THE LOST MUSIC
SUMMARY
I made this short film entirely by myself within the span of a month. It's set in a world where the robots have taken over, and any noticeable trace of humanity has vanished: all that is left are the abandoned remains of what once was. That's where the main character comes in. As they're searching around a house for any fugitives, they stumble across an old music player. Curiously, they pick it up and listen to the tunes, which inspires them that maybe there's good in what humanity has to offer.
PRE-PRODUCTION
Near the beginning of the project, since I had a lot of ideas for the story progression and environment, it was a bit all over the place because I couldn't decide on a single definitive plan to follow. I had originally planned to build all of the environments in Blender and overlay the animation on top of the rendered backgrounds, but because of time constraints (and the strength of my PC), I couldn't continue with this plan. I did come up with a solution, in the end: hand-draw everything in Procreate, which was something I was used to and knew I would have enough time to make. As much as I would have loved to explore making environments in 3D, it was for the best.
PRODUCTION
Who knew animating by yourself was so challenging? This was my first time animating a film at this length, so most of the time I was just making educated guesses with everything I was doing, which, in hindsight, was probably not the greatest idea because I should have done more planning for what I wanted to do at this stage instead of making stuff up as I went.
LOOKING BACK
I think the biggest drawback and thing I'll take away from this project is that I really should have managed my time better. Before making The Lost Music, I hadn't ever made a project as big as this solely by myself, and it made me learn that to make something good, especially at the calibre I was aiming for, you really have to focus and put the effort in; otherwise, you'll lose track of what you're meant to be doing, and everything'll just be a big write-off. Next time, when I make another film like this, I'll try to be more focused and committed to what I want to do.