Cherry Zhou | Fish Out of Water

Fish Out of Water

Roles: Producer, Co-Edit Lead, Animator

University of Washington Animation Capstone, Jan - Jun 2015

UW Animation Capstone guided my way into the animation field, and I'm infinitely greatful for the opportunity and courses offered by Professor Barbara Mones.

Watch film Film website

Film Details

Fish Out of Water won an Award of Merit in the 2017 Global Shorts Award competition and The Honorable Jury Mention at 2018 NOIDA International Film Festival.

Team size: 22 students and 7 Technical Assistants

Film length: 7-min 3D animated film

Production time: 6 months

My Management Work

Click Images to Expand

In the production of Fish Out of Water, I was in charge of coordinating each group to meet the production plan, reviewing the artwork with our Professor and Director Barbara Mones, and editing animatics and render reels for daily meetings with my two editing teammates. My job as the Co-Edit Lead gave me the chance to understand the condition of each shot on a daily basis, so that I can coordinate the team more efficiently. With my editing skills and love for the team, I also made mid-production and post-production outtake videos for team's memory.

Production Spreadsheet

Because all crew members in the capstone were new to animation production, we developed the production Google Sheet together. Some important features we used were:

Naming sequences and increasing shot numbers by 100 so it's easier to add new shots. Shots highlighted in red were "signiture shots" which were either particularly important in the story or had high degree of difficulty.
Color coding members' name so it's easier to find one's name and assignments.
Because the frame count changed frequently in the animation phase, we opened a Google Form (Image on the right) for animators to inform the editors with frame change, and put the link on the top of the Google Sheet.
We had to avoid having several people opening the same file at the same time because we worked off a shared drive and same Maya files for animation and lighting, which I learned not to do so in future productions, so a column "Currently Working" was added for members to notify other people that they are working on a shot.
Toward the end of production, we added columns to check off finished shots ("Motion Done?" and "Lighting Done?"). We also added render dates and composition dates with conditional formating, so that the date would turn red when the last render was too old.

Production Episode

One of the team leads (for privacy purpose, will be referred as "they") did not have experience leading a team and assign work to team members. They insisted on assigning most work to themselves, but could not finish the work on time. After this happened a few times, I made an 1-1 talk with them to convince them that assigning work to other members did not mean that the lead themselves was not skillful enough, but it was a natural way to push the production forward, and would show respect and trust to other team members. I told them that as a team lead, they had full right to give feedback to the team members or refine the work. After a three-hour conversation, the lead was convinced and willing to let the whole team work together.