5 Years

July 3rd was my 5 year anniversary for working at Dairy Queen.  There are only 3 other people who have worked there for that long, because not many people are crazy enough to do it.  It's a decent job to have while going to school but it can be terribly stressful at times.

One of my managers was super nice and made me a sign and put it up in the back of the restaurant.

She also brought in some cupcakes!  With RAINBOW SPRINKLES!  Anyways, I haven't posted any cake pictures in a while so I figured that now was a good time to throw some up here!  Enjoy!

This was a birthday cake that I made for a friend of mine. She's a huge 'A Very Potter Musical' fan, and she is adamant that she will one day marry Neville Longbottom.

This was a birthday cake for another friend of mine.  She told me to do something with a Disney theme and I was quite excited about it!  I titled this cake, "The Reason Why Simba No Longer Gets Invited To Parties".

I didn't manage to get a closer picture of this one, but it was for another friend of mine who wanted a Disney/Harry Potter/Music theme.  So of course I put Harry and Ariel singing karaoke under the sea.

This cake was for my cousins birthday.  He plays on a baseball team called the pirates so I put a baseball playing pirate on the cake.  My other cousin LOVES the 'whippy' icing so I put some extra on the sides.

This cake wasn't for an order, but i found the picture of the fish and decided that there needed to be a reason for his mouth to be open.

I called this cake 'Tyrannosaurus Rad'

I made this cake for my mom's birthday.  I put all 3 of our doggies on it!

This is what happens when you give me free reign with your cake.  I made this one for another friend of mine, and it was my first attempt at a '3D' cake.  Ice cream is not easy to sculpt...  I also got to put a terrible pun on the cake which made me very happy.

I made the unicorn out of the 'whippy' icing.

Best Friends Forever.

This was for another friend who wanted a duck sitting on top of a cupcake.

This was also for my cousin Mark, but from the year before.  He really loves Dr Pepper.  A lot.

I did not decorate my cake, but it was decorated for me by the wonderful Kristal for my birthday!  Kristal is one of the main cake decorators and I told her to do whatever she wanted on the cake.  She made it Glee themed and put Brittany, one of my favorite characters on it saying one of her ridiculous one liners.

My friend was wanting to order a cake for her homeroom class, but wasn't sure what to put on it.  I was standing nearby and told her that she should have a Dinosaur riding a monster truck, chasing a unicorn on a motorcycle on top of a rainbow with aliens shooting lasers at them.  She thought that was a marvelous idea.  I am a terrible influence.

So this isn't a cake, but it's a child's shoe that we found in the lobby and I decorated.  This is what I do at work.  You know, as well as all of the other work type things that I'm supposed to do...Hopefully my managers aren't reading this...  

The End of a Magical Journey

So it's been awhile since I last posted something up here, but I've been pretty busy!  I started class 3 at Animation Mentor (I'll write more about it in a bit) and I've been finishing up some side projects and starting new ones...even though I don't have the time for them, hahaha.  My latest project was in celebration of the very last Harry Potter movie.  I, being the nerdy person that I am have dressed up in costume for just about every Harry Potter related event that I've gone to be it book release, movie release or other things.  I had made a set of gryffindor robes a couple of years ago when I went on a Harry Potter fan trip in England/Scotland and had been wearing them each week when I went to see the re-releases of the past 7 films leading up to the last one.  Seeing as how this was the last movie I wanted to create a special costume, one that was very unlikely to be worn by someone else waiting in line.  I decided to be....Buckbeak.

I have always enjoyed Buckbeak and it seemed like it would be just ridiculous enough to suit me.  I made the head out of fun foam and felt (my two weapons of choice) as well as some extra padding and acrylic paint.  Here are some pictures of my sister modeling the unfinished head.

Luckily my sisters umbrella had broken earlier on sunday (there was no sabotage involved, I swear!) so I was able to take it apart and use it for the main structure of the wings.

I cut feathers out of felt and hot glued them together.

After all of the feathers were cut out I glued them to the umbrella leftovers.

I glued a big piece of white felt over the top to cover the umbrella parts as well.

To make the costume even more ridiculous I decided to make a little tiny Harry to ride on my back.

Here's his head pre-hair and body.

And here he is with hair and a body!  He also kind of looks like he's wearing a wifebeater...

I made him a shirt and tie so that he would look a little more presentable.

 Through the wonders of Velcro he got to ride on my/buckbeaks back!

He peeked over my shoulder.  His little pipe cleaner glasses look so cute on him!

We met a very tall Hagrid in the lobby.

Harry put on my friend Keaira's wig and looked a little like Sally Jessy Raphael.

There were special Harry Potter 3D glasses!  We were twins.

My friend and I tried to re-create the poster of Harry and Voldemort.

It didn't work so well...

Probably because I have a nose.

This is my 'battle of Hogwarts' face.

We also joined in on Pooh's grand adventure!

I really really loved the movie and I think that it was a great end to the series.  McGonagall was pretty bad-ass in it which I especially enjoyed.  She reminded me a bit of Angela Lansbury in Bedknobs and Broomsticks!  I came very close to crying at certain parts of the movie, but I didn't end up crying for a straight 45 minutes like some of the people that I went with, hahaha.

I am definitely sad that there will be no more Harry Potter movies or books as they have been such a big part of my life.  I will always have the book to re-read or the movies to re-watch though, so that the magic can live on forever!  I can also just run over to the Dollarama and buy some sparklers to have a wizard fight as well...Good times.

Sketch Blog-Final Battle

For this past week's theme we had to do something involving a final battle.  I decided to so something actually involving Spike (my schools mascot) seeing as how the sketch blog is called 'Spikes Sketch Squad'.  This is how I imagine Spike would do battle with the graph editor and the Dastardly Dr Spline who destroys all of your hard work during the blocking stage when you switch over to spline mode in Maya.  I wish that Spike would fight splines and unruly tangents for me...

Class 2 Progress Reel

So Class 2 is now finished and I learned so much!  Pete was an amazing mentor, and was never afraid to tell it like it is which I think helped me a lot and pushed my work further.  He also had hilarious Q&A's with much profanity and trying his best not to swear which kept me laughing all term.  I also have to thank all of my crazy awesome classmates for all of their support and helpful feedback on my assignments!  I definitely had my struggles this class but I have learned from them and overall I really enjoyed class 2!  Now here is my progress reel from the term!

Animation Mentor Class 2-week 7-11

For our final assignment of class 2 I picked the simple dance move option.  There were a bunch of different dance styles that I was thinking of doing, like Bollywood, 80's music video dancing, Michael Jackson, something from one of the Fred Astaire/Gene Kelly musicals or the Charleston.  I ended up looking at a bunch of 60's dances like the twist, fruging, the dance from Nancy Sinatra's 'These Boots Are Made For Walking' video (which closely resembles my mom's dance style) and then I remembered the dance from the beginning of the first Austin Powers movie.  It had just the right amount of fabulous 60's-ness that I was looking for as well as a fun audio track to go along with it.  Here's the clip that I used as reference.

The shot had to be 100-250 frames, so I had to pick the best parts of the dance and edit them together.

Here are my planning thumbnails for this shot.

And my first blocking pass.  This shot was already turning out much better than my drunken stumble...

The next week we did our blocking 'plus' pass.  Pete told me to push the up and down of the strut poses and the punching poses and to take out the last pose change because he felt like it was starting something up again right at the end.

Pete then told me to try taking out the pose at frame 170 because it was too similar to the ending pose and the ending pose was the stronger of the two.  He also wanted me to try to get the timing of the strut/punches to fit a little better with the music so I did another quick re-blocking pass before taking it to spline.

After I got Pete's notes for the re-block (he wanted me to add a 3rd punch and to bring the hand down into what I like to call the 'sassy position' but on the opposite side so that it would flow better into the next pose) I converted the stepped keys/breakdowns into spline mode.  I ran out of time at the end of the week and didn't get a chance to fix all of them before the deadline on Sunday.  This is what it looked like.

 

I was really unhappy with it so I worked on it for the rest of the day that Sunday and put it up in my public review area.  I knew that if I resubmitted it as my assignment I would be docked a full letter grade so I emailed Pete to ask his option on what I should do.  He had a look at both of them and said that it would definitely be worth resubmitting it regardless of the penalty because it was much farther along.  Here's what the re-submitted shot looked like.

The last week on this assignment was devoted to polishing our shots.  I was lucky enough to have Pete use my shot in a polishing demo during our Q&A so I got to see what kind of things he would to to make it beautiful.  He used a lot of hilarious Austin Powers type language while working on it which I really enjoyed.  The main things that he focused on in the polishing demo were knee pops, making sure that the body had enough oomph for certain accents and making sure that there was enough overlap on the head.  In fact I remember his exact words during the demo, "Don't be afraid to keyframe the living shit out of the head". Hahahahaha.

Here's how my polishing pass turned out

It still needs a bit of work, there are still some knee pops, certain parts could hit harder and the path of action on the head is a little crazy in parts, but overall I like how it turned out!  I'm really tired of hearing that music though, hahaha.