Okay so Squash took over the leadership of the project and I think he's reviving it now. Ask him for questions and stuff like that, I have no involvement in the project anymore. D:

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(TL;DR version: Disappointment. Late For Work half-failed and I kicked out 7 out of 10 animators. Will follow up in a couple of weeks.)

Hello everyone,

As you may or may not know, for the last 18 months I have been directing a project named "Late For Work". I presented the concept, idea, outline and format and everything in July 2007. The main goal of the project was to have both newbies and more experienced brickfilmers working on it, side by side. There was a lot of room for personal thinking; there were a couple of obligatory scenes (that just had to be shot), and then there were a lot of "make up your own mind" scenes where you could think up anything you want. Back in July 2007, the project was received with a lot of enthusiasm, and soon I had a lot of animators, both new and experienced, ready to work on it.

After some on-and-off activity, the official animating started (for most animators) in January 2008. In April, after a couple of animators dropped out, I added three new animators to the list. In July, I set the official deadline for late August/early September. Now, we're nearing January 2009, and just about one year after we started the animation part, I thought I should write what's the haps.

Three of the thirteen animators sent in footage. Two of these three are now done with the footage they promised to shoot for me; one still needs to shoot more (but I haven't gotten back to him yet so I can't blame him on anything).
Munzapoppa
Squash
Maronislego

These three animators were in originally but dropped out somewhere along the line for a variety of reasons. Thanks for trying, guys.
jay
Matt_Gillan
Gabe

Now, this is where it gets ugly.

Over half of the animators never got back to me. Some brickfilmers just fell off the face of the Earth completely, some did answer me once or twice, and some just never got back to me despite my repeated calls for action. As a result of this, as of now I am throwing out all of the participants who didn't send me any results at all. These are the seven animators. May your lack of caring and activity, and just getting back to me when I PM you, be a black mark in your careers forever.
Lord_Of_The_LEGO
BluDude
Rsteenoven
Filip
MindGame
CrazyGamester
Crazyanimator

I am especially disappointed by the seven animators who first promised that they would commit themselves to the project (and they did work on it, in the beginning), and then just completely ignored my emails, PMs etcetera and never got back to me ever. I can understand if someone is unable to finish his part because of school, work, busy personal life or whatever, but they could at least have let me known. Just letting me sit here with the project and never even saying "hey, I can't do it" or "hey, I'm working on it" is just rude in my opinion. (Now, not everyone on the list did it like that, I shall admit that. MindGame did get back with me a couple of times, as did Rsteenoven. Filip thought he might had to quit, but never told me if he did. Crazyanimator, CrazyGamester and BluDude fell off the face of the Earth. Lord_Of_The_LEGO... meh. Very meh. I know I haven't been the best of directors, and could probably have handled this better at points, but it's not a one way street. If it were, this wouldn't be a community project.

During the next couple of weeks, I shall be deciding what to do next. My two main options are recruiting new animators, or just cancelling the project. And at this point, I'm really close to doing the latter.

- BertL

PS Welcome, new spiffy BiM!

Last edited by BertL (November 15, 2009 (04:02am))