Fluffasaurus

WHY BIRD, WHY?

Intro to Acting + Lip Synch

Ahhh such a winding road of failure and progress! I love it! Here,enjoy my first shot diving into acting with dialogue. Can you guess where the line came from?

I am now in Class 5 which entails advanced acting, more dialogue and interaction between 2 different characters. I’m going to attempt to keep a more up-to-date blog tracking of this in progress, so stay tuned!

KB

AnimationMentor Class 3 Reel

Class 3 is done! Woo!!

My mentor this semester was Mike Gasaway, and boy I can’t thank this guy enough! He helped me overhaul my ENTIRE process, from concept to completion. While I was floundering in Class 2, scared without any direction, I’m now much more organized and conscious of the movements I make, and thinking specifically about why they happen.  A lot of it breaks down in the Blocking+ stage, and even into a Blocking++ level, and is more specific to building off of the “golden” poses, or poses that tell the story.

1. Story poses (8-12 only, no anticipations, just poses that tell the story. I treated these as if I was reading a comic strip or storyboard, so they were the most exaggerated.)
2. Supplemental story poses (More minor, but necessary poses)
3. Breakdowns & Timing Adjustment (Don’t be afraid to hit linear spline to test this!!)
4. Anticipations & Weight in the Hips, Torso, etc. (Complete focus on where weight is going or landing, etc)
5. Feet Lock (Making sure the feet are frikkin’ keyed where they need to stick to the ground. This always pissed me off when I forget and it’s go bonkers in spline)
6. Inbetweens (Going freaking nuts with the keys, I usually keyed almost every other frame at this point)
7. Arcs, arcs and more arcs! (Then almost every frame was keyed here)
8. Tweak time (Checking for wacky stuff, pretty much leans right into polish stage)

As you can tell from my reel, I still have a long ways to go. As my mentors and classmates have said, there are some foundation concepts that just aren’t being applied consistently and I still feel my sense of timing is just too far one way or another. I also fell off the boat as far as communication with my classmates through critiques and comments, but hey I’m going to test some morning routine tweaks to improve.

The feeling at the start of this term is different from all the others. I’m not stressed about being stressed. I’m not feeling like my work is at the bottom of the pile. I don’t have that feeling of failing before I’ve even begun.

Having a much tighter pipeline instills so much more confidence. It’s cut so much BS time out of the entire process for me. Having that, I feel determined to make my work look right and feel right. I’m halfway up this mountain, and I am starting to believe more and more that the summit will totally rock.

Thank you Mike and thank you to my classmates.

KB

AnimationMentor Class 2 Reel

Ah yes, the long overdo blog post about the Class 2 reel, whoops! Chronicling my journey from total suckage to decent improvement. Education works! Yippee!

This semester was by far the most challenging emotionally, with the added stress of learning to juggle my previous unemployed schedule with a new one. Many thanks to my classmates, family and friends who helped keep me together.

KB

2011 Resolutions

Resolutions are goals I enjoy setting because the attractive “clean slate” feeling of a new year never ceases to give me hope. 2010 was pretty trying and difficult in many ways, but I made it through, learned a heck of a lot and will make 2011 awesome, SO HELP ME.

This weekend Ken and I set off for our new apartment in St. Petersburg, FL. Yes, another move. It’s a personable little city that has little pieces of places we’ve loved to travel.  Not to mention the amazing climate, access to the Bay and Gulf, a handful of production studios and tons of delicious food places. This place is up and coming, the waves of hipsters will arrive any day now. I’m convinced. New places mean new opportunities, new thoughts, new people and new adventures.

I already have my sights set on places to volunteer here in the Tampa Bay area, but at the tip-top of my list is the Suncoast Seabird Sanctuary , a wild avian hospital specializing in the rehabilitation of indigenous birds, and Creative Clay, a point of several public art programs that promotes to make all arts accessible, no matter a person’s age, race, ability or gender. St. Petersburg establishments proudly hang many of CC’s artists, a majority who are mentally disabled, and all whose passion for art shines. I’m very excited to volunteer there, and am filled with the same anticipation from the days of Traum Baum with Christina.

2010′s resolution was to run a triathlon, and dammit, I DID. It was hard, painful and my training was far from consistent. But thanks to Irene’s inspiring performance at the IronGirl race, and Ken being a good sport, the Longleaf Tri happened and well, let’s say it’s no secret who was the last place person in their age group. So this year I will try to be a wee bit faster and learn how to freakin’ swim in open water properly (so hard those years of swim team mean zilch). I’d like to find a tri where you swim in the Gulf instead of a farm lake with gators…

Animation Mentor has been going very well, I’m VERY happy with my class this term. I feel like I was plopped into the group where the bar is set 10ft higher, so this is as good a time to focus on my planning. Good planning will streamline any creative or problem-solving process. And this means less time yelling at Ballie’s popping knees if I can help it. My goal is to put more time into planning, and to better my planning strategies.

And finally, more fruits and veggies! Especially locally grown noms, so I’ll have no excuses for lack of vitamin C. My attempts of growing veggies in Trinity had a steep learning curve and resulted in 2 eggplants, two seasons of fresh herbs, one red bell pepper (still ripening though possibly dead from frost?). The new apartment has a biiiiiig sun porch, half of which will be my studio, and another part will be an indoor garden, round 2 of these self-sufficient feeding experiments. Very, very excited.

So life continues, and things get better day by day. I feel productive and positive. I’m ready to take you on, 2011!

KB