-3 preliminary animation. In retrospect the schedule was a little too optimistic about my ability to model and texture everything in a couple weeks. However, I feel I gave myself way more time to do animation than is necessary (of course, the more time I have, the better then animation would be--but I have to balance the time spent on animation with completing all the other elements as well), so I'm not too worried--I expect to start animating in a week or so and believe I should be able to do a first pass of the entire piece in 2-3 weeks, and that should put me back on track.

Once the cameras are set, beginning animation should be fairly simple--I plan to reference in the two Justins into the Master File and scale them based on the Normans that are currently in the scene. Then I can block out my animation based on the simple poses I created for Norman--but with quite a bit more thought put into silhouettes, body curvature...etc...

I was a little worried that since I changed my cameras between my second animatic and my final Previs materials (because of slight story changes), that it would be a lot of work to fix them. Fortunately, they are all iterations of the original cameras, and it looks like I only have to change a couple shots. So the goal for the day is to get all the cameras set so next week I can begin animation!
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(Later that day...)

I've not only set all 9 of my cameras according to my shot sheets, but I've created a new camera rig where all 9 cameras are inputed into a new shot cam so I can quickly see what an edit would look like. Of course, I can still render out from each individual camera, however, this way I can play blast the whole piece quickly and get a sense of how the camera movement and character animation are looking over a number of shots.
As well, I've referenced in both Justins and scaled them according to the corresponding Normans that I used as placeholders. I still haven't figured out what to do about the IK/FK Switch issue, but I'm going to move ahead and hopefully will not need to use it. If a solution comes about, it shouldn't be difficult to scale the placer back to 1 (if necessary) so I can make the proper adjustments.
Starting next week I'm going to pose the small Justin based on the original poses I created for Norman and can begin to nail down the blocking.
I expect that the camera will have to change some since the blocking I did for Norman was so quick and dirty. Fortunately, since each shot is its own camera, adjusting for pose changes should be really easy. As such, I don't plan to render out anything until I have the cameras set. I can create new playblasts as I'm altering the poses and cameras to further my story reel from the animatic, but its just a waste of time to render before I have anything that can be deemed "final."
Meanwhile, I plan to continue fleshing out (literally) Justin and the planet modeling and texturing as I begin the animation process. Theres only so long you can animate before you start to lose it!