about time...

...for a new post, don'cha think?
It's 8 am here in my dorm and I'm already showered and dressed nice and early...I didn't want to wait to shower in the middle of a make-up party that happens in a frenzy every morning around 8:30. I've never been one to wear make-up, so I just skratch my head and shrug :)
Life here at CSSSA/Innerspark has been an amazing experience. I've been here one week exactly and already I've created four animation projects and I'm in the middle of another one. Everyone started out last Sunday by getting presents. A new sketchbook, markers, pens and pencils too. It was like kindergarden the first day, everyone sitting at long tables with their new sketchbooks. We were instructed to decorate our sketchbook covers, which was a lot of fun. I'm real lucky to have very nice roommates, one of which is in animation too. It helps a lot when you don't know anyone or where to go. She helps me wake up and I help her get around campus. It can be kind of confusing here; the main floor is actually the third floor, and a lot of the halls look the same. I think I'll have it down by the time I have to leave.
So Sunday we taped together strips of paper to be about 2 and a half feet long. The assignment was to think of two simple objects and morph them from the first object to the second to the first again. The head of the animation department here, Trixy Sweetvittles, showed us the technique of drawing the first object (a key, in my case) on the first and last frames. Then we drew two of the second object (for me a baloon) right in the middle, and then add in strange-looking versions inbetween. That was a lot of fun.
Monday we started flipbooks. Our teacher was John Mahoney, a really nice guy. He encouraged us to start without knowing where to go, and to animate in pen. I was scared to do that...but I did it anyway. It actually turned out better, I think, than my second one, which I did in pencil. I was so dependent on the eraser that I actually started over three times! I still like the first one better, however odd it is...The second one was our first homework assignment.
Tuesday we came to class and were split up into four groups. There's around 50 of us, so they were good sized groups. Our project for that day and the next was to build a set and puppets, draw a storyboard and animate the puppets in a 30 or 60 second short. Wow! What an assignment! Somehow we pulled it off (I guess). It was probably one of the more memorable group collaborations I've had. Many people had a different kind of humor than me, but I was ok with it...actually, I ended up animating a little pink alien that I had made out of clay the day before, although I hadn't planned on it. People were like, Hey, we've got to have the Pink Guy in it! So he got in.Tuesday I got to eat dinner with John Mahoney, a couple of cool TAs and Corny Cole, a great old guy, moves kind of slowly but does amazing figure drawing. He actually spent 12 years on an animation of his figure drawings I believe, and we got to see it. There was so much there, it was hard to compute.
Wednesday we completed our film, which is very odd but funny too.
Thursday we finally got to start figure drawing classes. I was disappointed at first to have been put in another figure drawing class instead of Corney's, but as life tends to do, things turned out pretty cool. I was able to work in a way I've never done before, with big sheets of black paper, blue, green; and oil and chalk pastels too. I worked on the floor, another thing I hadn't done before. The model was great, wore cool costumes, and they played inspirational music like the Amelie soundtrack! Our instructor, Michael Mitchel, is another cool old guy. He would come over to each person and tell them a compliment or to tell them to loosen up. It felt good to have him take away my drawings, because he put them up on the wall with many other student's drawings as well.
It was interesting when we stopped the shorter poses and went on to longer, 15 minute ones. I had run out of big black paper and had switched to a smaller pink one. My first attempt then was very sketchy and weak. Mike came over and said I should switch back to big paper, so I did, and it worked. I was back to being bold! I had a lot of fun.
In the afternoons after lunch we always congregate in the Bijou Theatre to watch short animated films and take notes on them. That's been both really fun and also eye-opening to different types of animated films that are out there. After the Bijou on Thursday I went to animation class. Our newest assignment is to create an abstract cut-out animation. It will be put to music, possibly made by the music students here, so we have to make some kind of change evey 15 frames for 150 frames. That's only 5 seconds of animation in video terms, 30 frames per second, but man I'm not even done with my storyboard yet. A bunch of students are going on a field trip this Sunday so they have to have it finished by today. I'm SO glad I'm not going on that one, because I'm a little behind.
Friday I was excited to be in Corny's figure drawing class but a little disappointed when he had to leave the class to do something else. He peeked in once in the middle of class and then came in near the end, but most of the time I was uninspired. I was back on the bench, white paper, charcoal, cold room, no music. Ugh... After doing several threes we went right into three twentys. That was jarring to me and again I started over three times. On the third try I went back to white paper after trying the Big Black Paper technique. I didn't think it looked good, but Corny liked it and I saw it up on the wall later on. In fact, as I walked past it a guy walked by in the other direction. He looked at it and said, "That's f-'n amazing. Only thing wrong is the charcoal's too big." So I guess I could take that as a compliment...though it wasn't charcoal at all, it was pencil. :)
Well now it's Saturday an dat 10 we meet in the Bijou yet again, but this time Jorge Gutierrez will be giving us a talk on animation. I believe he's worked for Nickelodeon on Mucha Lucha. I have never seen it, and I had never heard of Jorge before, so I'm pretty excited. And plus, he bought everybody pizza for a pizza party today! Cool!
And just for fun, that last picture was from Disneyland; three of Bud Lucky's concepts for Woody...sorry it's so blurry. I'll have another post just for Disneyland hopefully. As for now, well, now I've got to go eat breakfast. Have a great weekend!