Animation of a lesser God

Just to make note of a movie I watched a few days ago titlted, 'Omohide Poroporo' (Only Yesterday) It is a Miyazaki film, but not one I'd ever heard of before. There's nothing supernatural, no ghosts, no intense action scenes, not a single explosion. It's a very quiet film about a woman approaching 30 who goes off in search of herself by doing volunteer work at a farm during her summer vacation. This timeline is interspersed with flashbacks to her 5th grade year in school, and how that age had shaped much of her adult life. It's a long and slow movie (a bit over 2 hours) and the dialog is REALLY fast, making the subtitling difficult to keep up with. On the whole though, its a good movie. If you liked movies like 'Leaving Normal', 'My Life as a House', or 'Life According to Garp', its probably in a category you might enjoy.

For the Birds

Still studying the Preston Blair book. About an hour every day at lunch (provided weather is nice and I'm not working through) I've been following this formula of a half-hour of copy work and a half-hour of self-generated images based on what I've been copying. I think It is going alright, at least I'm getting really fast drawing characters. I'm down to about 2 minutes per pose, roughed out, and forms insanely fast. Of course, I'm also studying birds right now. Of all the creatures I've worked on so far, birds are by far and away the easiest. This is good because my next short is about a cat and a bird. :)

I'm still trying to develop a good character design for the bird though. I have a great design for the cat and a pretty good idea of what the sets look like and the cat's owner but I'm having difficulty making the bird match up stylistically. I guess I'll just keep at it.