So my Maya 3D modeling and animation instructor is back after both illness and being unexpectedly trapped in Europe by the volcano, so I have some schoolwork waiting to be completed. However, that hasn’t stopped me from continuing to keep filling spare moments with 2D hand animation. This one, “Little Green Buddy” for lack of a real title, was actually just drawn over top of an inflatable toy boxing glove (basically a small beach ball) being tossed.
Edit: Caitlin just pointed out to me that you can see the blue/red glove in a couple of the frames (I didn’t bother editing it out, but it would be easy to do so in Photoshop), once falling behind her since in real life it didn’t chomp her on the head, and then later behind her on the ground.
It’s a lot of fun starting to build up a portfolio in animation, and learning new skills has been exhilarating. However, there are aspects of my condition/disease/whatever that make even the small (about a hundred frames) animation above a monumental struggle that’s frustrating in ways that I find very hard to confront. Thankfully at least the weather has been decent, but it’s starting to get quite hot, stepping solidly into summer after a strange and mostly nonexistent winter (with what, a total of less than five days with snow on the ground). Today we had the last of April’s showers, and hot rain came down on us in brief bursts that ignored the mugginess and refreshed us instead. This will soon become a stifling humid heat though so I’ve got to get on having the A/C in this place repaired (recharged) before we’re too far into that torture.
Speaking of repair, as you can see I finally got my Saab back after a month of a motley assortment of repairs, the leaky gas tank being the last to get checked off the list. I don’t think any of it was particularly difficult or time-consuming (especially given that the front clip of the car was removed, as was the tiny little engine — it really is hilariously miniature), but because forty year old limited-run cars from Sweden can take some time to get parts for… It took me a minute (and one embarrassing stall) to get used to the new and improved clutch — and wow, is this ever different from driving Caitlin’s car, probably as “opposite” as it could be — but it was a real pleasure to be behind the wheel again.
And now begins the other good part of my day, as I watch the Ultimate Fighter and eat pie. I got a small half price cherry pie, and I hope that the gluttony guilt of eating the whole thing is minimized by the “best before May 5″ sticker. That makes eating it all the law, right?
Right!
