Plan A, Plan B

Still watching the animation stand on e-bay. I have formulated a plan now.

The seller only has a 60% positive rating with 2 no-pays on things he bid on. So... I'm fairly confident no one will buy this animation stand from him. they're not in high demand, it's heavy and would cost a fortune to ship, and bad e-bay record. So.. I think I'll wait until the auction ends, then offer him $120 for it, to be delivered by my friend when he arrives to pick up the animation stand. Less the cuts e-bay and paypal would take, I think it's pretty fair. It also brings it down just enough I'm okay buying it. Anyhow, if someone else bids, I'd have lost anyhow. Wouldn't do more than a minimum bid, so might as well play the angles. Okay. It's sort of evil and manipulative but... I don't have the money to shell out and get ripped off and there's a little extra cost if I have to send money to my friend, so I don't feel that guilty.

Plan B (On the off chance it does sell, or he says no) is to b a metal animation disc with a broken glass from a friend here for $40. I can replace the glass for ~$10, then get a dead scanner from Weird Stuff in the 'AS IS' room (Or better yet, a dead photocopier) Take the optical glass out of it and use it as the platten on the animation disc, and bolt the lid hinges onto the disc, so that the glass can be raised and lowered. Needs a couple springs and a latching mechanism, but all in all, I think I can make it work for under $70. :)

It's raining men!

Well, okay, not really. Just that at times I seem to live on the isle of Lesbos, secluded, secluded from guys. Funny. I really don't know very much about them, you'd think I would, but they seem really weird to me for the most part.

Anyhow, I've been on a semi-androphobic bent for a few weeks now. These moods come and go without much rhyme or reason, though I suspect it's because of the war and the clouds of testoterone waifted out of the whitehouse. Whatever the reason, I saw this photo yesterday. Snapped me right out of it. ;) Now, you know... I'd like fully support a war if this was all that happened in it. Buff guys nekkid in the desert, glistening with water. I say screw all this killing people and name calling and blowing things up let's have more hot nekkid british airmen. ;)

The other man in my life right now is the Blacksmith. He's paka's character design for the story he had for the animation project. I _SO_ like him. Big beautiful arcs, really strong dynamic keyframes.
He's just so easy to draw and throw all this personality into. He's got great stretch and squash characteristics and feels really fluid too. Our goal for this week was to do some pencil tests of the various characters. Hope I can get done in time for Thursday. I love the smith, I'll have some roughs of him done tonight. The stone mason has a different feel when I draw him. He's more mechanical in his movements, really kind of stiff at times, but I like him too. Now the carpenter... I'm having a tough time with him. I want to make him move sort of wobbly and willy nilly but I'm just having a difficult time getting into his personality. He'll probably be last on my list to draw.

Still. GREAT set of characters. They're all physically different and give me different personality feels which means I want to draw each of them different. See! this is why I think Paka deserves the animation lead title. My character choices would have been much more plastic.