A picture says a thousand words. Its a cliché, and yet true at the same time.

One frame makes a picture, two frames make a movie. Both tell a story.

It is how you convey the story. You use tools to get your ideas across. Theres the camera. The pencil, mouse, puppet or graphic. Theres the execution of these tools.

Its all about bring it together.

I don't fret too much on story. I just know when something isn't working. I learned a long time ago to be ruthless with the cutting blade in edit. My concern has more to do with where its coming from and where its going to.

In making all the tools work, I bring each level of production to its most complete form. Storyboards are completed, where in well-drawn frames or with a lot of scratchy drawings within. (I know what I mean when leaving something coarse, so I have a bit of leeway in not wasting time producing Matrix-like storyboards).

If the project comes to a stop for me, at least I have a completed STORYBOARDED project. You can read the story with what there is.

Next is the animac. I bring the animac to the state of completion. Often I start adding keys in within the timed-out boards. Just a few. When the animac is done, which now coincides with the soundtrack, I have a complete animac that is one level more finished than the storyboard level.

Rough animation is done on the timeline OVER the animac. The new animation acts as an opaque part of the cartoon masking the animac as the animation is being done. When the cartoon is animated fully, I have a dvd-printable disk that shows the cartoon done in a form one level more completed than the animac.

I should add that I often work in sequences. The sequence are done one at a time, and when the animation is completed for a sequence, it is printed out on a dvd and I can see that it is working or not. By this time, it usually is.

When animation is done, the work is cleaned up as a level of production of it own. On DVD, I still can see areas to go back in and fix. That is what I am always looking for.

So now I have a dvd of the cartoon that I liken to that of seeing a house partially built. You can walk around the house and see into and through it. This is a level of production that is in and of itself. If I go no further with it, there is a project that you can view and interpret for what it is. The story is as clear as a bell. Like the message or not, it is what it is.

The following level post production. Color and balance it all out.

The last level of production is rendering. I have done this a number of times and hate it passionately IF I have nothing else to do. Rendering is done a number of times to get it right. I am always looking for things to fix, and if I have to, I can go back in to do a fix ON PAPER. The process is like being the engineer of a long line of train cars in a railroad yard. There is a constant backup and bring forward the line to unlink the cars in a very certain order to gain access to the fix, make it, and put the train back in order again. To keep the making of fixes on paper is necessary because you cannot possibly remember all the digital applications you do to a scene if apply digital touches excessively to any, or all of your scenes. Actually you could IF you write down every little digital touch you do as you are going along through the production. I have done this successfully, by recording my process in easy to read complete sentences, but even then, the railroad-train car coupling and uncoupling is expontentially more if you over-digitize your work. Its just better making the fixes on paper.

I don't hash through story too much. In as short of an order as I can, I determine if it is working or not. If not, I shift gears and move on. In my memory banks, I have a number of projects I've pursued and then dropped because I could clearly see it wasn't going to work.

So that's the process.