Heavy Television Lift

Lifting a heavy television and carrying it across the room. Pencil test.

The Future and My Confusion.

Howdy Ho Blogger people! I think I still see a few of you out there. Right?

Well I've been working on logos and other marketing swag for a nonprofit group in Lancaster PA Dramablility Works! They've been a lot of fun to work on and even though I emailed the group leader mid week hoping to get some sort of reply it has been to no avail. I however am going to be meeting up with her on Monday evening. Unless I get a reply before then I plan to leave the ideas alone for now.

I have also been doing some serious thinking about my career and using twitter and real life people to ask questions about what I should actually be getting a masters in. The online portal of Academy of Art isn't bad. I have learned even more about animation the practice as well as the history (which I LOVE). I also enjoy Coco who teaches our figure class which is sort of like how Bob McCloud's 'figure in motion' class was set up at PCA&D and honestly by week 3 with the way she was presenting her critiques I saw my figure work improving.

The reason I am rethinking what masters I receive is because the program I am currently in is very entertainment production heavy. Even though I'd like to move out West I think I would rather stay here on the East. The past four years I have lost a great deal of people close to me and I really don't want to lose anymore or I wouldn't want to be far away if any of the remaining were to pass. My husband also has a fine job out here and he wouldn't want to move unless I found something better than what he has now.

Other masters degrees I'm considering are: instructional design, game design, applied technology in education, (art) education, or something other than those listed but will help me with what field I'm looking into.

I'm really interested in doing artwork and or animation for educational gaming and television. I've been reading up on it and it has become much more popular in the classroom as well as with parents and enjoying learning really makes knowledge stick. I also have thought back to my childhood (it's easy 'cause I'm young) and I was very fortunate to be raised in the time I was. The boys and girls clubs were open til 10 and my mom picked me up at 9:30 after work. I was taught a great deal about art as well as had free tutoring.

I really want to make art that is accessible to children and help them out the way that I was helped out as a youth. This whole thought process was brought on by someone saying to me "Don't live in the future, create the future." That has stuck with me for the past 2. 5 months and made me think about all these things.


I'm going to end with an unrelated personal image that I finished yesterday about a girl who is so stuck in the water these jellyfish have to pull her around.

Vidjio Games and Hearts!

Ok so today was the most fun I've had on a day that I didn't request off of work. Not saying that I was working 'cause I was off, but I didn't request the day. I went up to Harrisburg and watched as a few super cool high school presented their video game demos as well as tested a few out. Then in the superest coolest part Harrisburg University has a Virtusphere.

You get in this over priced hamster ball with a couple senors and you can be emersed into a world that's on the computer. Not quite X Men Danger room or anything, but it was still amazing!
This Russian game that came with the system is what we experienced. Despite the fact that the textures didn't blow me away the fact that I was moving in real time and able to go any direction I wanted and that I was only looking at this area (though goggles). I was a bit unaware of reality. When it was time for me to exit I was wondering why I didn't see Tony who was talking to me. That last bit may sound a bit derp, but I was really emerced in this walking around a Russian town that and when in the Virtusphere you have all the motions and work of walking up hill with all the momentum of walking down hill.

After all the fun was over at the University. Then my video game makin' homies and I went walking around Harrisburg and found a place to eat and talk about Gob's Rebellion we mapped out deadlines that we'll have to keep to be able to to get a finished looking demo done by the end of the summer so week can look up/for game/young game competitions and get some feed back before finishing the game. It's getting exciting because things are really in motion with the programing and now with the art; modeling and rigging is starting soon, animation will be in the game.

Also I'm getting really excited about getting married in 9 days *dances and prances*.

Good days good times next time I might post some more art, but this was a really eye opening day not just for restrictions in the entertainment technology fields we are fighting still in the 21st century. I am also trying to figure out what else I need to learn with art to make me more useful to the entertainment industry. The only way to know what you need to improve on is to create more challenging work, and I'm seeing through this gaming experience that working with other people who have high expectations make self challenging easier. I don't know if any of that made sense, but it does to me.

So I've Graduated...

... and I didn't get the grant money I was hoping for from the Delaware Scholarship Incentive Program. So I can't really afford graduate school next year. I spoke with my one friends sister who has 1 bachelors degree and 3 masters degrees and she said that after Oliver and I get married financial aid becomes a lot easier to come by. I can see that being true. Still not attending graduate school right away even though I got in and even was able to skip a class is a pretty big downer. So I'll be working saving money, paying back loans, applying at game companies, and today I sent out about 100 postcards for various illustration jobs that my work seemed to fit into. I am also reconsidering going to graduate school specifically for animation. I'm thinking more of an "Entertainment Technology" program and to specialize in animation, because I think I might rather work in video games because of the constant production work flow and I like being busy. That and with video game you don't get the out sourcing that comes with the animation territory (at least television animation).


So since graduation other than working I've also been working on food illustrations as seen above because Charlie suggested it to me after he saw my postcard 3 months ago and I'm finally getting around to drawing some

I've also started preproduction work for my next animated short "Level 4 Goblin" Title still in the works. I've pretty much started on making a map and fleshing out the map a bit so that I have and idea on where this goblin is going when I storyboard it. The basic concept is this goblin gets dropped into a game of dungeons and dragons while the world is being built around him I expect the run time to be between a minute and 2 and a half minutes. That'll sort its self out after I do the story boards and throw them into an animatic. I also want to go to 3 film festivals that have animation as part of their work and depending on what happens next year I really want to go to the Ottawa animation fest.

I have also watched this one anime Puella Magi Madoka Magica and between that and The Amazing World of Gumball airing on CN I am really taken a back by their animation. They are very different types of shows; Madoka Magica is a sad sad show with amazing character development and upon watching the ending my tears caused Lancaster PA to rain for a day straight, and Gumball is a silly show with less developed characters and convenient situations and over all hilarious shenanigans. Both these shows that have recently been airing in their respected countries have several different animation styles and techniques inter graded in the show and pull it off really really well.

This is a .gif from Madoka Magica and it doesn't show how awesome these combined techniques really look, but it does show the gest of what I am talking about. (Also from this show I learned that Joan of Arc was a magical girl).

The character designs are really adorable and between that and the way the backgrounds are build and the lighting in some of these shots I'm really blown away. (This show has the most intelligent humorous cartoon mom).

I'll try not to wait too long between posts because the result tends to be super long.

A week to catch up

So last week I was gone. My Grandmother passed away on the 10 and I didn't make it back until early morning on the 12. I was torn up, and spent the greater part of the week with my mother and being sad. I came back because I wasn't getting too much art stuff done while I was back there.

Since being back worked on model sheet and concept art stuff for Monday. Also been working a bit on my thesis, but I've been cranking out rough frames without testing them. Which means Monday is going to be a long day of testing and Tuesday and Wednesday are going to be long days of tightening frames.

Constable Bob model sheet from that Prophecy Machine book.

Stop him now with your special troop!

So, worried about my thesis, even though my professor man has confidence that I'll get my work done. This week I finally started working on shots with more than one character. I've never really hard level hand drawn more than one character in a shot before. I usually just do it digitally, so this has been a learning experience. From the 3 heroes running over the canopy I learn a lot like if you think you found a short cut it's probably going to be a giant pain in the but when you get to the coloring and comping stages. I leaned and I don't think I'll ever make the mistakes I made with Summon Squid again.

Also have been working on character concepts for the crapy book "The Prophecy Machine". I'm having fun with it and once the three are complete I'll have them up here, because they're fun and I was messing with shapes which made it more fun.


Vlnt9's day is coming up. I love this holiday because it require the person I love to remind me with either candies which are DELICIOUS! Or shiny jewelry which is awesome 'cause shiny. So Go VLNT9's DAY!

Pencil Test GO!

I think the semester is pretty intense despite not having too much to work on other than thesis, but that in it's self is keeping me up late. I think I have a better ideas of a couple of shots and they're getting more dynamic, and since this has an opening theme feel to it dynamic is good. I've been have some persepctive issues and have had to watch Lion King (1&2) I have also remember how good Lion King 2 was like why wasn't it in theaters good. Also have been watching jungle book which is sweet simply because I can't get good video clips of big cats doing super cool dynamic stuff. Maybe because their souls are crushed in zoos and animal parks which is where most of those videos I've looked at have been taken.

I also gotta finish this post card thing for self promotion as well as the intro to my reel which is a shot and a half away from being done. I also need good classical music for it, but I'm not sure what to use.

So here are two pencil tests that have taken me a while to get right and these pencil test aren't necessarily correct. I had one more that I was going upload, but it won't upload to blogger or to youtube which is strange, but here we go!

How Many Muffins are in a Dozen?

Ok, so here we good decent quality movie with sound.

The semester is wrapping up I'm stealing the computer labs to render work that I've been fixing/ trying to fix since Thanksgiving times. Which is cool to feel like the supreme ruler of the computer lab. Also played with my Count Chula for my Humorous Illustration class. I'm not sure where to go with it anymore so I think it might be done. I just gotta work more on my thesis since that's something I can't really take a break on, well except for when I'm working on other work, but it's still my number one priority. I do also have to start scanning life drawings before the semester is over so that i can't not have an under construction raccoon on portfolio anymore.

Semester is wrapping up pretty fast and I think this is the first semester I don't have a real test to worry about. I have projects and papers but not art history or whatever final to worry about on top of that. I'll try to get another blog postin' in before I go away during break and I lack internet.

Re-Edit:: So I figured out that embedding from YouTube Healine was wording about.

I guess this is my fist finished shot.

So last week I uploaded the pencil test of Multifunctional Laser Tiger fist using his laser powers. Today I think it's pretty close to finished I'm saving all of my color correction to the end of this project just to consolidate time.

I had another shot that is pretty close to finished and will be finished by next Thursday. It was the shot I was working on during break and it was the first shot of the tiger running through the jungle. I didn't really do much tweening of the head at all so he looks kinda special waggling his head about. I think I can have that done by tomorrow night. That said I haven't really touched that crappy Maya model for my Tuesday class and I'd like to not have a bad grade. I also have the acting yet on the bakers dozen part of my Tuesday animation which I need to make look less chunky.

Finally I got told my a professor Christina Hess that taking concept art would be a good thing for me over the game design class. Where as many of my other professors were trying to pressure me into taking game design. Christiana is a fellow patterning lover and she's been helping me out with the textures and colors I've been using for my background concepts. I really appreciate some encouraging words especially late in the semester when I feel greatly discouraged about several nouns.

So I'm going to leave you off with the finished for now shot of MLT firing his lasers. (The song has a sorta 8bit electric feel so that buzzing you hear is part of the song in this part.)

This was oddly the most relaxing break I've had during my college career.

Between work and my body begging for sleep that it didn't get over the summer or during this school year it's surprising that I got done what I've gotten done.

I got a bit in my thesis done, export isn't being consistant even when I spent 13 mintues of my life watching this 3 second scene render, the mov file still was like "herp a derp". I think rendering on the schools computers will work better. I also realized that the backgrounds will look better line less, so as I go on I'll have to make that happen, also some of the ground textures were a bit eye hurty so I made a faux wood inspired texture that's a lot better on the eyes. I've started on the "laser growl" bits of animation for the thesis 'cause I really like his head, and there is a couple of ways to color the lasers that I've been thinking about so I want to play with them.

I also have been fixing some of my 3D animated tutorial and stuff to have in my reel, 'cause I really like animating in maya and there were only a few simple tweaks needed to make these pieces look pretty slick. I've also finally gotten a handle on lighting (after like 4 classes on the program), and I've always like texturing. I just have a hard time modeling that and I don't like it when I open a model and there are holes where several faces are missing. It's frustrating and I don't need anything to add frustration in my life.

As far as the muffin pice I'm about 3/4 of the way done with it, it's also a lot simpler than my thesis. I unfortunately have to re-render three of the numbers 'cause they cut off weird.

Finally I'm working on a intro to my demo reel that I would like to have as my gallery piece when the senior show comes around.

It's all in aftereffects so it's simple and there is only 5 sections to it and I'm going to be about 20% (6 seconds) done by the time Tuesday comes around.

Well that's what's been going on this week.

How many muffins are in a dozen?

Ok when looking at this keep in mind that I know that the bakers left arm is our of it's joint. This is a style frame I putt together really fast Monday night because I forgot about it and I felt illness coming on (that's my story and I'm sticking to it). It's for my Tuesday non-thesis animation class which has honestly taken a back seat to my thesis because even though it's a super fun class and I've learned a lot in it. It is a butt ton of work every week with the exception of the last week we've had 3 complete things due. That means every week there was a possibility to fail.

This particular project needs to combine computer 2D animation, traditional hand drawn animation, and 3d animation. This is an example of the 2D computer animation bit I'm going to be doing. The animation is about this little kid asking a baker man how many muffins are in a dozen. Through the magic of bouncing muffins and maya rendered numbers we find out how many muffins are in a dozen and as a BONUS ENDING we find out how many muffins are in a bakers dozen.

I had a little boy to voice this little boy, but unfortunately he got really nervous while recording and the sound didn't turn out so well. I'm now sort of stuck not knowing who to get for a little boy voice or if I should find a lady to can do little boy voices.

Currently Being Aired on Television Influences

Total Drama, yeah, lots of people especially in the college demographic have their issues with the Total Drama series as well as 6Teen but Total Drama series has almost everything I would want in a television series. I was first drawn to the series because of it's flashy look and geometric lol gravity wat anatomy. This show has proven time and time again to have fantastic character development. In fact on several occasions when a character who I really liked was kicked off the island, set, or plane I have yelled with rage. This season the teenagers are going around the world in an Amazing Race meets American Idol or some other sort of singing show.

The character who are relate able whether they are following character stereotypes or if they're just being teenagers and breaking the rules of what their design says they should behave. Every season when watching this show my top 10 favorite characters tend to change through the magic of acting. My three favorites have consistently been Izzy, Owen, and Lindsay. These characters are also my favorite sorts of characters and I see Izzy as a bit like Jessie from Toy Story and that sort of over the top female character has always had my affection. As well as say Lindsay who is a dumb blond but really useful since that's what Barbie herself is.

The music in this season is really awesome I get super excited for a great deal of these songs. They aren't the Animaniac's or Tiny Toon's songs I grew up with but it's been 15ish years since they were created and focused more on a Renaissance toward the Cartoons of the 1940's and their music was reminiscent of that fact. These songs are short, since they're in a cartoon but they are also hip. I feel that they would not be out of place on the radio where I work. Also in this show they have played with animation style during certain songs. Top image shows their NYC song and it think the style used to animate plays an important role with how the location that they're singing as well as to really push the point across that NYC has a great deal of colors and fun. The second image isn't too reminiscent on the place; it is a love song and it drives to point of innocent love and why did this have to end sort of song (plus it's totally adorable).



Sym-Bionic Titan is a new show on Cartoon Network only about 6ish episodes in and it is quite possibly one of the best executed 2.5 D shows that I have ever seen. The story is nice, medieval royalty meets science fiction. And these two humanoid aliens and a robot wind up on earth and they're going to high school all why threw some sort of wormhole vertex thing baddies from their planet are trying to destroy the world that in inhabiting them as well as them. The characters a pretty like able and somewhat relate able hopefully as the series progresses they'll become much more relate able. This show is pretty crafty when sneaking in hidden messages; they are not crafty at all and they flaunt this. The robot has watched children shows on television and spit out lines for the other two to learn from which is amazing. Also I couldn't find the episode where the young male character races this Asian dude but the cars in that are super de dooper sexy.


Robotomy, is a new show just aired last Monday on Cartoon Network and I find it's pilot quite fitting to what I am currently doing in my professional practices, which is making social networking pages. The two main robots make a facebook page but they had no friend so facebook becomes their friend and get really possessive and excited about everything they're doing. During this time A bunch of their classmates get twitter pages and the two robots that couldn't get facebook friends get a twitter. Facebook finds out that they went over to twitter and kills the twitter bird who is a robot. It's a message to kids not to get obsessed, swept away, or friend people you don't know on the internet. I think it was more successful than Static Shocks internet episode that told me I could someday be friends with Harley and Ivy. The Animation is a little lazy but it's seems that we are currently in a Renaissance to the think ink and paint of the 80's cartoons and I am perfectly ok with.

Adventure Time has great characters not so much back story and development; there has only been about 3 episodes in season 2 so far and there has been a bit more back story for characters rather than just Finn and Jake going around beating monsters which is what when on during the first season. I love the idea of a post apocalyptic world and there is only really one human adventurer alive and really simple shapes and colors with simple faces that are simply charming and at times can be a heaping does of nightmare fuel which is an era we just left with the chowders and the flapjacks. The music for this show is super catchy and I would someday like to swallow a tiny computer so that I could sing like Finn does.

Currently all these shows are on television so they are television quality in animation and psychical acting with the main exception being Sym-Bionic Titan. They are charming in story and fantastic on character development. I find the styles and experimentation of styles to be fun and are currently inspiring me in my animation as well as in my illustration work.