Tea Time with Ari- Week 8

==>It's a nice, bright day with a light breeze. You're walking by the local stores and you hear me calling your name. I'm sitting at a small table in the comic shop with some tea, and, wowie- there's a cup for you, too! Take a seat! We've got some tea to spill.<==

As you may have noticed, I totally skimped out on last week's blog. Oops! Totally wasn't intentional. In all seriousness, I will likely finish the main blog from last week as it was pretty important and most of you really liked what I had going there. (I don't expect any points from doing so, it just felt like it's a good thing to do.) In our class, last few weeks we learned about particle systems (so cool!!), cloth, brush sets, and Premier. That demo video was as cringy as possible and I'm not gonna complain. I've already got a few ideas on how I'm gonna make this project presentable beyond belief.

I'd love to learn more about Drive, Ambition, and Motive when it comes to animation and art in general as some of these things burn out faster than a poorly lit wick for me. Even in my more ambitious and fun ideas sometimes I can't grip them hard enough. I'm pretty sure it's a problem of my way about doing things, as when animating in 2d I don't block out the entire thing first- I do it part by part, finishing it in chronological order and polishing along the way. The way I SHOULD be doing things is blocking out with rough shapes throughout, and then finishing what I can cut out the swiftest and move along with polish and pizazz. I'll be trying this in the final 2 animations we have. Dunno whether to be scared, intimidated, chill or a mix of all and more. I just hope our final project has a somewhat action-themed prompt like "Last Stand" or something. I could run and fly far with that in that case.

Frustrations these last few weeks came in the forms of sleep deprivation and plan demolition. I try to be good at planning hangouts with my friends but sometimes it just falls through. I tend to stay up for no reason when I know I function better working early waking up than staying up. When I do stay up, I often try doing important work but it takes 3X more time than it normally would because of the hazy, likely caffeinated state I'm in. I'm crunched for time a lot, as I have musical rehearsals M-W-F until 5 PM, and I need to find a job somewhere, along with learning how to drive, finding an endocrinologist and getting my documents legally corrected. I don't think my parents can see the urgency I have about the last two.

Kingdom Hearts III keeps me sane and I'm getting more used to digital art in my spare time. I have a 95.6% average in school, and I'd say I'm cruisin'. That's all, really. Not much else to say. Ferrets and Otters are cute as heck, though.

This link of interest comes from Deviantart in the form of "How To Balance A Character" with two links, one on Powers and one on Personality. These helped me get a better understanding of writing my characters and what to consider when animating them.

Solid Drawing and Poses- A Comprehensive

Solid Drawing is one of the major components in creating animation, as it refers to the skills needed to give 2D images a 3D feel. Of course, to be a good animator, you need artistic integrity-- it's often enough that years of work are built upon in an artist's lifetime to get to a final, amazing product. This week in BSSD, we will be analyzing the principle of animation called Solid Drawing as told by Jay Jackson, an animator taught by legendary Eric Larson.

In the computer age of animation, we don't need good drafters to come about a successful animation since digital enhancements allow us to continue editing to our hearts' content without damaging the piece. Jackson explains mostly from experience his way of doing things, along with tips such as how you should be spending half the time planning and half the time animating, and to not dive into animation without a clear pathway of which to walk along. In order to animate with a professional sense, the artist must be able to draw a character at any angle and take into consideration the following things; Line of Action, Weight and Balance, Twinning, Twists, Silhouette and Counterpose. All of these are mediocre at best to master alone, but in combination, they form the principles and dynamics that go into Solid Poses.

Let's tackle the most fundamental of these mini-lessons first. Twinning is, if not the most detrimental to any pose, as symmetry kills any form of life it touches. Stiffness is bound to come with symmetry and to break this you'd use the rest of these to help drive the knife deeper into the crack of lifelessness. Weight and balance go hand-in-hand as balance is dependent on weight to take form. Take into consideration your character's body type, size, and shape when animating. All these factors come together to control your character's motion, feel, expressiveness and gravity. Movement is obviously the most important thing, and being able to vividly express your characters through simple and complex motions is imperative to animation.

 Silhouettes come in handy when coming up with a clear, readable pose. Make sure when doing a dynamic pose that you can clearly get what's happening if your drawing was blacked out. If not, you end up with a flatter image than you intended. When making poses, the first thing you may want to do is draw a line. This will serve as a guide for motion direction in the pose. This is called the Line of Action and is very important to implement in any scene to promote dynasticism.

Solid drawing, to me, is extremely important to my work. I'm always trying to improve my dynamics by implementing perspective and action into animation and it helps a ton that I can conjure vivid ideas from my head to animate on the dot. If you hadn't noticed yet, I love using abstract lines and shapes to form powerful movements alongside a character's, but I plan on spending my independent study chip on combining a study of dynamic animation AND abstract shapes to music. I already ready to dive in, but it seems a bit early. This blog really helped me in pinpointing where I can improve my work. Although it's short, it's also sweet and to-the-point. Thanks, Jay Jackson.

AriTea Party #7

(I would usually type up a tsunami here but my ambition machine broke oops)

The True Tea feat. Tyrannical Corporations (guest stars Corruption and Debt) ((BSSD))

     Now, college is something we've been lectured on thousands of times by now, we get that it plays a huge role in our furthered education and can launch some of us directly into our dream jobs, but did we ever take a second to consider our options? No, I don't mean CalArts or Harvard. Our real options, ones that aren't fueled by money-hole corporate for-profits. Unless you catch a lucky streak and somehow slam a scholarship, it's quite likely that the prestigious school you seemed to take an interest in (partly due to a few alumni) is only going to cripple you financially until you're well in your later years. The thing I took note of that I did a lot when researching colleges that often leads to a collective pitfall for those interested is that we see one really successful person (such as Rebecca Sugar) come out of SVA and make her own cartoon series (Steven Universe) within 4 years of graduating (her thesis film, Singles, debuted in 2009, SU began airing in 2013) and assume we will have that luck of doing the same. I realized, however, that it doesn't matter what college you go to, it's what programs you take and how you use that in tandem with your creative drive in order to succeed. Like Ms. Licata referenced, people come from all around and it's the ones that use their creative spark that burn the brightest flame. Your location doesn't define you or your skill level. That's up for you and your audience to decide.  In this blog, we will be reviewing the damage of these for-profits with sources from The Atlantic- two articles by Bryan Snyder and Sam Edwards.

   
((In this blog nothing more happens, so enjoy this fresh watermarked stolen meme converted into a gif for your viewing pleasure))