@ Jay

I might start blogging about it, It'll really bug me to have more than one wip thread going and my office thread is still there and I haven't even posted the changes I made on that.

@ SilverFeather

Well if you're responsible for the modeling and humanoid characters are involved then yeah you're going to have to study/practice organics, regardless of whatever style you like. What I've learned so far from the Alien tut has helped me with forms that are not even organic, like I'm using geometry more efficiently while getting better forms and that goes a long way.

Sometimes you have to step back and decide if you're trying to go too big too soon. I think that is something we all have to deal with at some point or another because of why we get involved in 3D in the first place. We have ideas we eagerly want to see fleshed out but there is very little chance in learning all there is to know while tackling our dream project and actually have it turn out as desired.

You said you're doing the modeling and animating, I'm guessing that includes, UV layout, assembling/painting textures, rigging etc. Anybody familiar with Python or MEL? Whos doing the lighting/look dev? You said your friends are supposed to do the motion graphics and some editing are they doing the compositing as well? Not trying to discourage, twenty minutes worth of animation is a very big deal and not nailing down a solid workflow will just compound the problems that you're going to face anyway and probably create some new ones. If you still want to hang in there and do it, O.K, but it's perfectly normal if it starts to drive you a little crazy.


P.S

If you're more comfortable in 3D, You could sketch using primitives, make some really simple geometry and paint over it, there are free paint programs around the net.