After I decided on the concept for WAKE in early 2013 and spent a lot of time researching dreams, the fall semester was dedicated solely to building on the story and creating the animatic. I found the process of developing the story quite enjoyable, as it allowed me the opportunity to experience the college life I never really had! Since I studied animation throughout my undergrad and grad school years and was pretty much chained in front of a computer all that time, I scarcely had the chance to take my work outdoors or to a coffee shop.

With the story for WAKE, I spent a good chunk of my time sitting at a coffee shop, reading through a textbook and generating ideas to use in the short. As soon as I had the skeleton of the story in place, at least enough to pitch it to a few people coherently, I sought out feedback for the narrative.

Things changed for the better when I had recruited another student to help me with nailing down the story and layout for the storyboards. As per his suggestion and preemptive thinking, in order for this short to be feasible within the timeframe that I had, I needed to simplify it and condense it down. In the end, I ended up removing two environments and one character, all of which I had grown extremely attached to. After about a week of mourning the loss, the story was in a much better place than it was previously, and though still ambitious, it was something that I could see completing in the next year.

To be continued…