I was sent back home from France - Here's what's happening...

Dear Patrons,

You know that feeling when things seem so good that you just know something bad is about to happen? A couple of weeks ago I was feeling on top of the world – I’d just passed my driver’s license test and gotten a cheap little car. My head was starting to fill with dreams of moving to an apartment a bit outside of the city and getting a dog, all while work on Tales of Zale progressed smoothly. At the studio, we had started recruiting interns to help with early concept development until the funds’ application deadline approached, and we were beginning to set up meetings with potential scriptwriters and other interesting parties. I was being granted access to venues that I’d only ever dreamed of participating in, set to pitch at the Animation Sans Frontière in Paris, Animation Production Days in Stuttgart and, with some luck potentially at the Annecy Animation Festival. Oh, and a former classmate of mine was coming over to help on Episode 3 for two months - which I was really looking forward to! It was like I was living my dream, everything was going in the right direction! I was almost a bit unnerved by the lack of setbacks so far…

Now, that ominous prologue right there might make it seem like everything has fallen apart. Don’t worry, it hasn’t. It’s just that a lot of the happenings with which I naively used to measure my success has taken a hit. The project still lives, and things are still moving in the right direction. Just a bit slower than I’d have liked now. 

We’ve all been hit by the Corona Virus in different aspects of life these days. Last week I was in France for the Animation Sans Frontière, which was set to take place over two weeks. I saw the unease spread among us participants day by day.

Tuesday we were given the choice of whether or not we wanted to continue ASF into the second week. We were pretty split at that point, with 7 people voting to keep the event going against 6 voting to postpone or cancel the pitch. I was among the latter. I wasn’t too concerned with the virus itself, but in my head, the chance of the government taking drastic action within the next two weeks was about fifty-fifty at this point. Between pitching at the ASF venue and getting back to Denmark without a quarantine, getting back was more important to me so that I could direct the aforementioned former classmate and participate in the other planned meetings. 

Of course, neither of these worked out. The event was canceled yes, and just in time before the Danish borders started closing (as a Danish citizen this wasn’t a problem for me as such, but for others, it could have turned problematic). But with the borders now closed that also meant that my friend couldn’t get into the country to work with me on the project. 

That’s probably for the better though, because since the schools have also been shut down, my workspace at the Open Workshop / Animation Workshop has been completely locked off. Until they open back up again I don’t have access to my usual workstation. For the time being, I’m working from my old laptop and Cintiq that I had luckily brought along for the trip. It’s already crashed once, and it doesn’t have enough space for me to sync all my work files from my Google Drive. But if I take it one shot at a time and increase the autosaving frequency, I should be able to make due in this regard.

Events like Animation Production Days have been canceled, and who knows what’s going to happen to Annecy. I’ve certainly got my fingers crossed, but my hopes aren’t high at this point. The interns that were going to come to Denmark will likely not be able to cross the border either, so whether or not they can assist depends on their schools’ willingness to work remotely. These things are probably what frustrates me the most. As a yet unestablished name, it’s hard to gauge how much is lost through the cancellation of these events, but one thing is for certain; nothing’s gained if nothing’s ventured. And I was sooo ready for venturing.

I’m happy that I got the car before I left though. The world became very small of a sudden, but with a vehicle, it’s at least a little bigger than it otherwise would be. The other day I took a drive out to the Danish countryside, and it helped clear my head a bit. For now, we just gotta solve one problem at a time. When I arrived Friday I didn’t have a workspace or internet in my room, but I’ve already managed to solve those two concerns. Next on the list we’re gonna try to set up a decent remote work system, and then we take it from there.

I hope you’re all managing to stay safe, happy and healthy in these truly odd times. Let’s continue to keep at it and solve one problem at a time until the world finally opens up again. See you around!

- Sif