CGI Debate

I got to thinking last night (which is never a good thing) and I think I should learn Maya *hiss!*, because, lets face it, without any experience with CGI there is no way I am going to get a job out of this. So, my plan is to talk to some people on Monday and find out if I can get someone to teach me how to use it, from scratch. If things go well then I might just do my whole film on there! People keep telling me how easy it is, and how I could work so much faster. If this is true then I could make my animation really good!

To do my film in 2D is going to be a nightmare (we all know it deep down). For one, I have, in the past, preferred to work at home (I have my own lightbox, and I can control my entire environment), which means going into Uni, test it all out on the line testers, go home and make the changes. For this year, the work has to be completely polished, so that means after the thousands of tests, I have to have my sheets of paper perfect, then i have to ink each one, rub out all the pencil marks and put it all back through the computers to colour it in - that is, if the inking is spot on, and I don't have to redo some frames because i messed up.

There is also the matter of getting the work into the computer in the first place. After inking, if I use the line testers then I'm not going to get my paper perfectly black and white - it will most likely be yellow, or even blue depending on the bulbs. That is not good, and means more work. The ideal way would be to scan the sheets in - we do have an A4 scanner that feeds the paper in, but that would take hours to do, where I am sat waiting, doing nothing. It also means that I have to work on A4 paper, which is thick and small - I am used to 12" field, proper animation paper, which is nice, and I have lots of, and cost a bloody fortune. To use my paper I would need an A3 scanner, something which the course cannot afford, and I certainly can't.

Once my work is in the computer, and all ready to colour, I then have to colour each frame, individually, in Photoshop - mega pain in the arse. I heard that ToonBoom might be a possibility, but I have no idea how to use it, and heard it was limited.

So, at the moment, doing it in CG seems like the best option. I might be completely naïve, and it could be even worse than 2D because I have to learn a program completely from scratch, and get good at it, but if I spend this time before Christmas practicing and doing tests then it might just work. I can animate, and I have good marks so I must be competent, so maybe it will be O.K. to cross over to the dark side? Sean mentioned a render that makes it look 2D, so it would still have the quality and look that I was going for, but just doing it a different way.

We'll have to see. I am saying all this without talking to anybody else about it first, but I am worried that the response I get will be biased towards CG, and I will be told it will be easy when in reality it's not right for me.