Four weeks ago, we set out to do something wild: animate a 10-minute short film in one month.

Spoiler alert: we didn’t make it.

From broken mocap gloves to naked characters, things unraveled fast. Instead of a triumphant finish line, we’re hitting pause, regrouping, and figuring out how to keep this project alive.

Here’s what went wrong — and what we’re doing about it.

What Went Wrong

• Broken Mocap Gloves: Halfway through, our gloves died mid-shoot, killing hand capture across most scenes.

• Character & Location Builds Took Forever: We underestimated how much time goes into set + character design before animation.

• Facial Mocap Bottlenecked: Processing dialogue-heavy scenes on our weakest machine? Huge mistake.

• Wardrobe Delay: We didn’t plan clothing early enough — meaning our characters are still naked placeholders.

What We Learned

• Whiteboxing Saves Time …but you still need a prop design buffer.

• AI Image-to-3D is Amazing …but only if you schedule cleanup time.

• Sync Mocap Early: Running body + face mocap at the same time saved days of work.

• Shot is King: Treat every camera cut as a new shot sequence in Unreal. Duplicate instead of cutting clips — huge workflow win.

• Prep is Key: We need at least one pre-animation week dedicated to characters and wardrobe.

What’s Next

• Weekly Goals, Not Big Deadlines: No more “finish in a month” crunches. Smaller goals = less burnout.

• Keep Animating Without Gloves: While they’re being repaired, we’ll keep animating. Later, we’ll do mocap pickups or reshoot if needed.

• Refine AI Workflows: Our tests showed limitations — we’ll need character LoRAs, fewer extreme close-ups, and steadier cameras.

The Bigger Picture

We may have failed the one-month challenge, but the bigger goal hasn’t changed: finish this film, no matter how long it takes.

Building a two-person micro studio in public means failing in public, too. But every failure gives us data, lessons, and better workflows for the next push.