Now that I've had a taste of every step of this process, I can tell you that every single step has taken longer than I thought it would. One of the problems that I'm having now is that the Gertrude and Mayzie puppets are cracking for some reason. The clay is not holding up as expected and even after adding more new clay to try to fix the cracks, new ones continue to form. This is confusing because the bird girls have held up perfectly fine and I used the same method to build Gertrude and Mayzie. I think it may have to do with the thin copper wire holding the foam on, but I am hesitant to take them totally apart. And so for now, while taking pictures I have to constantly worry about smoothing cracks as well; it's a nuisance.
After shooting a few animation sequences I have discovered that if I don't write out very detailed actions for each frame on the frame sheet that I easily get lost. Unfortunately this takes extra time prior to shooting. Additionally, much of what I'm actually doing is at least partially guesswork. This means that if something I think will work does not and I only find that out after it's already been done, extra time must be spent to fix whatever the problem is. I find the redo process to be especially draining.
All of the negatives aside...it's spring break! And I'll be spending some serious time working out the kinks in this project and hopefully getting a lot of good work done!
