DIALOGUE!!

"Hello! This is a demonstration of a talking picture. Notice, it is a picture of me and I am talking. Note how my lips and the sound issuing from them are synchronized together in perfect unison." (SINGIN' IN THE RAIN)

Wow.. this has been an insane couple of months. I'm uploading another set of 2 assignments.. The first is the character Stewie and his little magic trick. ha. The second is a project that will go through the end of the class (the end of June). We're working on dialogue right now and it's WICKED awesome! Lots of fun to finally have a face, instead of just little eyes. Hopefully the sound works.. I haven't put anything on here that has sound yet, so we'll see. Enjoy!

SOOO... you still there?

ha.. I have just realized I'm horrible at keeping up to date on a blog, especially when life throws CRAZINESS at you! (ehem.. like the news that I'm officially moving to South Korea in August! ..yeah.. THAT craziness) Almost 2 months have gone by and you (whoever may read this) have not heard from me. I apologize. So lucky for you, I have uploaded not one, but TWO new animations from class 2: BODY MECHANICS.. dun dun DUNNN. I hope you enjoy. I've started to get an eye for what looks right and it's exciting. People will watch my animations and be like "wow, that's so cool!" and then I'm thinking.. "yeah.. but... see how his hand isn't overlapping the motion of his arm? Or look how his whole body just feels mechanical because it's moving all at the same time??" (and it's at these moments, after I get "the look" that I feel like one BIG nerd. but hey.. it IS a part of my name, right? ha. Nerdmannimation.. hmmm... I might be on to something.)

ANYWAYS, here's the last 2 assignments I turned in. The first is stewie (no arms) jumping on posts. I still need to tweak overlapping.. (I feel like that's my cheer now.. "hip hip.. OVERLAP! hip hip.. OVERLAP!") The second is what I'm currently working on, so this isn't the final version.. but it's DEFINITELY taken a turn for the better since last week. phew.. LOTS of noodling going on here. The second animation is a fully-"ARM"ed stewie falling asleep in the outfield and being RUDELY awoken by the incoming play... will he save the game?? ..ha.. you gotta watch it to find out! :) again.. nerd. i'm going to take out the glance at the watch and OVERLAP this thing like crazy madness.. but enjoy it nonetheless! Thanks for stopping by and let me know if you have any comments/suggestions/enquiries, etc.

I'm also going to be creating a comic strip for my church's newspaper, which I'm SO excited about! So once I get those cranked out, I'll GLADLY share them with you! TAKE CARE!

CLASS TWO. ASSIGNMENT 1. LET'S GO.

So here's the first blocking of my first assignment. We had to either animate ballie kicking a soccer ball, taking a big step to the side, or turning around 180 degrees. I chose the second one and here's what I got:



This past week we turned in a splined version of this animation. I changed mine a bit and added a few things here and there. One of those was the ball. I decided it was too distracting and confusing, so in this second version I just made it a ball. I had plans of making it a body on the ground, but I need to keep things simple. (Sometimes my mind will get ahead of my actual abilities on this program..ha) There are some things I still need to work on, like his feet sliding too much and I need to overlap his body more on the steps. He looks too mechanical when every action ends on the same key. Also, I'm planning on smoothing out the ending. (It's too jerky) Anyways, here's my work from the past few weeks.. ENJOY!

in other news..

i have put my update letter from my mission trip on this website. ha.. sorry, i planned on having this done a LONG time ago. but here you are...

Class 1 review

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!