Jacquestar

...Well, here's the last two years of my life...er...not all of the last two years of my life, exactly...anyway, bet you can't tell which parts I did in 2008, which parts I did in 2009, and which parts I did last Thursday!



Incidentally, this is the first time I've ever pulled an all-nighter making fun of a professor in animated short format, but I did have a deadline to meet. Jacques is moving to NYC after this, so I had to have it ready before his sendoff party. It's really more of a Lacoste joke if anything--Andy Moxon (voiced badly by yours truly) was the photography professor while I was in Lacoste, and in the first week he told Jacques that he could walk to the next town over in less than thirty minutes if he followed a Roman road just outside of town.

Naturally, Jacques missed it entirely (it was pretty hard to miss once we did find it) and wound up taking all of us through the woods for about three or four hours. And from now on, Jon and Lauren and I have been calling airplanes Jacquestars.

So yeah, Thursday went well.

I wish I were animating right now

I am never taking another quarter without animation classes again, ever. This week got so midterms-crazy that I can't even drop by Monty to animate, just write up a slew of journal entries for Production Design. I mean, production design is great and all, and I'm actually doing REALLY well in that class, but it's so much work. My professor works us so hard she makes Troy look harmless, which should say it all. She's having us come in on Friday morning to present a project two classes after another project. Which Troy totally did, just not on a Friday. Okay, there was one time in Animation I but that was only at 8AM because my class was actually at 8AM, this class is at 2. You'd think we'd be meeting at 2. This isn't the first time I've had to present on a Friday morning for this class, either.

I mean, I know I shouldn't be whining about work, but it is seriously cutting into my animating time! I have got to finish Jacquestar before I get too much better than I was to keep the style consistent, and this department is entirely oblivious to the fact that I don't relegate my animation to my classwork.

Wish You Were Here

Darling Montgomery,

Salutations from scenic Crites Hall! I'm taking all Minor courses this quarter, so I won't be seeing you as much as usual, especially once Practicum starts up. I can actually see the water tower from the fourth floor girls' bathroom window. Yes, Crites has them! Lots, in fact. I could honestly get used to it.

Don't cry over that whole...er...window deficiency thing. You'll short-circuit the Cintiqs and Anthony will explode again. There's always CAS, and until I have to begin Practicum you can bet your water tower I will be visiting. Constantly. After all, I have a good...er...sixish projects I want to get done. Pasta Perils is coming along nicely. It's nearly all rough-inbetweened now. Expect a finished product about the same length as Finals Week.

Poor Troy doesn't get even half the screen time Debber does. A Timely Warning clocked in at 18 seconds. But on the other hand, it's actually done. And Jacquestar is going to be epic once that goes through.

I will be seeing you soon, and do I mean soon.

ALP,
Zelda

One Scene to go, and Lemrex character concept

Only one scene till "Bit" is fully animated (sans top-secret final scene Papa doesn't know about). Yay!

I finished the concept work on Lemrex for John's project, "April," yesterday evening.


He should be fun to animate next quarter. Tons and tons of special effects and I haven't even TAKEN that class yet.

And speaking of effects, Professor Troy totally graffiti'd the whiteboard this afternoon. Welcome to the 321 Whiteboard Tag Force, Mr. Ninja. We salute you.

I'm also going to try my hardest to overhaul Foiled Again if I can get my computer back. Plus Jacquestar and Pasta Perils. And Monty!. That's six things if you toss Bit into the mix. I'm excited!

Bit

I just realized I have absolutely nothing posted about my senior project. Oops? I mean, I've only been working on the thing for what, a quarter? Two quarters if you count Concept Development? In any case it's been keeping me from finishing Jacquestar and Pasta Perils.

I did it in Flash, frame by frame like "Finals Week," only the quality is going to be noticeably higher. And it's actually shorter, too. A little bit shorter. It clocked out at 40:16ish in the animatic. And I have twice as long to do it. Four times as long, really, because I knew what I was doing from the start of the first week of this quarter.

The story revolves around this bucket of bolts...

His name is Ignatius. Just kidding. It's Bit. He works inside a computer transporting files in little crates to different chutes that lead to different computer drives. Courtney Brooke Vaughan is doing the backgrounds and totally rocks hardcore for it. Expect the floor to be greener and the rest of the scenery to be grayer, though the coloring on Bit himself is pretty accurate. He also has a supervisor who is very much in charge.

The story focuses on a specific incident in which his boss expects him to deliver a virus to the C drive. So far production's been a smash but cleanup is seriously tedious work. I have been deleting vectors for the past week and still have two and a half more scenes to inbetween. Pop seems pretty confident that I'll get it done but he doesn't know I still have Debber's final, a short story to write, and my friend John's character turnaround to finish.

I've taken a pretty lighthearted discourse in dealing with a *gasp* potentially serious subject matter (one of those "You can't control me" sort of deals that's cropped up in my own life as of late) and a couple of weeks ago I thought it was dumb. Especially the vector cleanup part. But last weekend after blitzing through Jason's concept class in a vampire cape on a quest for dry-erase markers, I wound up helping a guy out with perspective drawing and got some perspective of my own. His wasn't funny at all. It was craptastically serious and filled with symbological mumbo-jumbo. Every shot was carefully and deliberately planned even though he couldn't quite draw them out because he cared a ton about what he was doing.

I found more meaning in my conveniently brief project and might have to add an extra scene at the end. As closure. But don't tell Pop!

Looks like my spring break's over.

Dang, new quarter already and I still haven't finished animating Jacquestar. It's that ooooooone scene in the very beginning of the second sequence that just doesn't want to leave that very-very-very-rough animatic stage. I really should have finished the thing back in France. Darn those final projects getting in the way of the funnies!

I want to finish it before I get to the point where I've been doing so much animating that it tumbles into that "old stuff that is so old it's embarrassing to look at" category. I lose so many projects that way.