Managed to get the voiceover done for the yacht video – the voiceover artist was recommended by the client and turns out to be very good. The initial version of this project is getting very near to completion now and today I’ve set the renderers up with the last two shots. After that it’s all just tidying up and editing (and any changes the client wants to make).

I’m starting to render the other project too – the trilobite animation for the museum. The images look great – and it’s possibly my enthusiasm for the project, but I’ve gone with all the highest quality settings for my rendering. I need to keep a reign on rendering times, and so far that’s not happening. I’m also rendering in HD which doesn’t help. It’s also not necessary strictly speaking – the clients haven’t asked for HD – I just think that if I can I’ll do as much of the project in HD as my rendering times allow.

Unfortunately, that’s meant 2 hours per frame on one shot – so I’ve had to re-think a little… Having done a couple of tweaks with the lighting (I’ve found area lights are a real time killer – especially when combined with raytraced shadows).


I also returned from holiday to find another project landing on my desk – another animation for another museum – this one a medieval castle – which should be fun and not too stressful.

Today, I also got an email from an old friend from Computer Arts – he’s now working for an osteoporosis charity and needs some medical illustration done. It’s easy enough since I’ve got a high quality medical model I bought for a poster project which didn’t come off at the beginning of the year.


All of this means I need to by my extra rendering PCs as soon as possible. Which I can’t do until I get the first payment for the trilobites animation… let’s hope that appears in the next week and I can begin to clear the rendering log-jam.

It’ll also be good to get a new pc with a bit more memory and shift my adobe suite onto it. For some reason, capturing video is becoming a real problem, with stuttering playback and lost sound.

When I recorded the voiceover yesterday, I did it using my camcorder and a tie clip mic. Transfering it to the computer eventually had to be done through the PCs sound card because firewire wasn’t playing ball…


I also returned from holiday with the desire to make a series of 10 minute animations for children’s TV… is that going to happen? It’s a big job…. Hmmm. I’ve got a documentary to finish first (although with my current computer not behaving with video, that will have to wait until I get a new 4 or 8gb machine).