9-5 is not what the future holds.

I have been very busy at the animation building lately. Plugging in around 8 hours of work on assignments i care a great deal about, and then coming home and studying for tests i care nothing about (the curse of an art student). Of course, it is extremely interesting to see the progression of art in my Art History class, I just don't care for tests. (Does anyone?)

Anyway, this past weekend I have been having to animate a waving flag, and a bean bag who goes through all sorts of various animations.


This is my waving flag. I really enjoy it. It was very difficult to get the length of the animation up to the 4 second mark due to the nature of my flag. The wind seems to be a gentle breeze strong enough to pick it up as it does in the beginning of the animation. Then it falls back due to gravity, and the follow through happens. 96 frames (48 Drawings) is how long 4 seconds is, and because my flag has minimal movement it was difficult to get it to last that long, but I did.

Edit: Blogger compresses those files so that they are very hard to see. I'm sorry. Try your best. I will try darkening in my lines but in the meantime try to make do.




The bean bag animation is not even close to being done. It goes a bit fast and the fall is not very noticeable. I need to add a frame before the anticipation of the fall, and the splat itself. I have also been mulling over whether he should flail his little tassels, or hold a pose and slowly tilt towards the ground until he falls over. Regardless, tomorrow will be another long day, but each day is a learning process and that is something to keep in mind.

Edit 2: I forgot to mention I received a 94 on the bouncing and bowling balls, and then i submitted the redo for a grade of 100. I wonder if my picture is listen in the dictionary under over achiever.

4 AM=No title.

Note from the Author: I ask that you keep this on as you read this post.


************From the Journal of Jake Mittleman, B.F.A************

April 01, 2010.......Animation is tough. On the one hand,
you spend a lot of time. On the other hand, you
get the satisfaction of something being completed....
Everything should be this way.


(You can close that youtube video now if you like)






Anyway, This is the 'final' test for my bouncing ball projects. Technically it's not my FINAL, because my professor offers a redo for people who handed it in on time. We'll see how I do and if it is worth it to spend more time on it. Did I forget to mention that right now it's 3:58...scratch that, 3:59 AM? I started working last night around 8:30 and now it's 4 AM. Well that is how the cookie crumbles I suppose.

Anyway, that's all I really have to say because I am pretty exhausted.

Oh two more things. I have been reading my favorite book: Catcher in the Rye. It is starting to have some sort of effect on me, where I feel the need to say things like 'that knocked me out' and 'shooting the crap with old '. Holden Caulfield is awesome. The other thing, is that I watched the last episode in the Doogie Howser M.D. series and I'm sad that it's over. I want to be friends with Vinnie Delpino.

Werewolf?

Not an art post, but I thought it might be interesting to post these cool pictures I took of the sky last night. It seemed like something straight out of the Wolfman movie that i did not see.

I get critiqued on my animations tomorrow for class. I am going in early to work on the bowling ball. Re-shoot it and whatnot. Hopefully the professor likes it enough that I don't have to redo it. (Of course he will probably make me redo it) but that is how you get better.

Also, labels/keywords for these posts seem very tedious to enter. I wonder if anyone would use the search feature on this blog?

Beginning Animations

I haven't posted in a while. I suppose I have been taking a break for a bit, but I am back to practicing, so that's good! I had a spring break where I went home and I saw a bunch of familiar faces. I have been back to school for a week, and I've had my first couple 'Animation I' classes. Our first assignment is to animate a bouncing ball (Tennis Ball and Bowling Ball). Below was my very first attempt at animating a bouncing ball. It is my first paper animation ever, and even though it is not the best, it is special to me.



The above animation clearly has a lot of problems such as size and timing. I tried to go back and fix the size issues. I re-shot it and it didn't come out because of the lighting in the room. I decided that instead of confusing myself with substituting frames, fixing mistakes and matching them to other small mistakes, I would just redo the whole thing. Throw it out, start from scratch. This is my result below.



Finally, the other half of our assignment is bouncing a Bowling Ball. I started doing this towards the end of my work session today, and I was getting tired and restless. It looks alright I think. There are some clear problems with some of the frames that I redrew, but I did not feel like re-shooting the animation tonight. I will fix and tweak it up tomorrow, and if I feel like it I may redo the bowling ball depending on if I can fix the problems well enough. Bowling Ball below.



I have put Preston Blair on pause a bit. I really need to start on that third page, however this animation takes up a lot of my time. I was in the studio for 8 hours today. (People tell me that is what the job description entails). So be it.

Self Portrait Final

I finished my self portrait for my Life Drawing class. I definitely think there are areas of the drawing which need a lot of improvement, namely the background and parts of the face. Unfortunately I ran out of time or didn't notice it until the end. Had I more time I would fix these problems, but for now I think it looks much better than it used to.

Self Portrait (WIP)

More work on my self portrait. It looks way better in person than the digital camera phone picture.

Preston Blair Pg. 2

Hi everybody! I am typing this with icicle fingers. I decided to walk home from the animation building today, and the weather decided to make me regret it. Also, I enjoy the taste of Flintstones vitamins. I think perhaps grape might be my favorite flavor, even though with most fruit flavored things, cherry is. Hm...interesting.

Also, I finished page 2 of Preston Blair's book 'Animation!'. I think these are alright, I think that I did better on the first page, probably because I thought I was a hot shot who moved on to page 2 and I didn't need to go slow (although for the most part i did). turns out I am not a hot shot, but I did finish page 2, and so far I don't have page 3 so I need to look for that.

Adventure awaits!