15

Trying not to let myself get behind. With a good little surge on Friday, we have only 15 shots left. Some of these are real nightmares, but our momentum is good.

We had another full-film review on Friday with our esteemed guest Chris Bishop, who's been there with me since the beginning of this show in 2005. The list of CBBs (Could Be Betters, a term from back at Pixar) keeps growing, to be sure, but many of them are starting to look positively trivial up against some of the remaining shots.

Monday we should hit another big milestone: the 100th final shot. It's the last piece of low hanging fruit out there for us, and you bet I'm plucking it!

This week we popped the cork on 32-bit TIFF renders. Yes the files are huge on disk, but the compositing in shake is just so much better. Is it worth it? Too soon to answer. We'll use it sparingly for now, only when we can really use that extra range.

I'm pleased to present this final frame from u7_07, when Leed (the main aquatic character) dives down to avoid the fate that awaits his human counterpart. And just to honor Mr. Bishop's return, I've also included one of his original boards for u7_07:


How far we've come!