Personally, this personality walk is quite personable.

This last week's assignment was a.. PERSONALITY WALK. So, naturally, I chose the moonwalk. (and yes, I can mooonwalk..) Maybe not as crazy good as MJ, but still..

It was actually quite harder than I thought to create it, and I think it might still be a bit slow, but it's in stepped mode right now and this next week I need to work with spline and make this walk... just glide across the screen. So here's my blocked out version of the moonwalk and also STU posed in exhaustion. Enjoy, and let me know what you think.





oh yeah.. and one more thing. I've decided to start an idea book. You would never guess how many interesting characters or situations I run into working at a department store. Sometimes I just have to laugh to myself, or just inside, otherwise others might get the impression that I've one too many screws missing. ha. But I was just watching "Planet Earth" on tv last night and got so many ideas for characters and short animations. (by the way, that show is ridiculously good, and if you haven't seen it yet, you should. Amazing.) I was explaining/acting out some of the crazy animals and their behaviors to my family and my mom probably explained my personality to a tee when she said "Sarah, you think just like a cartoon."

Maybe, just maybe, I am one.

(or just at heart.)

mmm... Vanilla.

So the past couple of weeks were devoted to learning a vanilla walk cycle.

"Vanilla walk?" you say.

yes, that's right- a vanilla walk. No chocolate chip cookie dough walks or superman.. just a plain ordinary vanilla walk. simple? well..I've heard that if you can get a walk cycle just perfect, you can do just about anything. (hehe.. or something like that.) The walk cycle involves EVERYTHING we've learned thus far and so it was VERY tricky getting this little ball with legs (Ballie) to walk across my screen. (frustrating at times also, especially when I switched from stepped mode, where it would play just the certain poses i keyed in, to spline, or playing normally. Oh man, when I first played it back, Ballie's body parts went flailing about! ha..

I figured it out and was on my way to making a full walk cycle. There's much to be changed with this first walk, but at least I've come to understand how to go about it. It's a good thing, too, because these next couple weeks our assignment is to animate a personality walk. This is going to be a lot of fun! So here's my assignment from the last couple weeks. We also posed STU as "concerned." enjoy!

Calling All Front Row Seaters!

It's now been almost a month since the last time I wrote in this blog. (Sorry.) But that doesn't mean I haven't been busy. It's actually been QUITE the opposite. I knew that using Maya would inevitably be a huge learning curve for me.. but WHOA. About a month and a half ago I had not even cracked open the Maya program. (let alone been able to load it onto my computer..ha.. but that's a different story for a different time.) I was a 2D person trying to adjust living in a 3D world. Not an easy task. Though since then, I've had weekly assignments challenging me to exaggerate and push myself in animation. (Granted, we've been working on bouncing balls the entire time, but as far as learning the basics goes, you can and will learn ALL of that with a small little sphere.)

Also, the way Animation Mentor is set up is a VERY front row seater kind of class. Let me explain. I've taken art classes before and so I'm used to showing my artwork to the class. Now, this online program isn't the "normal" class (because only 4 of 15 students are actually from the US and we've never actually "seen" each other in person.. just through webcams) But I applaud the way that this program is set up! ALL students in ALL classes can see ALL of your work. VERY humbling. You can't sit in the back row and hide anything from anyone. haha.. a frightening thought at first, but now I've realized that's the best part of AM. Students will see your first sketches and finished animations as well as the critiques from your mentor. And as I've come to find out those crits are not only helpful to the one being critiqued but also to anyone else checking it out. This website is like a FOUNTAIN of knowledge and I feel like a little kid in a candy store! haha..

It's an exciting time over here, let me tell you.

So let me catch you up to where I am right now. I left you in week 2 with STU in a somewhat cheesed pose. ha.

week 3: I received a ball to make bounce. simple? haha.. oh, and posed STU in "excitement"
week 4: to animate TWO bouncing balls of different weights
week 5: use squash/stretch to animate a ball bouncing through an obstacle course, as well as pose STU in "Devastation".. haha.. that was a fun one! :)

so here's the good stuff!






There you have it. The past month in a nutshell (somewhat). As time goes on, I'm feeling more and more comfortable with the program and that's SO encouraging to me! It's hard being the newbie with no experience, and yet somehow incredibly inspiring . It pushes me to do the best that I can. I'm surrounded by so much talent and just because of that I'm learning leaps and bounds! Thanks for visiting and hopefully I'll update sooner on the next one!

God Bless!

Animation Mentor Fall Showcase

One more thing before I forget...

I thought you might like to see what exactly I'll be doing for the next year and a half and show off the work of some of the current students. This stuff is just ridiculously amazing!

"it's about time Benny, my clothes are goin outta style!"

This could not have been stated more perfectly. Like Squints, the gangly baseball geek with coke bottle glasses sweltering outside from the intense heat and waiting for that glorious moment of refreshment, I have also been waiting for this one moment a very long time. For years I have dabbled with cartooning and animation (mostly flip books made out of sticky notes for my brothers to enjoy) and have often dreamed of becoming THAT name in the long list of credits at the end of an animated feature film.


This now brings me to an amazing opportunity to which I have been recently accepted. It's called Animation Mentor, which is an online intensive character animation program. I will be taught by animators working in the industry now and it will last for (if I pass all of my classes) a year and a half. (So that means in the spring of 2009, I SHOULD be on my way to becoming an animation ninja and joining all of the geniuses in the animation industry... or at least that's the goal.) I wanted you to be a part of my journey to fulfilling my life-long dream and I hope you enjoy my craziness along the way. I would love to have any feedback, good or bad, because in order to be successful at this, you, the audience, are the most important part of my animation. If it's not clear to you or you find it not believable, I need to know this!

Thanks again and welcome to the life of Erds: aspiring animator.

(Below I have attached a .jpg of my first sketchbook assignment. We had to sketch people in a public place and pose STU, our friendly Maya character, in one of those poses. enjoy.)