Tablets and Glitches

Getting back into animating stuff hasn't been easy lately.  I like 2D animation; it looks nice regardless of how rough it is and computers are generally more willing to work for you.

That being said, I've been low-tech lately because my graphics tablet went obsolete.  My tablet is a blue Wacom CTE-640, which was gifted to me when my dad bought it on clearance back in 2007 (or round-about that time).  Buying it cheap was practical because I'd never used a tablet in my life and there was no guarantee that I'd like it.

To my dad's relief I took to the tablet like a bird to flight; a little awkward at first but raring for more.  Though I often claim that my first digital drawings look like my 7th-grade self drew them, the novelty of having Ctrl + Z and no eraser lines kept me coming back.  I still prefer line drawing with paper, but I love digital painting.

My little Wacom tablet survived my senior year of high-school, 4 years of college animation classes, being stuffed into book-bags, being dropped on the floor, and having the USB cord replaced.  It has scratches, sticky notes, and sparkly smiley-face stickers stuck all over it.  The pen tip has never worn out, and neither have the buttons or the eraser bit on the end.

A month or two ago I plugged my tablet into my desktop computer...

...and the computer did nothing.  It was clear my tablet was working, but the computer had forgotten what a graphics tablet was.

I went online to download updates, because that usually fixes weird things like that, but there were no more updates for the CTE-640.

Here lies my first tablet, brought to death by software obsolescence.

For a time I borrowed a Monoprice TWA60 from a friend, but that model doesn't have an eraser, which bugs me.  It also developed this quirk where it would start drawing at a point as much as 2 inches away from where I intended to draw, so I'd get done coloring a character's belly, and then have to erase all these unwanted freckles from their backs and tails.  When it stopped registering pressure differences (essential for my calligraphic lines) I decided to return the TWA60 to its owner rather than download the software updates.  The tablet design overall didn't thrill me.

I'm planning to get a brand new, professional-grade tablet this time.  My aim is for longevity as well as quality.  I need something that I can get comfortable with and then keep for the next 6 years or more.  I've had my eye on an Intuos5 Touch.  It has an eraser :) .

Earworm of the Day: Fortune Days by The Glitch Mob
.  On a related note, I recently started using Pandora.  What took me so long!?

The Merits of Meyer's Other Book (a minor rant)

I woke up this morning and I'm all like, "I must write!!!"

Today is my last day of college.  All I have to do is show up for the figure-drawing critique and turn in my class portfolio.  Then try to maintain attention long enough while forced to analyze each student's artwork for ten minutes while having to stand up... yes standing is the hard part.  I can't take standing for long periods of time, it gets me all stressed out and cranky.  (Walking for long periods of time has the opposite effect strangely enough.)

My Hand-drawn Animation final was yesterday.  Here's how it went:


Kitchen Chaos: Pencil test stage from Elizabeth Young on Vimeo.

On a related but totally different note, movie trailers that have succeeded in making me want to see the movie:  Warm Bodies, and The Host.

A word on The Host, it is a book written by Stephanie Meyer.  I've read it, and I thought it was better than the Twilight series (for one thing, there is only one book of The Host).  Was it the writing caliber of Timothy Zahn, Anthony Horowitz, or Naomi Novik?  No.  Of course not.  This is Stephanie Meyer we're talking about.  Was The Host at least more palatable than Twilight?  Yes.  Yes it was, and for no other reason that the narrator is a space alien.  The narrator is still a Mary Sue who can do no wrong and has no depth (read: expert/victim/flaw model, implied back story, 3-dimentionality).  When she does mention a past life, it seems to come out of left field (this character can fight?  What?  This was not foreshadowed or referenced in the preceding pages!  I call shenanigans!).  But, any Mary-Sue-ishness can easily be written off because Wanderer is a space alien.  She doesn't feel human, but then again she's not human.  Disbelief remains suspended.  The story was at least decent.  I'd be willing to pay money to see how the film makers handle it (because frankly they can only improve upon it.)

Earworm of the Day:  The BG music to the video Our Story in 1 Minute.  I put the video link first because you must see the epicness that is the video, but the song itself is Our Story by melodysheep.  I am seriously considering downloading this, it would be worth every penny.

P.S. Because I promised to post when I was done...

Cll'li jogging along... and she doesn't look happy.  Safe to say someone's in big trouble.

In Which My Train of Thought Waltzes Down the Produce Aisle

I have had some very silly songs stuck in my head for the last 3 days.  But I'll get to that in the earworm section.  First...



Second...

Sketch of Cll'Li jogging along.  Color inverted in Photoshop because it looks cooler that way.

...which I am currently coloring by trying out Photoshop's various brushes.  I'll post when I'm done.

And Finally...

Earworm of the Day: Oh No What We Gonna Do? from the VeggieTales episode "Where's God When I'm S-scared?".  I recommend reading the lyrics too.  I was 3 years old when this came out and my Grandma worked at Berean Book Store, so yeah, our VHS collection was 40% VeggieTales growing up.

Looking at old VeggieTales from a distance of 19 years and a B.A. in Animation?  Well, now I get all the jokes.  And the CG is on par with a 1st year animation class, but the character design and acting (asymmetrical eyes, great voice acting) is very professional, and also just plain hilarious.  I mean, come on, cucumber singing about his lips, peas parodying Monty Python?  How can you not laugh?

--End of Babble--

Return of the "Flams"

For my animation final this quarter I've decided to pull the animatic Kitchen Chaos off the metaphorical shelf and move forward with production.  For those of you who may not have been reading that far back, this project was started in my story-boarding class last year.

So here is the first pencil test for what will soon be a fully animated video (I only have two weeks to complete everything.)  So far I'm optimistic.

Nothing gets the creative drive flowing like animating a very angry wallaby-thing running around with a butterfly net.  The character with the net is named Jimmy (thanks to an earlier project concerning a sound clip from a certain show).  His mom is a giraffaroo and his father is a very large frog, which means I'm still waffling on whether Jimmy's skin (or possibly fur) is yellow or green. The frog-clam-annoying-mouth-things are a little less puzzling, having officially been dubbed "Flams" today by my animation teacher (because "Clogs" is already a word.)

I also wrote a chunk of script in Celtx this morning for the first time in months (at the expense of homework time, but totally worth it).  I won't post it here because it's long, but let's just say Spitfire wins a fight using pacifism and parkour.

Oh, and found another cool video concerning movies. Warning: that video has some language in it, (because many good movies are not rated PG.  Sorry, fact of life.)

Earworm of the Day: Zorba's Dance what else?

Lost My Drive... No, Not That One, the Other One.

I know, I haven't posted for a whole month.  Again.

The funny thing about a gap this large in posting is that when I finally sit down to write, I have nothing interesting to post.  It's like all the interesting things that happened over the last month mash together and cancel each other out so I can't remember any of them anymore.  Hmph.

Well, ok, I have Elf the Jackalope freaking out:

That was animated on paper then lined in Toon Boom.  Ok, there's something to talk about.  Toon Boom is -- according to my teacher -- the industry standard for digital painting in animation (or something to that effect).  At least in the west (again, according to my teacher, the Japanese has better programs, but they aren't available in the U.S.)

But then again Toon Boom seems to be a pretty intuitive straight forward program and I wish I'd bought a copy when it was on sale for $150 instead of waiting too long and having the price jump.  Live and learn.

Earworm of the Day: A Whisper and a Clamor by Anberlin

I don't remember if I've posted that one already, but I've been blasting it to stave off the end-of-college-beginning-of-fall-too-long-away-from-family depression I've been wrestling with lately.  (Don't worry, I'm getting help for that.)  The artwork may be few and far between until I can relocate my creative drive.  I think I dropped it somewhere.  Maybe it's hiding in my subconscious under the philosophical inquiries, or the dismembered Motion Builder actor guy, or the 2 ton chunk of self-doubt in the corner.  I'll find my drive eventually.  Hopefully by Christmas (this Christmas will be fantastic, I can feel it.)

20 Days To Graduation!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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

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).

Avian Emotions

Beth will willingly dive into battle with aliens, robots, crime lords, and homicidal librarians... but spiders?  She doesn't do spiders.

I bought a bag of coffee for my dad today and put the bag of beans in my backpack for safe keeping.  My favorite sweater was also stuffed in there.  Now my sweater smells amazing!

In other news, I've been working more on Dripbird.  His legs and claws are now fully rigged, as is his face.

It lives!!! Buahahaha!

Unfortunately I waited till now to create the master locater thingy (usually seen as a big set of arrows at the character's feet).  Everything is grouped under it.  The problem is, when I grouped everything under the locater, the neck sorta... went nuts.  Like translating the character would turn it into an alien giraffe. So for the moment I'm back to square one on the neck.  But that's ok.  At least I have books to tell me how to do that.

Earworm of the Day: Trip the Light by Garry Schyman and sung by Alicia Lemke.  As seen on the fantastic video called Where the Hell is Matt? 2012.  Seriously, it's great.  The scuba-diving part is my favorite.

Rainbow Alarmclock

First, the drawing I mentioned last time with the clock and the frying pan.  For context, it's set the morning after giant killer roaches invaded Dennis and Beth's house and they had to barricade themselves into Beth's room.  After a tense night with little sleep, well... Beth's a little jumpy...

Frying Pan of Doom indeed.

And I know the sizing here makes it super hard to read, so here's the transcript:

Dennis: Zero to deadly in 2 seconds.  I'll have to remember that.

Beth: And it was the nice one with the colored numbers too...

And for the record, Beth's clock with the colored numbers is real.  I got it at Target several years ago.  Sadly, they don't seem to be carrying these anymore.

Also worked more on Dripbird today.  I'm reasonably happy with the leg rigging, or at least I'm totally sick of it and just want to be done.  The skin hasn't been connected and weighted yet, so I attached some cubes to the rig so it could be seen and made this walk test:

Earworm of the Day: Germs by "Weird Al" Yankovic

Animated Animals and Mutant Food

That is a preliminary walk-cycle test for my original cartoon character, Beth.  This will be the first time she's ever been animated.  Can I get a celebratory "Whoo-Hoo"?

Too early for that?  Ok, moving on.

Went to the last day of Taste of Chicago.  I decided to be curious and daring and ate an Irish Egg-roll.  Come to find that it's essentially the unholy love-child of a spring roll and a quesadilla.  Both are up there on my favorite foods.  Neither should ever be incorporated into the other.  In terms of ingredients, an Irish Egg-roll is simply an egg-roll wrapper filled with cabbage, flecks of pink meat that were probably part of a pig at some point, and lots of white cheese.  Note that, like a real egg roll, the whole wrap is fried.

Cheese + Frying oil = Me having zero appetite for the rest of the day.

Also yesterday, we went to the Lincoln Park Zoo; which is, by the way, FREE.  I've gotten used to the turnstiles, ticket booths, and bag-checks employed by everything from theme parks, transportation, museums, and even the local public library.  So it was utterly surreal to walk of the street and right up to a grey sea lion tank with no one stopping me.  If you ever get a chance to go, do it.  No, it's not exactly Disney's Animal Kingdom, but it does have a surprising variety of critters for a zoo funded by donation.  My favorite was the takin.  I'd heard of them but I'd never seen one in real life before.  Apparently they're related to goats.  The rest of the Lincoln Park Zoo's menagerie can be found here.

Earworm of the Day: Winter Wrap Up.  Yes.  I'm serious.  I'm a female animation student that spends a lot of time on the internet, it should not come as any surprise that I watch MLP.

The Hunt is On!

Finals are over, summer is here, and I'm job-hunting.  Huzzah!

Don't have room for all 3 of the videos I need to share, but I'll give you the links (Vimeo is better through their site anyway).

• Carpe Noctem.  Yes, it is now at a reasonably state of done-ness!
• Title sequence for Cosmicomics, a book by Italo Calvino
• My shiny new Demo Reel!  Yay!

In other news, I've returned to my personal modeling/rigging/fur simulation project: a Tiger Swallowtail butterfly.

Preliminary upper wing coloring on butterfly.  Those little veins were tough!

I started this project back at Parkland.  The nice thing about arthropods is that they're naturally made out of stiff bits and pieces.  I wanted to make something that was easy to rig, and with an insect you don't have to worry so much about painting weights.

Of course, I do have to worry about painting color, but once the uv map is in place (as you can see, it already is) it's super easy to do a pallet-swap.

Hence THE BUTTERFLY OF DOOM!!!!

Mwuahaha!

In retrospect, I should go back and make the eye spots bigger.  Maybe add some more embellishments on the edges?  And frankly, it's a butterfly.  Even when evil it still looks pretty-ish.  It can't help it.

Earworm of the Day: Afterlife by Switchfoot

Here's Some Tea, I'll Avoid the Parties

I have no connection whatsoever to Lipton, I was just told to do a fake commercial for Motion Graphics class, and I decided to do tea (because I was drinking tea at the time).  I chose Lipton because... well they're well known... and they're logo is easy to draw.  Oh, and the song is the intro to This is Your Life by Newsboys (normally I don't listen to a song with that much chorus-repetition and sap, but my iTunes was on shuffle that day.  It was a total light-bulb moment.  It's so delightfully commercial!)

 

Another animation test for Carpe Noctem.  I plan to do all the hand-animating this weekend on account of the school computer labs being shut down.  It's due to this little world-leader get-together called NATO.  Maybe you've heard of it.  I understand that the university trying to avoid innocent students getting jumped by crazed protestors... but I can't help but note that this never happened in Champaign-Urbana.

If you're struggling to get This is Your Life out of your head now...
Earworm of the Day: Kids in America as sung by Cascada and seen in the English-dub of the Digimon Movie.  Was I a Digimon nerd as a kid?  Yes.  Yes I was.  In my day it was either Pokemon, Digimon, Yu-gi-oh, or Dragonball Z... and I chose Digimon because:

1. the monsters spoke in full sentences
2. "surviving in an alien world" is a more compelling premise for a TV show than "competing in a card game tournament".
3. the fight scenes didn't last a month.

Strangely enough, fast-paced fight scenes are also a reason I like Nickelodeon's Avatar.  Personal preference I guess.

Flying

And that is what I did today.

Earworm of the Day: "Test Flight" from How to Train Your Dragon The video doesn't have the voices/sound fx to it... but it's still epic anyway.

Post #100!

Translation of hen-scratches: "Leah is sent to get more chalk.  She zones out when teacher gives her instructions.  Trial and error door-opening."

Today is my hundredth post (I have also just discovered there's two d's in "hundredth".  Who knew?).  I was planning on posting something cool... but the coolness didn't get finished in time, so instead I'm just going to update on projects.

My new animation project currently in production is titled Carpe Noctem.  It is a minute-long sequence told from the first-person point-of-view from an ordinary microchiropteran bat (I can spell "microchiropteran" without spell-check first try... but not "hundredth".  Shows you where my priorities are...).

The project will be photoshop/hand-drawn animation with 3D enhancement... which I haven't puzzled out how to do in a timely manner yet.  Doesn't help that the school printer ONLY prints Double-sided documents.  Not to mention screws up the page order.  .

On the up-side, I remember how to MEL script:

Forest-generator.  Aka: proof that I know MEL scripting.

 The basic look is coming together too.  After Conner the Contortionist, I am fed-up with doing outlines in Photoshop.  I've replaced them with gradients and value-contrasts.  Takes about the same amount of time... but it's so much easier to focus on, and the results are so much cooler.

Nighthawk for Carpe Noctem.  In retrospect, I might've made the beak too big...

Discovered in research that nighthawks can make a booming sound with their wings wings (yes, their wings).  Birds, bats, and sonar-jamming moths?  I am in flying-creature-animation heaven this week!

Earworm of the Day: Already did Guide to Marine Life... and can't link to my project's bg music... iTunes shuffle says The 59th Street Bridge Song by Simon & Garfunkel.

I wanted to find a song from a school play I was in back in first grade... but YouTube hadn't been invented yet then.  (I remember practicing the song with a cassette tape.  If you don't know what that is... ... ok, I'll post the link.  I feel old now.)

Conner the Contortionist

I finished it!  Yay!

I've been up to my ears in homework as you might imagine.  Easter weekend was uneventful (you could even say boring) and today I'm simply looking forward to the Her CDM meeting later today (I come for the pizza, stay for the people.  Great group.)

For my next project... Well I'll hold off on saying.

Earworm of the Day: We Won't Give Up by The Afters

Surreal and Contorted Circles

If I haven't posted this week, it's because me and my teammate from Motion Graphics class were busy making this:
 
And if I don't post for this coming week, it's because I'll be finishing the character animations for this:



Have a nice week!

Earworm of the day: The Windmills of Your Mind sung by Noel Harrison, but written by a French Guy.

Don't Release Invasive Species!

Earworm of the Day: "Pizza is a Vegetable" by my classmate, Ian.  Our entire class will be bopping our heads to this for the next few days probably.

Daylight Savings? That was today?

Who forgot Daylight Savings Time today?  I did!  Thankfully at my church no one gets mad at people who are late (as long as you're quiet about it).  Now if daylight savings started on a Monday... .

Here's my final project for Cinema & Art class.  Went over a lot better than I thought it would (people who don't have to stare at animation every day are more easily impressed by it methinks) so I thought I'd post it.  Just because.



Also made a style-frame for the PSA animatic posted a week or so ago:

Lots of birds, a smallmouth bass, and... what's this?  Kudzu!  Agh!  Kill it with fire, quick!

Earworm of the Day:  Eh, already posted the one that's actually stuck in my head, so random pick from iTunes.  Sticking With You by Addison Road  Kid you not, I think of this song every time I pass Wrigley Field.

Rush to the Finish

'Tis the week before finals at DePaul, and I have hours worth... no, days worth of homework to complete by quarter's end.  The good news is I don't have any papers to write, just a lot of arts & crafts.  I'll keep this entry short, but here are a few pictures of what I've been creating.

Figure in Composition for figure drawing class.  The guy in the picture is completely fictional as is the room.  Discovered the wonders of blending nubs on this one, what a difference!

A paper forest for my PSA Animatic.  Exacto-knives are nifty.

Expressive Drawing for figure drawing class.  Both characters are fictional, though I did use reference photos (as in more than two).  Thanks bunches to my friend Katharine for the Prismacolor Art Stix.  I could not achieve this with Crayolas.

Earworm of the Day: The Upside by Newsboys  Drawing a grinning tow headed girl with a hamster has put me in a very positive mood.

PSA Link Storm

Step 1 on my animation final this quarter.  It had to be a PSA.  I'm thinking of doing stop-motion paper cutouts so I can work at home.  I'm getting tired of sitting in front of the computer.  I want to make something a little more tangible (and a little less accidentally-erasable.  That's another lesson I reviewed recently).  More info about the featured invasive species can be found at The National Invasive Species Information Center.

I considered doing cain toads and rabbits too, but rabbits are in fact native to North America (though I've heard there quite invasive in Australia), and how do you animate the devastation caused by cain toads under a time limit?  Have a dog lick one and die with x's over the eyes?  That's some dark comedy people.  I think I'll stick to funny sound effects, thank you very much.

While researching for this animation, I also learned that starlings are sometimes kept as pets.  Let me just say that I have nothing against keeping starlings as pets, provided they stay that way.  In reality they're probably safer for your neighborhood wildlife than a pet cat.  Domestic cats can wreak havoc on delicate ecosystems (poor Stephens Island Wren).  It also turns out that starlings are capable of imitating human speech.  It's kind of creepy but cool at the same time.

Earworm of the Day: Remind Me Who I Am by Jason Gray