:(

This is why I took the baby squirrel I found to a shelter.

http://www.sugarbushsquirrel.com/

I hate people. I know the squirrel probably doesn't care but I find this incredibly loathesome. Squirrels are wild animals. They shouldn't be treated like this. It's the american mindset though. capture, control, dominate, exploit.

Abuse of Technology!

Heehee!

I wanted to watch cartoons while I animate but Stacey is asleep and Peggy is working on her portfolio for work so I didn't want my audio to interrupt either of them. So... a while back, Stacey had bought this weird little radio transmitter thing that plugs into the computer to get power off USB and then patchcords into the audio out on the computer. It's purpose is to generate a local-range radio boardcast (about 100 feet) So I have my iRiver in my pocket, my headphones on, and this thing plugged into the audio out on my computer and I can listen to my program all the way in the kitchen. I feel like such a total nerd. :)

Weak Animation

Well. I finished the pencil-test of that Yerf SeSa animation. I'm kinda disappointed with it.

I haven't really got the feel for animating on 1's yet. I had to drop my frame rate to 18FPS to get it sort of in the right time so I'm off by 1/4th. I did decide though that I should be doing a lot more animation on 1s than I have been (I tend to animate mostly on 2s) This test is all first-time through of the animation, I haven't corrected anything (mostly because this isn't a project I was really into so I don't want to spend a huge amount of time cleaning it up) The pounce is pretty floaty. I think either she needed to travel a greater distance across the screen or higher into the air. In general, my keys could be stronger and my animation more exaggerated. I forgot the rule I'd set for myself of doubling what I felt was 'exagerated' and using my first drawing of a key as the middle inbetween.

On the other hand, I think I did a better job overlapping motion and smoother transistions into/out of holds, so it's not all bad. I think the head turns are working reasonably well and I'm actually rather happy with the hop up at the end. That is definetely a motion that I would not have tried a year ago or if I had, I would have struggled with it a LOT more. I'm still finding that I sometimes forget I can move the character in 3D space on the paper but I'm getting better at it and it's coming a lot more easily. Sharper keys, more exagerated motion, better timing, continue working on overlap and character design. Anything else?

Anyhow, I hadn't done much drawing at all the past 2 or 3 months, so it was nice to see that I hadn't completely backslid on what I'd learned. Also, if I think of it in the sense that I didn't do any cleanup and this is a first pass, I can feel pretty pleased about this animation. I think after dinner I'm gonna do some more sort of loosening up stuff. Maybe floursacks or something.

If you're interested. Here's the animation I'm babbling on about. It's a 700K quicktime movie (MPEG 4 codec, Quicktime 6) http://circle.twu.net/animate/pencil/kytha_web.mov Critique always welcome.