Moving the Three Dimentional

So this quarter I started my Intro to 3D Animation class. I'm grateful that my boyfriend is in the same class with me, he's great at 3D programs like 3ds Max and he kinda tutors me. I completed my first 3D animated project which is simply a ball bouncing down the stairs. But even though it;s so simple I'm really proud of it. I need to get the digital book my friend has that has from him. It's a book that has everything you would ever want to know about 3ds Max. Once I get it I'm going to work harder to improve my skill. 3D animation seems to flow a lot better than traditional 2D animation.

The End of a Quest and the Start of a Journey

So I'm approaching the end of the quarter at school, working on finals and such. My final animation is turning out well. I'm going to miss my 2D animation class. I've learned more in that class than from any of my other classes. I hope I can get into advanced 2D animation next quarter so I can take it with the same teacher. My artwork has come a long way but still has a ways to go. I've decided to improve my skills in my 3d modeling as that area needs a LOT of work and is kind of unavoidable. My friend got me what I have dubbed the Max Book O' God which is like thousands of pages of everything you need to know about 3ds Max written by the peeps who made 3ds Max, so a lot of excitement there. As the new quarter begins I will continue posting updates a so forth. Updates so far have been a little scattered as I had to take care of my step father after he got out from the hospital. But keep checking back =)


I have some new pieces, view my art here at www.wolvenred.deviantart.com

Progress

Almost 3 am and finishing my animation for tomorrow. It's been a busy week but at least I look forward to Monday's class. When I took breaks I did work on some new artwork, which can be found at www.wolvenred.deviantart.com. Amazingly enough the files on my busted external hard drive was saved and I was able to recover a piece that I have put several hours into and hope to post with my next blog. Gotta cut this one short tho, have lots to do.

Merglglglgl

So another week passes by in 2D animation, and my friend was right, Krishna is a hard grader, I got a C on my first animation. Buuuuut that's okay, I;m still glad I took this particular teacher. I've had the other teacher that teaches 2D animation in other classes and I don't really learn much from him, and I've learned a lot and improved my art a lot in the class that I'm in. This past week our character development project was due. He gave us a paragraph describing a character and we had to draw it. It was interesting to see how everyone interpreted the description. Mine looked kinda like an anime version of Shaggy from Scooby Doo, to best describe it. I would post a picture of it but the pics I have of it are crappy because my camera failed, I'll try to get a better one once the projects are handed back. I'm just worried about it getting wrinked, everyone had different sizes of paper they turned it in on. But, sence starting this class I have been really motivated to work on my artwork more and try new things. I've gotten several art books recently, and started working from them. One book, written by Christopher Hart, was a lot of tutorials and tips for how to draw in the manga horror style, learning from that, and what we learned in 2D animation on character development I created Sarah Ann (pictured above) for a new story I'm working on. I also did another picture with copic markers of the main character of the story, so far her name is Anariah but it;s yet set in stone. I would like to post the picture of her but blogger.com said no unless she's at the top of the blog with Sarah Ann and that just makes it look cluttered and the HTML links to it on file front aren't working... GR!!
Well I must be off, my boyfriend baught me some more copic markers, one of which is a colorless blender, and they call to me =x! OM NOM NOM NOM COPICS!!!

A Character Eye Opener

So I guess after a couple days some of the things in a lesson really sink in. Well my boyfriend and I were at the book store because I am a nut over new art books. Well I was looking through the books and noticing that all the good books had very similar tips from what we learned in class in 2D animation just up a notch. We learned about how head shape, eye positioning, and other features can tell a lot about a character before the move or utter a word. It's ironic how the books relate to exactly what I'm studying in. These books go into a lot of depth even showing how the shape of an eye on a human character (non cartoony, anime-like I guess the best to describe it) can affect their personality. One of the books is about a Japanese graph system that is buit for the soul purpose of creating new ideas to make original characters that you wouldn;t have other wise been able to think of. I love the new books and can't wait to get started on them :D.

Animation Week 3- The First Great Turn in

The quarter is moving right along and Monday's 2D animation class marks the beginning of week 3 of the summer quarter. We focused more on concept art for characters. I have to say this is one of the biggest lessons I've been looking forward to sence I started this school as concepts for characters and stories is what I want to do the most. I learned of a different way to set up my skeletal structure for more toony drawings. The abdomin part of the way my teacher taught will most likely be incorporated into all of my artwort when drawing humans and replace the smaller circle I have at the waist. I never took into but consideration teh different shapes and sizes of teh shapes you can use when developing a cartoon character. For example, most of my characters have a circle head. The exercise showed us using different circles, long ovals, boxes and others that I wouldn't have considered when creating my characters. I used some of his tips for a more proportional pose then the tooney characters and was quite proud of it(pictured above). What I would like to do is create several line gestures and take them into photoshop and create nice pieces with them, and sence these gestures are not solid characters I can reuse the pose as much as I want.
We also turned in our 2D animation bouncing ball projects, we had a lot of good ones in the class. We had one where one zombie punch the other and his eye popped out and bounced, and another was a kid with a large head jumps off a roof and his head bounces. They were really cool. Mine was of one of my characters named Melvin the anti-gravity sheep. I had some trouble getting it on to youtube, I had to add a tittle screen at the end in order to get the last few seconds in.

First step, dun trip and fall!!!!

So this blog is started to record what I've learned in my 2D animation class, but I hope to extend it to basically cover school from this point forward. This quarter (which ever quarter it is in my school career) I finally get to go back to school full time and I don't have to make any payments to the school so things worked out great. I was really worried I would never be able to finish school after my loans gave me a giant middle finger and forced me to go part time. It was really demotivational ya' know? I'm expecially excited because I can finally take 2D animation which is what i came to this school for. I've only been trying to take it for a year know but crap kept getting in teh way. I am also taking Computer Modeling II, Histery of Western Art II, and College Algebra.

So to catch up....

Week One:

My week starts out with 2D animation. I was a little scared at first, the teacher I got for it I've heard is on of the harder teachers. But I guess that's a good thing in the long run. But when I met him he seems really different from what I imagined him to be. I thought he would be a hard ass who would jump you when a line was a millimeter off (no offence Mr. Krishna, I think you rock ;_;/ ), but he's actually pretty cool. We had an assignment to do 50 gestur drawings and showed us how soem animaters draw with different colored earasable pencils and to draw with your shoulder vs your wrist. It took me a while to finish all the gesturs but it was a huge surprise, with the advice I had gotten with the different way to draw with holding your pencil, drawing with your shoulder, and the tip with the colored pencils I noticed and immidiate change in my art, just in the gestures! I was getting poses, porportions, everything much better than I was, and was actually drawing some new things that I had never really tried before, or tried and failed epiclly, and was doing very well at them, I kinda surprised myself. I did the animation plan and key frams for my animation, worked a really long time on it x.x. I want to have everything set for next week because he is going to show us how to capture our frams and I want mine to be the one that is cause so I can see how it's comming so far =).

Wendsday is my lond day, I have two classes which means I'm here from one o'clock to ten o'clock at night. I start out with History of Wesrtern art. We mostley looked at soem artwork and talked about some artists. Kinda expected. Then I have computer modeling. OMG I HATE computer modeling classes. Dun get me wrong, modeling is cool and all, but they use a projecter to show us what to do, which means the room is dark, and it's night time. If I had a quarter for every time I yawned obnoxiously in that class I could probably pay my rent ;_;. At least the teacher is nice, thought, he seems kinda nervous most of the time.

Thursday is College Algebra.... I have a Migrain....


Week Two:

So in 2D animation I got my artwork scanned in and I got to see the key frames play out, but sence it was just the key frames it played realy quick so you couldn't see TO much. My teacher said all in all it was pretty good, there was one frame I needed to squish the character a lil' more. But, the character is to small, aaaaaand I want a good grade, soooooooo, I'm starting over ><. The new plan is a lot simpler, for the bouncing ball assignment instead of him bumbing off off bumbers everywhere then doing the final bounce animation the sheep I'm animating is going to bounce off the wall and then do teh required the bounce animation, this allows me to make teh character much larger and simplify the project. Well, as simplified as you can get with me, I over complicate the crap out everything ><. I've been working on the new animation non stop senve Tuesday unless I have class. I've put a crap ton of hours into it, I hope it comes out well x.x.

In History of Western Art we got into groups and researched certain artists and gave a presentation. I was surprised, my group members actually did more work than me, I felt bad, but there was really nothing else I could add to the project than what I already gave them, so I went back to the classroom and worked on my animation until it was time to present. I actually like this teacher's way to teaching. It make history kind of interesting and inspiring. <3 da Vinci.

In Modeling we.... modeled, egads!=O! Computer Modeling hasn;t exactly started yet but I'm sure we will model, learn a new way to do things via lecture in a dark room as I fight to stay awake. Must... fight.... the yawns....!

And tomarrow I have College Algebra, I'm not sure what we're covering, but I'm sure I'll have a migrain.