Wednesday, July 13, 2005

It’s funny how the most thrilling, exhilirating moments of your life are also the ones most full of stress.

(I don’t like that word, stress. It’s a suspiciously modern term, and it smells like a modern excuse for something. Why did nobody in human history note a feeling of psychological stress until 1942?)

Last night, myself and an animator worked furiously to finish Matrix Experiments Lain in time for the Otakon submission deadline. The animation still needed to be tweaked here and there to eliminate stray lines and blemishes that had crept into the cels and gone unnoticed. Then, I had to render it several times and burn it to disc. Then I checked the disc on my laptop and found that one of the movie files was corrupted. So I burned it again. Then I checked the submission guidelines and found that they wanted a README.TXT file on the disc. So I burned it again.

But THAT ONE STAYED UP! (Sorry; Monty Python reference.)

So, as of midnight last night, I tossed Matrix Experiments Lain into my bag so I could mail it today. Huzzah. It’s not completely final; I’ll show it to the rest of the studio on Saturday, and they can suggest any final changes before I bless the animation as complete. Then I’ll burn DVDs for everyone.

Phew. It’s good for it to be over, and I felt wonderful accomplishment in completing it, but…man, I didn’t like the last-minute rush. As I noted to Saalon last night, rendering a video is somewhat like compiling software code; though it’s an automatic process, inevitably the compiled product has bugs that have to be fixed. I now plan to set aside a large amount of time—say, a month—for rendering Summer Storm.

I just don’t want all that stress.

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