Last Project

I now present my last final project for the Spring 09 semester! We could do anything we wanted for our Ideation final. I'm a quiet, reserved person who keeps most of her feelings on the inside. I tend to remain quite composed, so I decided is was high time that something should be done about that! Inspired by my room mate, Jenn's, silly antics with the Photobooth application on our macbooks, I decided to do a stop motion with pictures of me making a variety of faces. My brother gave me the song suggestion, which worked really well. It was a fun project to make. A bit weird though since it's a bunch of pictures of me being weird. Not used to being so exposed. But that was the point of this project too. :)

The Arctic Shoulder

My first animated short film is finished!! I had so much fun creating this. Animated with classic Disney tunes in the background and danced around. Usually Amber was animating next to me, so that was pretty fun. Although it got frustrating at times, especially using the support rig to get the penguins off the ground, I learned a lot through the process. Mostly about timing, but also a lot about implying 'dialogue' through expressions/emotion. Since I am most interested in character animation, this was a good task for me! After nearly two months of working on it, I'm glad the short is finished, but I will miss the class!

Cluster Balloons

This past Monday I had the wonderful opportunity to help with the Up Cluster Balloon Tour even in Minneapolis to help promote Up, Pixar's latest movie set to be released May 29. Amber, Meg, and I go to the Metrodome before 3 am to help set up. We filled the huge balloons with helium and attached them to the chair which is a replica of Carl Fredrickson's in the movie.



Before the media arrived (it was a media only event), the crew got to go up in the balloons! I am afraid of heights, but it was really really neat. Since we were inside the Metrodome, we got to go higher than they have been able to go on the tour so far; 130-150 ft.


Then around 7:30 am, the media started going up and we all got to help send them up and pull them back down.



And finally around 1:30, we started deflating balloons. For the 12 hours spent there, it sure went by really quickly and I never ceased to be amazed by the large cluster of balloons! It's an experience I will remember for the rest of my life.


More images can be seen here.

Fun Time in the Black Studio

I am currently in the black studio taking a bit of a break from animating. Shooting the last scene today and I have the first pass done. Now just to make my penguin fly and I'll be done animating! It is quite exciting. Although, I will miss this class. I learned so much about animation in general from this class; timing and weight especially. Doing stop motion has made me think about animation in a different way. Definitely been beneficial. Made me a better animator. Shell's been a great teacher. Super helpful.

Anyway, last night when I was in animating, I decided to take a few pictures of myself and my studio space.

Strata!

In the midst of working on our short stop motion films, Shell gave us an in class assignment to create a strata cut animation. I opted to just play around and see how it would turn out. No rhyme or reason to what I did. It was pretty fun though. We all got to sit around and work. Jenny said it was like a knitting party since she looked up and we were all talking and working away. It was so nice out that day so it was hard to stay put in the black studio. When Amber and I finished creating our strata cuts, we decided to go take a walk outside while we waited to shoot our strata cuts. I got to enjoy the day somewhat.

So here is my finish piece. I shot it and then decided to smoosh it all together and shoot it again to see what happened.

Penguins!

I've been meaning to take a picture of my completed stop motion set and penguins. I've already started animating, but I figure now is a better time than never! Plus, I won't be posting any of the animation until it is completely done. Things are going fairly well on the animation front. A few problems here and there, but nothing too bad. It's pretty fun once I get started. I tend to drag my feet to start, but after the initial push, I'm alright. I'm at a stand still at the moment since I need to talk to Shell about my support rig. Wasn't working how I want it to last night. I'll figure it out tomorrow and progress will commence! My goal is to finish animating by the end of the weekend so I miss the madness of people rushing to finish. Then I'll have a week to do all the post production.

The main set piece is a two in one piece: A slide and a cliff!



In other school news, I finally remembered to upload a photo of my complete featherless chicken for 3D Modeling! All the modeling is completed. Now I am working on the rigging. The process is alright.... ok, it is a bit frustrating. Stupid paint weights. And I'm just not in the mood for it right now as stop motion has taken first priority on my To Do list. So here's Cluckles. I think there's been some minor changes since this screen shot was taken though.

Bale Challenge

I didn't win the Bale Challenge, but I didn't expect to. It was fun just to do. I was able to get some feedback on my animation from Andrew Gordon, one of the Spline Doctors. He didn't have time to fully review, but he gave some good overall feedback which was much appreciated. I have too much twinning going on and the movements are a bit robotic. So I know what to work on! Hopefully I can get some more practice in while still at school, but the last 5 weeks will definitely be chaotic with my stop motion short.

I had the best intentions over spring break to get work done, but only started a few things. It was break so I suppose it isn't too bad, but I just have to work extra hard now! Oh well. I'll get things done.