Ah, yes. That’s what grad school is all about – staying up until 4AM to finish a project that’s a downsized version of the uber-ambitious project you’d had in mind at the beginning. In this case, I’d hoped to animate the logo, the ‘stinger’ (or whatever you call it) of hook-’em plot that goes right before the opening credits, the opening credits and the first scene of an animated version of Bones of the Angel, but instead I only got through the logo, stinger and credits. The first scene will have to wait – which is fine, since I want to have Talon do the voiceover work for Jack Walker anyway.
But! It’s done, I got at least some sleep, I now know how to do some more basic work in Final Cut Pro and how to burn DVDs using iDVD, and the end result is pretty kick-ass. I wanted to see if a guy like me could create an animated project using just a G5, a Wacom tablet, Adobe Illustrator, FInal Cut Pro, some off-the-shelf shareware for screen grabs and audio off the Internet. I think the answer is yes, with the output being something akin to a “Reading Rainbow” for adults. What do you think? Check it out:

http://www.geoffreylong.com/portfolio/video/bonesoftheangel_med.php

(5.2MB QuickTime .mov file, QuickTime required, needs sound to be turned up)