Final Touches and the Forever Rule

Finishing a film is a great big pain in the ass.  All the wild enthusiasm for what the film could be has yielded to a mottled view of what it has become.  By the end, you've spent so much time with every little nook and cranny of the film that you can't tell if it is entertaining anymore.

First released still from Steve Moore's  "Chief, Your Butt's on Fire".

I am experiencing this right now on a short I started in 2000 (!) called Chief, Your Butt's on Fire.  It's a cautionary tale based on my life in animation.  I animated the entire five minutes, full on, on old-school 20lb punched Cartoon Colour stock in my spare time.  It took years.  My wife, Donna, scanned it all - rough, not cleaned up - and figured out a way to paint it in Toon Boom in her spare time.  It took years.