Recently I finished a second rough pass at cutting the boards together.  The first rough cut revealed some things that weren't completely "full" or were straying away from the basic thread of the story.  After looking at it last night with J. I realized that I am at the point a lot of artists get to somewhere during the process.  I have hit a bit of a wall and having some trouble looking at it objectively.  This is precisely the point at which I am getting some much needed fresh eyes on it, to see if my second guessing is a result of hitting this wall or if I have, indeed, found the wrong tree to bark up.  One thing I continually tell my students is to not get married to a drawing or an idea, to allow things to happen organically and when things are working follow it, strengthen it.  I do a lot of that and as a teacher I find that I need to follow my own advice-after all, I am teaching my students MY studio practice.

The last 5 or 6 years have culminated in this cut which is why it will be difficult to let certain things go but I'm pretty certain the right things that are problematic will be clear to the few I will share this iteration with and will inspire me to cut and adjust in the right places.  There are things that work well and things that were done so long ago they seem out of place-a function of working on it for so long allowing things to evolve.  

The other thing that is a little disappointing from my standpoint is that the pacing in the board is strange, not quite there yet so there is a lot of tightening from an editorial standpoint, some screen directions became a little   

odd due to the fact that I was trying to keep old boards that worked in another context-any one thing that has changed has influenced everything else around it which warranted further adjustments to things that were working just fine.  This constant adjusting and readjusting is maybe one of the reasons for "the wall".  When I was working full-time as an animator for commercials I would pour my heart and soul into the first pass of my scenes making them as good as I could.  When the client would ask for a change I would go back to my desk and stare at the scene with disinterest.  I found that I had to dig deep to change something I felt strongly about.  There were times that I felt very strongly that what I'd done was the strongest way of telling that part of the story and did not have much energy to redo parts of it, but would understand how it would function as a part of the whole.  Then there were times that things were changed for change sake and I had even less energy.  This is where I am with the board.  I feel like I've put all of myself into and know that there are sections that are still coming up short.  Still learning.

Now begins the tightening phase and getting a rudimentary sound track to accompany the image.  I hope to have at least 85% of it working for me to move forward.  I need to move forward.  I realize I can't be married to it yet but I need to be going steady or at least promised.

~JM