Grumbles about .Gifs

So, I think I'm changing my posting schedule to Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.  Why?  Because that's when I've got time.

First, I finally (finally!) figured out how to make an animated gif.  As per usual, I was only missing one button to make it work.

Also have a really cool idea for a deviantART avatar image now.  Involves a hamster of course.  Now, a bit of a note about animated gifs and my opinion of them.  I don't understand the phenomenon of chopping up a perfectly good YouTube video of a dog doing something and making it into a 6 panel animated gif comic strip.  It's a mutant if you ask me.  Too many things moving at once.  Mono-tasker's nightmare.

I also find endlessly looped gifs to be cute for the first two seconds, then annoying for the rest of their existence.

That being said, I wish I had looped the rainbow as it is a very short animation and may be hard to catch when the page loads.  I get that.  That makes sense.  What gifs need is a pause.  Some breathing room.  But making a gif longer means more work, and more animation skill.  In that sense I understand why annoying gifs happen.  They take less time and energy to make.

Well, I'm an animator, so I'll just have to expend the extra energy and make something fantastic.  My work ethic won't allow me to do otherwise.  Huzzah!

Earworm of the Day: What is Love? by Haddaway OR played on 8 floppy drives

Chucking Rigging out a 13th Story Window With as Much Force as Possible.

So, Google Chrome no longer works on my laptop because my Mac OS is old.  My desktop PC, within the span of 2 weeks, has gone from dust collector to primary computer.

And consistent readers will remember my rant about wallpaper.  Thus, this:

My attempt to take adorable up to 11 while maintaining realistic proportions.

I love Photoshop CS6.

In other news, yesterday I reached an epiphany.  I am not a rigger.  I can model, UV map, and put a bone system in place -- heck, I can even paint weights if I must -- but once I reach setting up a control system for it all, it's grinding hours of frustration.  FK/IK, pole vectors, splines, face rigs, locators, handles... dislike.  Dislike it all with a passion.

And as of yesterday, I am completely ok with that.

So in light of that epiphany, here's what's going to happen.

1. I am going to make a simple skeletal rig for both Butterfly of Doom and Dripbird so I can place them in some other position than a t-pose.  Nothing more.  They will not be animated... in 3D.  (Dripbird lives in 2D now.  He's finally getting to stretch his wings.)
2. I will finish UV mapping the fossa skull.
3. I will finish coloring Butterfly of Doom, Dripbird, and the skull.
4. I will render a video each of charater/object posed on a turntable in both color and occlusion passes.
5. I will post the 3 videos and accompanying stills to my portfolio/vimeo/blog/gallery.
6. All of the above will be completed one at a time so I can get my homework done.
7. I will celebrate when all three are done, take a week off, then go model something new.  Maybe a ninja hamster.

Earworm of the Day: Elements by Lindsey Stirling because you can never have enough dub-step violin. (To be fair, it is a narrow category.  Reaching saturation would be highly unlikely.)

Hands-On

I totally forgot to upload this Monday.  Wow.  I'm scatter-brained.

Matt Owl asks "Am I in the right century?"

In other news, today I applied for my degree conference (did I spell that right?).  If all my records are filled out correctly, and everything administration wise goes right, then an official paper that says "B.A. in Animation" should come by Christmas.  (I hope.)

In the mean time, I have the supreme hilarity of having a Motion Capture class and a Hand-Drawn Animation class back-to-back.  Yes, I go from the most automated form of animation to the most hand-crafted form of animation within the span of 3 hours.  I love my life.

I also love traditional animation.  Here's a bird jumping for an apple:

Earworm of the Day:  Due to my rule of not repeating earworms, I've officially got nothing.  Pick your own catchy tune and jam out to.  Heck, let's make it interactive.  Post your own earworm in the comments (video link is optional).

'Tis My Birthday! Hooray!

Another year older, and life is moving at a pretty fast clip.  Today I worked on a 2D animation of Dripbird jumping for an apple, which I hope to have refined and posted by Wednesday.  I also, finally, purchased an Adobe CS6 package for my PC.  Two weeks from now, I will be creating awesomeness from my own desktop!

Also, my roommate and I teamed up and made cupcakes (from scratch!) and decorated them with icing and chocolate (from the store).

Yay, cupcakes!

 In other news, I was helpful!  I got to help make a prayer network board Willow Chicago is using for its kids' program. I designed the swirly background and mapped out where the colors would go.  The painting and string was by some other super talented person.  I think it turned out great!

It's also upside-down.  But I kind of like it better this way.

Earworm of the Day:  We Got a Dollar (or I Got a Pickle in some versions) from The Little Rascals.  Of course, thanks to NATSU I now have an entirely different (equally catchy) song stuck in my head, but I'll let them have the glory for that.

"I got a birthday.  I got a birthday.  I got a birthday, hey hey hey hey..."