Kate and Bradbury is off to a good start, and when I have a chance I'll finally post some visuals here! I haven't started any production on the film yet, but we had the animation workshop over the weekend, and it was fantastic! Basically down the street from my house is the animation facility (shared with NSCAD, which is doubly awesome if I end up going to school there), and not only does it have an animation hole punch, but a line testing facility as well! It speaks to how little-versed most of the live action-oriented members of AFCOOP are in animation that no one there (or at NSCAD for that matter) knew that it was around when I was asking. Actually this whole experience has really made me realize the amount of technical knowledge that I learned at Emily Carr. There is the tendency to think of it as a less technical program since it focuses on the experimental and conceptual aspects of animation, but boy did we ever learn a lot compared to what your average live-action filmmaker knows about animation.
Fortunately AFCOOP and CFAT have their share of animators with a large knowledge-base, Heather Harkins being one of them. She showed us all the basic workings of the Oxberry stand, and we got to do a bit of cameraless animation as well (the same sort of markers-on-film thing that I had tried out while learning how to teach the Hands on Animation workshop this past summer). I have a feeling I will definitely be going to her for help in the future. Also I got in touch with my mentor, Jim McSwain. I'll be meeting with him on Thursday and hopefully having an animatic ready at that point, so I'll probably post about that once it happens!
