I’ve been drafting the story for my shadow puppet animation in my head over the past week and yesterday I sat down and set up an experimental project in After Effects, only to be severely disappointed. Even though I’m current through AECS4, I’m running v6.5 because my processor doesn’t support SS2 instructions. I’d forgotten how parenting, in this version, is laughably primitive for this type of animation. Even with a creative rig of null objects and pre-comps, animation was tedious. I have a solid idea of how I want the short to play out, but without the new Puppet Tool from CS3+, or more sophisticated parenting functions, I just don’t see a way to elicit the performances I need from cut-outs without spending ridiculous amounts of time keying individual frames or tediously editing velocity vectors. Yeah, it’s possible. But no, I’m not going to spend the next two months animating this short when I can get a better result in half the time. I’m loathe to say it, but this is a project which will so clearly benefit from a single new tool that it’s actually worth postponing until I upgrade my hardware. Right now I’m considering drafting an animatic just to get the ideas down. In the meantime, I’ve given the project a reference name: “This Is The Way The World Ends”. Like all my project names, it may or may not end up being the title of the project, but until it’s finished or I actually name it, this is what I’ll refer to it as.