/youtube

Heh heh heh...

Youtube didn't need it compressed. And youtube keeps the videos bigger. So here it is! My final from 3D Character Setup and Animation with professor Brian Schindler at SCAD.

Now I'm just waiting for my professors to google their cohort and find my blog... again. :D

Tying Bottles of Eau de Cologne to Mah Cat's Tail

I tried posting my 3D character setup and animation final last week, but the file was WAAAYYYY too big for blogger's uploadermajig. So I have to compress it before I post it, and I've been too lazy to do it lately. And by lazy, I mean I was busy playing WoW and getting my tauren druid up to lvl 80, then discovering I was sucking at being a DPS feral druid and switched to BOOOMkin, but now I'm just bored with the game. So, in my boredom, my character sits undergeared in Dalaran, awaiting to get her fuzzy cow butt handed to her during this weekend's raid, while I decide that my time is better spent on...

redoing my other final.

Yea, that's right, I'm animating during my break. The Acting For Animators final was a total flop. I got an A on it, but I think it was an A for Attempt. So, I'm forgetting that horrid piece of pencil test disaster and going back into a different direction. I'm going to pound out a satisfactory animation using the newest Moom rig, using my final voice take (that I am not satisfied with either), and will hopefully get a good piece of dialogue animation out of that. From there I might use it as reference for yet another animation that will actually use the Sophie Rammeyer character I created for the project. (In the essence of "I like what I did here, so let's do it over here..." not for factual reference)

I have a mirror behind my computer on my home desk, so referencing the facial animation is going to be fairly easy... might make that a necessity for all my desks in the future... my desk is technically a vanity table...

So, enough blogging! On to animating!

Doing Disney Better than Disney

Don Bluth is a great man. For some reason I thought I had seen Secret of NIMH when I was a kid. Maybe I just wanted to fit in with the cool animation kids and not get taunted for having "missed one of the greatest things to life" and how my childhood must've suffered. (Let's face it, some people can be annoying when you haven't seen certain movies.) And, now I can actually say I've seen it. And it's amazing. And Rock-a-Doodle is hard to watch when it's been chopped up into 16 four-minute long segments on youtube.

I'm trying to write my thesis paper on Don Bluth for thursday now so I don't have to worry about it tomorrow night when I'm standing in line for the new World of Warcraft expansion. Though, I'm nervous. Truth be told, my ADD acts up when I'm supposed to be concentrating on something like a paper (i.e. this post) and all the WoW servers are still down from their scheduled maintenance. In fact, when I checked the realm list... realms were just plain missing. Odd. Good problem to have two days before the launch of an expansion. (Not)

Back to the paper and Don Bluth.

Remember, Remember...

Posts will always be few and far between while I get distracted doing actual work rather than trying to display it.

So, while I'm at it, here's the latest character to be added to the Caprean arsenal with Dallas and Jestir -

Sophie Rammeyer!


Actually, she was just created for a certain project for my Acting for Animators class (which is proving to be a waste, I'll explain later). She's based on the character Sophie Rauschmeyer by Neil Simon from his play Star-Spangled Girl. I'm animating her to a line Sophie says from the play ("And I can do without you tying big bottles of eau de cologne to mah cat's tail!") If I finish the animation well enough, I'll post it. If not, then it was a bust.

Hurricane Hanna(h Montana) = /hate

There's a good chance that this Hurricane Hanna is going to hit Savannah Thursday/Friday. This means there's a good chance that Hurricane Hanna is going to screw with my plans of going back down to Savannah.



haaatttteeee

Belated Update

While I'm at it, I should probably post some of the character designs I did last year for Troy Gustafson's classes.


Jestir was done for Animation 1 with Troy Gustafson. An original character of mine that I've had for some time now but she had to go through a bit of a make over to fit the criteria of the project. Let's just say making characters look as fancy as possible sometimes doesn't go well with getting things done on time.




Dallas is another original character I've had for some time along side Jestir. Wyatt I made up for the sake of the project but he's a usable character still if I decide to take these guys any further in my animation projects. Dallas and Wyatt I did for Troy Gustafson's Character Design and Visual Development class. (That was a wallop of a class : / )

Some of the results of the character sheets...

My Animation 1 final featuring Jestir.

It's supposed to be super rough looking, I'm not a slacker.

I would show you the results of the maquette I had to make of Dallas... but I broked him the night after I turned him in :(

This is how he looked in progress, however, before I broke him, and before the terrible gray spray paint... and before everything went to shit for the poor guy. Since then, I've tried to reuse his base to start making a maquette of Jestir... but I lost interest in doing that awhile ago. Her wireframe is still hanging out somewhere in my room, so I could always go back and keep going.

Summer 2008

So I haven't had anytime till just now to really just sit down and breathe. Honestly, it feels like it's been from one thing to another. I worked all summer long at the Chelsea Teddy Bear Co. store here in Chelsea, Michigan, and when I wasn't there, I was thinking about being there. I didn't help myself either when I became addicted to World of Warcraft... heh, oops. I've been a terrible friend this summer, not keeping in touch with my friends from school or from home! They're all at most twenty minutes away and I've only seen them a couple times this summer. Also, I've gotten nothing creative done this summer.

Now I just have two weeks before I head back down to Savannah and stay at my boyfriend's house for a week, then move back in and start up classes again! I'm surprisingly not very stressed about the idea. I'm trying to have a more Hakuna Matata outlook on life, seeing as I can get so pent up over next to nothing.

I have managed to see a couple movies this summer. I got to see WALL·E earlier this summer.



Absolutely adorable movie! Disney/Pixar score again in my book. However, I am not a fan of the use of life action filmed people in these animated movies. Happy Feet was an enjoyable move for the most part, but not one of my favorites. I was especially turned off when I saw the filmed people towards the end of the film. It felt cheap to me for them to use real people like that. There's something about an animated film that just has its own feel and character to it that is interrupted by the use of mish-meshing medias like that. So when I saw the clips of Fred Willard being used in WALL·E, I was afraid. But, I was pleasantly surprised with how they used it this time. The progression of how people became what they were in WALL·E's time was very smart. Showing the captains' portraits, up to how they become, fat and baby like, was ingenious and reassured my confidence in the film. So, just having those few filmed clips didn't bother me as the film progressed. The minimal use of dialogue was amazing. In our beginning animation classes, we're stressed to on how to animate things without having to use verbal cues, and still being able to portray action and emotion. Now, in WALL·E, we still got sound effects and little blips of language, but for the most part they had to rely on expressions and movements to get the emotions across. This, in my book, puts WALL·E up there as one of the best pieces of animation I have seen to date that has utilized non-verbal cues like that.

I didn't get to see Kung Fu Panda, so I don't have much to say about that. I did get to see Dark Knight, and was very impressed with it. It's a shame we had to lose Heath Ledger, he had quite the future ahead of him. But, on an animation note, I've been told that part of Harvey Dent's burned half was actually animated. If this is true, then that was some damn good visual effects right there. If not, then that was some damn good prosthetics job.

However, as a side note to all this animation talk, whoever made the rigs for the cat forms in World of Warcraft needs to be slapped. Cats can't sit without a disgusting pinch at the hips. Yes, I understand it's just a video game and it doesn't have to be a neat as a feature film, but a good rig can't be so hard to ask for! Even with a certain polygon count. The texture people can't cover all the imperfections of a polygon model!

Oh, yea, and PS-

I've given up on DeviantArt. It's gotten too fancy for me.

Oops

The last time I posted I was nine days away from going home. Now I'm two weeks away from going back to school. I think it's about time I gave this blog an official update, but here's an update in progress.

Rush

In approximately nine days I'll be in a car with my mom and my fish Killer and on our way away from Savannah for 3 months. And in those 9 days I have to...

-Complete 2 animation layout packets, including two full renders in blue, field guides, ground planes, character movement, line art optional... (Due monday!)

-Complete a maquette of my character Dallas

-Complete a 5 second 3D animation of the maya rig Moom v.4 doing a pirouette.

-Study for my government final (and attempt to get a B on it)

-Recover from being sick

-Put things in storage (and i don't have a car, so I need to get help doing that)

-Mail things home (again, lack of car, and I need help)

-Pack, pack, pack...

-And manage to spend enough time with my friends and boyfriend so they all don't think I hate them. Evidently I'm already failing at that. :(

Fuck. This is life, right? It's supposed to suck? And I am I supposed to want to make the effort to fix everything? Because currently, I'm tired, and I'm tired of trying to fix everything, and I'm falling apart at the seams. I've been trying to fix things that I didn't break or even have a hand in, and now... I'm tired. Let me just get my shit together right now, ok?

9 days, 9 days and I'm somewhat free. *sigh*

Pop Tarts

Tis a charming thursday morning throughout the land of Savannah! I sit here, consuming pop tarts, planning my next course of action for my Animation Layout and Character Design class. Truth be told, I am stuck. I am stuck in the middle of a road of character design, surprise surprise.


Sigh.

Dislancubama

So I have returned to Savannah from my spring break in Dislancubama. (Which is my conglomerate phrase used to describe Disney, Orlando, Cuba, Alabama... not as in Cuba the country, however, as in Cuba, the town in Alabama...)

I have to say, I have grown quite fond of my gingery locks that I acquired from a box. For several years, I have wanted to try the ravishing hair color a whirl, but between insistent hair stylists and not-so-nice red heads that detered me from the hair color. (honestly, I ran into a string of disagreeable people that were of rouge hair. It was strange.) But now, now I plan on going forth and wearing this hair color furthermore as my own. Some people have managed to overlook my ever-prevalent dirt colored roots and thought the red as my natural. Nay, it is not my natural, but aye, I plan to keep it and fool you some more.



The best part is that I can pretty much be Ariel from the Little Mermaid now. Just give me a ton of hairspray so I can get those huge bangs and I'll be all set. Credit to Lois Van Baarle for the lovely piece of the red head above. Wish I could claim credit, but I can claim none.

I have no idea why I felt the need to post about loving being a redhead, but I had to. Now on to better and more coppery tones perhaps?

Jestir Rock Dance!

And there you have it, my final for Animation 1!

I think I've successfully posted this animation on every webpage I can attach my name to.

When violins go bad

And this is what happens when violins go bad and get attached as the head of a jockey in a Degas painting that's been modelled while being sent through a cemetary.

It's a work in progress. The violin final had one extra step, and that was to be put in a team of three people and they combine their pieces into one. So the modelling on everything that isn't the violin was done by two of my classmates, Chris and Erma. It'll be cool.

A Little of the Bandits Soul

This is the painting as done by Rene Magritte.



This is the 3D modelling of the painting as done by me.

Look, Ma'

I modeled me a violin.

And yea, I'm calling it a violin rather than a viola because, let's face it, Rene Magritte probably wasn't thinking about violas when he painted his painting.

Painting with Light

I was pretty proud of myself when I finished this.
Not when I got to class though and found how ornate people had gotten with the project. Bugger. Oh well, enjoy what my disco lighted spheres!

Hey, I have to be proud of something between the emotional emo rot, back spasms, and lack of proper meals. I can only last so long on mac and cheese dinners. And I'm lactose intolerant. The fake cheese is eventually going to get to me.

Maple Tree

In front my house back in Chelsea, Michigan, there once was a giant old maple tree. We figured it was probably actually two maple trees that grew too close together and fused into one eventually, it seemed so abnormally huge for a maple. It towered over the house and the neighborhood, and from my elementary school playground that was a block from my house, I could see the top of the maple tree above the rest.

Then several years ago an ice storm hit. Trees were felled under the weight of sparkling ice that winter, but the maple only lost branches. It stood tall and proud still... or so we thought. Come the spring thaw we noticed that there was a small split where the trunk branches off in two. The maple's days were numbered, seeing as now if another bad ice storm like the one that hit came again, the maple could fall apart and possibly on our house.

The summer of '06 we finally did the sympathetic thing to the king maple tree - brought it down in peaceful pieces with a chainsaw. We were curious to find out how old it was, but we'd never know.

As the maple stood tall and proud, it had begun to slowly rot from the inside out. The core of the maple was pure mush. We figured this was probably happening, but it was still surprising to see it. You would never guess by looking at the tree that it was really only supported by what you were looking at.

Tall and proud but no internal support.

Occasionally I feel like that - Trying to keep the appearances of being tall and strong, but on the inside I'm emotional mush and I'll crash and fall if the right storm rolls by.

------
Oh, and you should've seen the grubs that feasted on the maple's rot. They were HUGE! It was disgusting!

MINE!! In 21 days max...

Every once in awhile there comes a time for some sort of new addiction. Once it was Lord of the Rings, for awhile it was Harry Potter. Superheroes are up there in the addiction, along with pirates and random Japanese animations. As you can see there's a pattern, being that all my addictions are of the visual moving picture sort.

And now I have a new addiction.

Sex and the City.

A bit late, seeing as the series has been off the air for a few years now, but better late than never!

And now is not the time for artistic updates because I have none.

It's 2:30 am and I'm staying online with the help of cashews.

Why?

Why not.

And hey, check out my new digs over here. I decided to go for a different look over here, use good ol' Star Hawk rather than Tiffany the Sorostitute Villainess. Good times, good times.