I’m no animator, but…
Intro
Hello reader! My name’s Matt and at Project After Hours I do my best to make the magic happen behind the scenes. But recently, I embarked on my own journey. To bring my ideas to life through animation.
But I’m no animator. Nor a layout artist, a concept artist, a voice actor, a storyboard artist, a lighting artist, an FX artist, a writer, a modeler, a texture artist, or an editor. Just a humble dude who cares about spreadsheets and sits in awe of the art and magic spun by our collaborators.
And I never had a clear vision of how I could bring my mind and humour to life. That is, until an unexpected guest waddled in.
The Set Up
In the course of making Project After Hours the best animation studio it could be, Curtis (my Co-Founder) and I came to an important decision. Six months in, having posted some work to social media, we were pouring over the views and statistics. “How can we get more views?”.
And we answered this question in a somewhat unconventional way. We wouldn’t. We decided this question was not worth focusing on.
For us, we want to spend the bulk of our time and energy on making shows, not content for social media. But that didn’t mean we couldn’t repurpose what we’re developing into stuff for the world to see and enjoy. There’s a bit of mental gymnastics in that, but it was how we would proceed.
The Wily Producer
Have you ever wanted your cake and to eat it too? I have. From the moment we decided to not focus on social media content (my idea I should mention) I was thinking about how to get more eyes on us.
But what if we made a show that lent itself really well to social media? Engaging, 40-60 seconds long, easy(er) to make, but still looked really good. Few props, sparse backgrounds, and a charismatic character.
An empty frozen snowscape. A lone igloo sits on the horizon. A penguin plaps in to frame. I’ve opened Maya for the first time.
…to be continued.
