3 Panel Transformation

So I recently started a Drawing for the Graphic Novel and Narrative Storytelling class taught by Riley Rossmo, and our first assignment was to transform our partner in the class into something representative of them in three panels.  My partner really liked tarantulas and had kind of spiky hair that I thought would work well in the transformation.  I kind of like how it turned out, but I wish that I had used something other than graphite to color it in...

Sketch Blog-Green

Sometimes it's not easy being green.

Maya Springboard

So last fall I was accepted into the amazing online animation school Animation Mentor, and I took their Maya Springboard class from late September to Mid December so that I could learn Maya to the extent that I would need to, to be able to use it for the assignments.  We had Jared Garcia as our instructor who is a former Animation Mentor student and a super cool guy!  These are some of my assignments from that class. 

Our very first assignment was to take a picture of this shelf with objects on it and try and replicate it as closely as we could.

Our second assignment was to create a character and set up a hierarchy for the limbs, head, torso, etc.

We then had to build a set for our character.  I tried to find the most garish textures for my room, and I even put our class mascot-the Hang In There Kitty on the picture on the outside of the wall safe.

Next we had to add lights and cameras to the room.

For our first animation assignment we had to do a simple bouncing ball.  It wasn't supposed to look particularly good, it was most so that we could practise moving things around and setting keyframes.  My ball was REALLY happy, despite the fact that he was bouncing towards a bottomless pit!

Then we had to try to get our ball to move in as close to a perfect circle as we could manage.

For our next assignment we learned how to import characters into our scenes.

This assignment was done over two weeks.  The first week we blocked out the animation, and the second week we learned how to constrain the cup to the robot arm.

For our last assignment we had to take the one legged character and make it take a step or jump.  I put mine on a treadmill so that his jumping in place would make more sense.  It looks like he set the treadmill on really fast though!



Another Belated Christmas Post

So as well as the Christmas cards that I posted a few days ago, I also did a couple of other crafty Christmas things.  Here they are!

I was lucky enough to get a cake decorating shift right before Christmas, so I decided to make the most of it.  I can't take all of the credit for this cake though, my friend Charli helped me plan it out.  It is probably one of my favorite cakes that I have decorated!  I especially like how the snowman tuned out with his little sprinkle arms and nose...

I also got to help paint the front window at work for the holidays!  Luckily this year I didn't have to put any children on it because whenever I attempt to do that they end up looking like soulless demon creatures...  We had a holiday Blizzard called, "Reindeer Bites"  So I got to put reindeer on it instead.

This reindeer turned out looking a little bit beefy, or like it had taken some sort of performance enhancing drugs...

And now for my Christmas masterpiece!  My Christmas Sweater!

We have a Christmas party with a couple of other families each year and this year we decided that everyone should wear an ugly Christmas sweater.  I decided to make my own, and since I for some reason have been finding cat related puns hilarious lately I decided to incorporate one (or two) into my sweater.  I also added lights. :)

Cat related pun #1

The back of the sweater.  I learned my lesson about hot gluing things around the neck-hole of the sweater...After I had glued the white feather boa on it was very hard to get the sweater over my head.

Look at those santa's dance!

Cat related pun #2

This is the sweater that I made a couple of years ago.  It has a slight elementary school teacher vibe to it.

I made my dad a sweater too!  He didn't have one so I offered to make one for him.  He surprisingly agreed and told me to put whatever I wanted on it.  I was once again surprised that people have not yet learned that giving me freedom to do whatever the heck I want is generally going to end with ridiculous results.  And it once again did.  It took me literally 30 minutes to make this sweater.  Mostly because I started it 30 minutes before we had to leave.  Hurray for procrastination!  The hot glue job on the beard definitely could have turned out better, hahaha. 

My dad is quite the sweater model.

My sister made one too, and I was so proud to see that my ridiculousness was starting to rub off on her.  I helped her with the terrible dog puns.

The back of the sweater.

Sketch Blog-Resolution

One of my resolutions for this year is to not let work take control of my life. I work at a Dairy Queen (hence the annoying mouth mascot) full time-soon to be part time, to pay for school. It can often be physically and emotionally draining what with the delights of customer service and the high turnover rates, and it often leaves me with no energy to do the actual schoolwork that I’m working to be able to do in the first place. This year my goal is to worry less about work and focus more of my time and energy on animation mentor and just generally not getting completely burnt out.

I also really dislike that mouth mascot…. :)

Christmas Cards!

Ok, so I've been really busy lately and have kind of neglected my blogging duties...But I'm back!  And I have a bunch of stuff to throw up here.  Not in the vomiting sense though...Because that's kind of how I made it sound... Anyways, Christmas Cards!

I did these up really quickly for my family using sharpies and watercolors on watercolor paper.