DO NOT touch the white leaves!

So I went to the zoo today. It was one of the things I wanted to do on this vacation. I took my sketchbook and my iPod Nano, and went sketching. I also took my digital camera to sketch things I didn't have time for. That was pretty much the back half of the zoo.

I was doing pretty good in the beginning. I was walking and sketching. I was sitting and sketcing. I was snapping pictures. I even had a couple of kids come up to me because they were interested in what I was drawing. Their dad told me one of them loved to draw and wants to be an artist. I told him he needs to get a sketchbook, a nice set of pens, and never stop drawing. (If only I could take my own advice.)

It was hot. There was no wind. And the zoo is not actually known for smelling like a bed of roses. Just a warning, but when you see tall trees with birds way up on top, and all the plants and folage down below are not green but white, GET OUT OF THERE AS QUICK AS POSSIBLE!!!

I'll be posting some of my sketches and pics soon.

Ok, I got pics.

Here is my animation studio. I recently surrounded it with old calendar pictures. If this doesn't get my animating juices going, I don't know what will.

So this is my new table for the darkroom. Kenny entrusted me with the darkroom equipment before he moved to Pearland and I am eternally grateful.

This looks boring.

I need some pictures.

No idea what's gonna happen.

I picked up my new PC Monday. It's a really awesome system. It's fully loaded with all the video editing and graphic software I need to make my animated shorts really POP! The only problem is...I don't know how to use any of them. It's going to take some time. Great, now I need more time to figure these out when I've been trying to find time to work on my animation and drawing.

Luckily, I am on vacation in about a week. I've been looking forward to this for a while. Plus, it's my birthday. yeah. Not really looking forward to THAT part. What can you do, right?

I would like to tell you my "plans" for this vacation but when I do, they never work out. Something ALWAYS screws them up. So you won't have any idea what I'm going to be doing and neither do I.

LOOK OUT WORLD, I'M DOING SOMETHING!!

Disney, Plympton, and Pat Smith

I need to start animating and I need to start NOW!! The problem is when I look at my storyboards, I don't see a lot of moving around. I see the acting as very stiff. Maybe it's because I've been staring at them as boards for so long. I need to look at some movies and see how I want the acting to be. That's what it is, acting. I want the acting to flow. I want the action to flow. I don't want them to be stiff and lifeles with only the mouths moving. I want them to come alive. Acting. That's what it's about. I am, after all, an actor with a pencil. I want to emulate Disney, with the look of Plympton and the feel of Patrick Smith.

I need to order more animation paper. I was thinking, when I receive the paper that I could trim off the excess that doesn't fit in the scanner. 1) I'll need a larger paper cutter. 2) That could take a while because I'd want the sides to be equidistance from the peg holes, and not lopsided. Well, I guess it could work that way but I like things to be even.

I need to start sketching. I need to start drawing. I can see drawings in my head and I can see them moving. In a recent interview on The Animation Podcast with Glen Keane, he said that Eric Larson told him "you have to see the animation in your mind before you animate it." Well, I can see it I just can't get the image from my mind, thru my arm, to the pencil, on the paper. I can see my cartoon come alive in my head. I can see the action. I can see the action. I can see it. I just haven't had the time to get it to the paper. THAT is the most frustrating for me. Other stuff comes up. Life comes up. Working full time then trying to work on my passion full time. It is difficult. But if I love it enough, I can make it happen. I do love it. I do love seeing my drawings come to life. That is the greatest feeling in the world.

What I need to do is do some more tests with this scanning process. Yesterday, I scanned in some of the cells of "Merlin Shmerlin." What I realized was that I had a lot of empty space. If I'm going to be using this scanning process, I have to realize that I can use the ENTIRE sheet of paper. That should be really fun.

I can't believe it took me this long!!

I finally had a huge breakthrough today. I have been trying to figure out a way to create my animation with the resources I have. I've been to The Disney Institute several times and there we used the Animators Lunchbox. I saw it and fell in love. Well, I haven't been able to afford it. Right now I have an iMac with iMovie, iPhoto, etc.

Long story short, here's what I did. I did a couple of quick sketches, scanned them in, imported to iPhoto, and then imported them to iMovie. I tried this once before and it took me forever. I shot stills of my drawings on my digital video camera, imported the video, then took out exactly three frames from every five seconds of video. It took me forever! It was really discouraging but I was able to achieve the results I was looking for. BUT NOW I did it a much easier way. I scanned them in. Imported them to iPhoto. imported them to iMovie. Within iMovie, when I am going to use a photo, I can determine how long I want the photo to be on screen. I can have it there for several seconds or, as I just realized, I CAN ONLY USE IT FOR THREE FRAMES!!!! Do you get what I'm trying to tell you?!?! All this time I have been doing it the hard way! This is going to make my "so-called animated" life so much easier. I can't believe it took me this long to figure it out.