Mike the paleontologist says: "Anybody can do this. You learn by doing."

David the animator says, "valuable advice."

What's professional? If you're an instructor, this is likely a tedious discussion. Recently, while renovating yet another apartment (don't ask) a possible discussion-ending metaphor occurred to me:

Being professional means using cheap sheets of plastic.

Time-tracking is often viewed as the one most singularly evil impulse between you and your creative energies.  For good reason? David Maas gives a first-hand impression.

David O'Reilly releases his acclaimed film "The External World".

Renovating an apartment is more similar to animation production than I would like. A metaphorical look into the logistics, planning and communication that nearly swallowed me whole.

If you’ve inherently suspected that there’s a structural difference between a soccer match, a space odyssey and your favorite porno but never been able to put your finger on it, cinemetrics is for you. It beautifully lays out a film like a flower of pencil shavings, colored according to the film’s palette and oscillated according to amounts of screen movement. Stunning… and informative. Compare genres, director’s oeuvres or remakes… its a beautiful step back from the cinematic experience.

Steve Streeting, if anyone, should know how to plan his work week. He's been at the helm of OGRE (the open graphic rendering engine) and a prolific freelance developer for a qurter century. Refreshingly, he admits that it isn't that easy... even with so much experience under your belt. Check out his post for valuable work tips on how to make the most of your time.

Occasionally I'm confronted with the following scenario:

an independent or student film is already half-finished, but now the budget's used up and the initiators are running out of steam / taking on jobs / otherwise reducing their future engagement on the production in question. But the film is really looking good and - yeah, it's half-finished!

Here's what I tell them...

Now that we have an animation target we use it to get a feel for our project's doability.