Click the image to go to the animation’s page in my portfolio. The link to the MPG is at the bottom of that page.

This was my final for last semester’s character animation class. I’m trying not to say bad things about my work in the public forum, so I won’t comment on this piece.

Man, oh man. I was going to write an update or two while I was back in Baltimore, but that obviously didn’t work out. I didn’t do anything I was planning on doing back home with the exception of taking a few long walks. Unfortunately, I offset the health benifit by eating a 3 whole cows and a bucket of buttered noodles. Whatever. I was doing god’s work.

I spent a lot of time with Cacie. She’s my monkey.

Now I am back in Savannah. Here’s the run down:

This semester I’ve got two undergrad classes, and I hate it with a white hot passion. I love the material we’re covering, but undergrads give me a headache. A typical undergrad class is akin to taking a bus full of retards to the zoo. Maybe I’m getting old.

Yeah. That must be it. Except for the cartoons about my dick. That doesn’t exactly add up.

I have a “job” this semester. I sit at a desk reading and drawing for 5 hours twice a week, random people ask if I am bored, occationally someone will huff a little when I do the one single thing I am being paid to do, and then I go home. No complaints aside from the typically bad Savannah parking.

There are more stick figure cartoons coming this semester. Probably nothing to show here until late April. I need to add a title card to the original cartoon and do the redraw of the animation frames. That’s going to take a little while, but the new animation segments should just plug right into my old edit, saving lots of time.

I need to start looking for my thesis committee. My orignal idea isn’t going to work now, but I think I’ll be cool.

Off to class.

I just downloaded an HDTV capture of the trailer that was on TV the other night for SW Episode III. Holy crap.

I also saw the new trailer for the next Zelda game. I’m looking forward to the kitten saving side-quest. I hope there’s the comedy option to throw kittens off a cliff like in Mario 64: the baby penguin massacre.

Yesterday afternoon, I wrapped up my Winter quarter. The last week has been nothing if not brutal. The stress and my awesome cookie and pizza diet have me feeling like hell. I guess it could be worse. My roommate Rick slept every other night this week and only for 5 hours at a go. While I pulled about 5 all nighters this week, only the last one was a 24hour+ run. I don’t want to speculate on my grades, but I think I’ll be ok.

The awesome group project should be ready to show here sometime towards the end of the month. That 15 second character animation I put together the other night needs some small tweaks before I put it up. Nothing major, but nothing I have time to fiddle with now.

My flight to Baltimore is in 6 hours. I’m thrilled, but I haven’t put any thought into packing until this morning. I spaced on a few minor errands I was going to run this week. I woke up early (for me) so I believe I’ll be fine if I can just stop playing on the computer.

I’ll be in Baltimore until the 21st. If you want to see me, keep in mind that I won’t have a car unless my dad is feeling generous. Otherwise, I am totally at the mercy Cacie and how far I am willing to walk (roughly 2 miles).

One of my projects is done!! There’s a segment I edited the timing on where the screen ratio changes, but aside from that I am more or less happy with this edit of my E-Mail!! animatic slash pencil test thing. I even sort of like this version better than the Mario Paint Yakkity Sax version I posted yesterday.

Download it directly HERE.

or

Visit its little portfolio page.

Now all I have to do is animate a 15 second 3D character animation with vocals in 24 hours. Huzzah!

I usually hate showing works in progress, but the reaction I got from my roommates on a piece I’m putting together now spurred me into putting it up here.

Bear with me while I bitch about why I hate showing early work… The piece below needs proper audio, tighter editing, perhaps a title card, and real (correctly spelled) credits. On top of all that, one of the dangers of showing this to you now is that the placeholder soundtrack is 100 times better than anything I’m going to be able to put together. Sadly, I can’t legally use this sound clip, and nothing in our sound archive comes close to this level of hilariousness.

Now an explanation for the non-art kids… this video is an animatic… sort of. An animatic is a storyboard (think: comic strip) timed out on video that a director uses to time shots in a movie. What I did that was neat\stupid is that I animated a lot of it. I wouldn’t call this full animation because I made liberal use of repeating frames and didn’t lipsync any of the vocals (there will be some in the final version). The piece I’m making this as a guide for will be fully 2D animated with wacky 3D effects. WOOOO.

If you are still confused, go here: Storyboard, Animatic

The real version of this animatic with a much lamer soundtrack will be finished some time Wednesday.

Oh… and the idea is based off of this comic.

Click the pic to download a 10MB, 1 minute long thing