Project Deep-Dive Questionnaire
Your idea is the what. Today is the how.
The Creative Direction Finder got you to a direction worth testing. This takes that direction and forces the concrete decisions: what it needs, what order it happens in, what software each step takes, and what could go wrong.
You can follow these slides on your own screen. Arrow keys move you through them.
Why this matters
This is what your conference runs on.
You turn this in before you sit down 1:1 with Mr. Oxford. It is the basis for mapping your real project schedule — milestones, deadlines, checkpoints.
A vague answer here means a vague conference. Answer like somebody who actually has to build this.
This is also the evidence Cycle 1 Week 1 (“Define and Manage”) already requires: objective, audience, scope, milestones, risks, a learning plan.
Six questions
Answer all six. Be specific.
Format, length, and what “done” looks like. Not “a video.”
What doesn’t exist yet? Are you making it, finding it, or asking someone?
Every program, in the order you’ll use it. Star the ones that are new to you.
Every step, start to finish. Mark which ones block the others.
The one technique you don’t have yet. How and when you’ll learn it.
Gear, software, or help you need from me. Ask now, not in week six.
How it’s turned in
Fill this out as a Google Form.
Not a Doc. Every plan lands in one sheet I can actually sit down and read.
Answer it in one sitting. If your plan changes later, ask me for your edit link and it reopens your own answers — do not fill the whole form out a second time.
Today
Four answers. One index card.
Your idea is good. Four of your answers were too short for me to build a schedule out of. Write those four again, on a card, right now. Put your name at the top and number them 1 to 4.
- Everything you have to make.List it — each drawing, clip, sound, model, or piece of writing. Next to each one put make, find, or ask.
- The one step you think might break.Name it. Then write what you will do instead if it does.
- What has to come first.Pick your three biggest tasks. For each one, write what has to be finished before you can start it.
- The one skill you do not have yet.Name it in a few words. Then write the date you need to know it by.
Line 1, done badly: “I’m making it myself.” Line 1, done well: “Backgrounds — make. Song — find. Voice acting — ask my brother.” The first one is a sentence about you. The second one is something we can put on a calendar.
The next four slides take these one at a time. You are not filling the Form out again, and nothing you already turned in changes.
Question 2
“Raw material” does not mean software.
Blender is not a material. A camera is not a material. Materials are the things that have to exist before you can build, and do not exist yet. Most of you have more of these than you listed.
- Drawings, frames, painted backgrounds.
- Footage you have not shot yet.
- Audio — voices, music, sound effects.
- 3D models, rigs, textures.
- Written text — a script, a newspaper page, on-screen titles.
Go down your list one item at a time and mark each one make, find, or ask. One mark per item, not one answer for the whole project. The item you have to ask someone for is almost always the one that makes you late, and that is exactly what I am looking for.
Software belongs in Question 3. Gear belongs in Question 6. Neither one goes here.
Questions 3 and 4
Name the step that might break. Then say what has to come first.
Every project breaks somewhere. Guessing where now takes two minutes. Finding out in March costs you the project. So guess now.
- Pick the step you are least sure of.An export. A file format. A feature you have never opened. The part you are quietly hoping just works.
- Write what you do if it does not work.A different program, a simpler version, or asking me. Any of those is a real answer. “It will work” is not.
- Write down your three biggest tasks.Under each one, write what has to be finished before you can start it. If nothing does, write “any time.”
Every task goes in one of two piles: has to wait for something, or can happen any time. One pile or the other, never both. You cannot color a drawing you have not drawn — that one waits. You can pick your music whenever — that one does not.
Question 5
“Get better at it” is not a technique.
A technique is specific enough that you could watch one tutorial on it tonight. “Improve at design” is not something you can finish learning by Friday. These are:
- Keying a green screen.
- Rigging a character so it can move.
- Lip sync to a recorded voice track.
- Frame-by-frame drawing at a set frame rate.
- Physics or cloth simulation.
- Animating a camera through a scene.
- Exporting SketchUp into Twinmotion.
- Capturing stop motion one frame at a time.
- Recording clean audio in a loud room.
Pick the one your project fails without, then give it a real date. “In a week or two” is not a date. Neither is “as I go.”
Scope
How many finished seconds can you make in one period?
Answer that honestly, multiply it by the number of periods you have, and hold it up against the length you wrote in Question 1.
The plans I read ask for anywhere from thirty seconds to thirty-five minutes of finished work. Hand-drawn animation runs somewhere around twelve drawings for every second on screen. Stop motion is worse. Do that multiplication now, not in March.
Cutting the length is not the same as making it worse. A finished ninety seconds beats eight unfinished minutes every time, and it is the same skill either way.
Bring your number to the conference. If it does not work, we cut the length together and keep the idea.