Thursday, August 30, 2012

Reading Pages 1-34!

August 30th, Thursday 8:00-8:45pm

I bought The Animator's Survival Kit by Richard Williams over a year ago, before I knew about this class or that I would be attending this college. I felt very lucky that I didn't have to go out and buy a book let me tell you! I bought this book because I did animated stop motion shorts for my high school senior project, my first serious attempt at animation. I didn't know a single person who knew something about animation, so I bought this book. Rereading this reminded me of so many things. I feel like the beginning is a little discouraging to many artists, but I really do love Richard Williams, and his advice. My favorite of his is The Thief and the Cobbler which is not what he is known for, Who Framed Roger Rabbit. I feel in love with the movie when I was eleven or twelve.

I actually, after reading him go through some history of animation itself, went on youtube and watched The Skeleton Dance, which I have not watched in a very long time if at all. It reminded me of the extreme work it takes to animate even a five minute animation sequence. I read through the comments and laughed at how many people, who in my opinion couldn't have been animators, reamed the animation. I couldn't help but wonder if they thought they could do better.

The book and the animations reminded me of the difficulties of animating and the importance of drawing that I have long gawked at. I have taken summer drawing classes at other colleges, and it reminds me why I need more practice. I dread Drawing I, but it reminds me why I'm taking it. To become an amazing animator.


First Blog Post

August 30th, Thursday 12:30-3:30pm

Today is my first day of animation class and we created Zoetropes. I have never even thought about doing this before. I tried with flip books, unsuccessfully but I feel like this is a simpler way to start learning. I feel like I learned how to move a simple image easily, and I got really excited. I've only ever done stop motion so far successfully. So, I made 3 Zoetropes so far today. One is of a bouncing ball, on is a fly, roaming around, and the last one is a square guy moving his feet up and down. I still have to ink the last one, which isn't so bad. I'm really excited to get whatever homework we have!

I also feel like I did really well, which surprised me. I've tried animation many times over the years and was always inherently bad at it. But I did really well with the simple images. I do feel the Zoetrope with the fly was a little hard to see, but it did get my general idea of the movement across so I'm not unhappy with it.

Shelby Hamel