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AUG 2019

Well it's always nice to have feedback from friends, family and little ones who are enjoying the antics of Upstart & Rummage, it's all very encouraging.
But from a commercial point of view, I do appreciate comments from professionals who know their stuff and look at the project from a more consumer or sellable perspective. To try to keep the project on the right lines I've been quite active in pitching to well respected people in the industry to try and get a good balance of what works and what doesn't. There doesn't seem any point in chasing dreams that have no chance of success, given the high standards of competition that everyone is so used to.
If you've read my previous blogs you will know that I'm always open to advice, and have had some very encouraging comments from some high-profile people which I think helps so much in keeping things going in the right direction.
So it has been a great privilege for me for Shane Acker to take the time to look at Upstart & Rummage and give his opinion. Shane has been a great inspiration for me as the creator and director of the film 9 which I must have watched a hundred times. Pure genius.
He liked the general concept saying "It looks like a fun project, I like the concept of a future tech character joining forces with a Victorian era character, it's a fun mashup and can be a source of fun conflict."
He went on to give advice about honing my animation skills, which I am aware need some work, and I will be putting his advice into practice. He also pointed out that as both the characters are robots, the organic human eyeballs don't really fit the the nature of the design and look a little creepy. Now once this is said, you can't "unsee" it. A very good point and I must say a rookie mistake on my part.
So I'm now experimenting with new eyes for the characters, it will mean a delay and quite a bit more work… re-doing many hours of rendering etc. but I can't ignore such valuable feedback from someone I have so much respect for.
I've already tried some new designs for Upstart's eyes, which I've just replaced the texture for, this is a bit of a cheat as they are basically the same eyes but I've done away with the organic stuff and replaced it with a more mechanical look (which still might change), this saves having to re-animate a whole new set of eyes, I can just re-render the existing files which will save an enormous amount of time. See the difference below….
As I have not rendered too much footage of Rummage's eyes (close up) I think I will go the whole hog and re-design his eyes completely along with his whole body structure to make animating him easier and more natural.
So, thanks to Shane I'm looking forward to taking the whole thing up a level or two which it very much needed. I'm excited at how much better the future film will look.

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