the medium non-permenant green Stabilo marker

Two and a half weeks of animation left on Little Face. Progress has been made but a disturbing development has developed. My green pen, the one that I use to colour in the boxes on the route sheet, is running out.

The deep rich green of previous boxes is slowly becoming pale and unsubstantial. What was once a beautiful block of colour is now becoming an uneven gradient. Rather then one smooth satisfying scribble to fill a box a now have to apply pressure and move the pen slowly and deliberately to make a mark. Sometimes I have to make two or even three passes to achieve a suitably visible shade of green.

I fear that after only a few more boxes the pen will be making marks barely visible to my already short sighted eyes, particularly in the low light conditions of the long evenings ahead of me. I may end up having to make so many passes that I will be spending more time colouring in boxes then I will be animating which in turn gives me fewer boxes to colour in which will create a reductive cycle that eventually leaves me colouring in a single box forever. Not only is it counter-productive it also means I have to re-assess my continued use of the pen. This is unfortunate as the pen, a medium non-permanent green Stabilo marker, saw me through the entirety of my previous film Operator and has made it through the majority of Little Face. I have become quite attached to the pen and, with only a scene and a bit to go, it is sad that it looks like it is not going to make it until the end of the film. This is largely my fault for making a film with so many shots and using an already well-used pen to fill in the boxes.

A natural solution would be to discard (or at least put away) the green pen and use another working pen that I have to hand to colour in the remaining boxes. This is of course a ridiculous solution. To use another random pen will ruin the consistency, symbiosis and psychological constant that the green pen and the coloured-in boxes provided me. I have not been creating a patchwork. I have been creating a solid bar of beautiful green colour that represents my progress through the film, much like the red bar that will show viewers their progress through the film when they watch it on YouTube (although at 12 minutes I don't think it will fit on YouTube). The bar must be maintained and nurtured through to the end, otherwise it will just be like the point at which the viewer clicks the back button when they realise the film is 12 minutes long. The bar can not change now.

I have only one course of action. Tomorrow I will go to the stationary shop down the road and buy a new medium non-permanent green Stabilo marker. If they do not have any medium non-permanent green Stabilo markers I will go to the stationary shop up the road and buy a medium non-permanent green Stabilo marker. If they don't have a medium non-permanent green Stabilo marker then I don't know what I will do, but I will do something.