Good Golly, Gummies!

STOP!

In the name of stop motion!

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Do you know what stop motion is? It's very likely that you have witnessed it whether you know it or not! Films such as The Boxtrolls, Coroline, and The Nightmare Before Christmas are all stop motion productions! What this means is that most if not all of what you are seeing consists of actual, tangible, 3-dimensional models that are moved minutely, frame-by-frame and taken pictures of to create a moving feature film.

It's real, and it's very, very tedious. But it is yet a passion of a small sect of the animation community. This semester our project was to incorporate stop motion into our projects! It was a group project, something I had not done since last year's E.T. clip, but I was surrounded by people I knew and somewhat trusted, and I was confident we could get something together.

The hardest part always seems to be coming to a consensus on the direction of the short. We had ideas involving clothes, living models, and most favorably, candy. The prevailing idea was a short story taking place in a kind of candy land with the stars being gummy bear villagers and a ferocious Bionicle beast. It was not meant to be long, but in hindsight we could have pulled off a longer fight scene to our benefit. After carefully crafting our edible utopia, we set the stage and delegated jobs. Sierra Draney was our intrepid photographer, Jake Combs our monster animating connoisseur, Katelyn Brule our music selector and co-set creator with Sierra and Anna Gaiche, and yours truly as the gummy moving master.

And the best part? This was our winning(ish) entry for eMagine this year! My team and I placed second for animated story!

I hope you enjoy watching it as much as my friends enjoyed eating it!

Petri Swallow: Revamped

The Bird Is Back

For the last time, however.

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Remember Petri? That yellow bird that gave me so much grief last semester? Well, I revived him! (Mostly by popular demand of my peers, however.) I wanted to make something out of him to prove that I had not spent an entire semester working in vain. (Which it really did feel like I kind of did, in a way.) 

So, I buckled down and made my quasi-rigged bird move for the audience of expectant friends and parents. And, looking at it now, it wasn't as bad as anticipated. Surely not as good I wanted, but ok.

Here it is:

Now, I know it's short and the rigging is not smooth and he never does get his drink, but I think this particular animation is a testament to this past year of animation and my growth in dealing with some particularly horrid issues and incomprehensibly frustrating challenges along the way!

e-MAGINE the Festivities

Greetings readers!

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That's me on the left there. My friend Katelyn is on the right.

As you may or may not be aware, my high school Olathe northwest, hosts an annual digital media festival so gallantly named e-MAGINE.

Schools all across the Kansas-Missouri area converge on my home turf to display their digital proficiencies in animation, graphics design, video, and web design! With categories spreading from advertisements to 3D organic modeling, there was a place for everyone to show off their skills! To see what I mean, you can check out all of the entries here.

My Personal Entry:

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Of course, there's no way that I wouldn't have submitted something to this event (especially given that I was required to attend regardless of participation), and I took a week of my like to animate one of the most bizarre character designs I have in my arsenal: Jeffely. (Whom you can search to see more of at my Deviant Art)

Now, Jeffely may not make any sense physically, but I can assure you that he's a full-fledged character with a fleshed-out personality (even if you can't see it from this simple loop animation) and I adore drawing him doing all sorts of things.

This perfect loop may have been seamless and well put together, but I only got into the top 5, and did not formally place, for I had not given the image any of his personality or story. But since I had not tried for any, I was not surprised. (At least I got on the slideshow this year)

Here's My Entry:

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NEXT YEAR I plan to enter something amazing, something that contains sweat, blood, and passion poured into it over an extended time. I will strive to make a STORY. (And maybe even beat McCall)

So anticipate the best when it comes time to enter again! Wish me luck!