AM.2.03 Anatomy of a Shot

I got to work today and there was an 8-inch floppy sitting proudly in its sleeve up against my monitor. Whoa, I haven't seen one of these thing since I was, I dunno, seven!!! A whole whopping 256 KB capacity. The best part was reading the caution icons and cheesily-selected words that went along with them. One showed a bent floppy with the word "NO" in a couple romance languages and then the equivalent of "CAUTION" in Japanese alongside. Another showed a magnet next to a floppy with little thunder zaps coming out of it, accompanied by the word "NEVER" in a couple romance translations and then the equivalent of "EXTRA CAUTION" in Japanese. Though hey, now I'm wondering if those romance translations were accurate. Hahahaha, I guess that's back when jobs for graphics didn't exist in the techie realm. Hey, wait, could this floppy be older than me?! Wow....

So back on the graphics note, here's my assignment for last week. There were some outrageous monstrosities going on with the arms for awhile, but hopefully I've managed to hide most of them. Also, I had to piece together two files since one of them got corrupted halfway through, so errh, enjoy finding the blip.



We also started planning out our assignment for the next few weeks, which is to animate pushing a heavy object up an incline. I jotted down some poses and possible actions, then tried taking some reference videos. Though I don't have an incline handy, my landlady does have a couch, a large living room, and a book on which I can prop half of my camera to make a virtual incline (well, with the walls still 90 degrees to the incline) so I spent some time shoving it across the room (shh, don't tell them) and trying to capture a fall in the process. Dang, apparently all that snowboarding spillage I used to take has only taught me how not to catch myself falling. Ouch. Obviously, I only managed a couple takes of that before I realized hardwood is really hard.

Oooh, this would be a good time to mention something Mark said about reference videos: they should be informational, not inspirational. Plannning is about figuring out the soul of a shot. And the heart for doing that has to come from the artist. Reference videos can be used for teeny supporting inspirations here and there, like a particular flick of the hand or something visually appealing which you wouldn't think of till you observed it. BUT, reference videos should be meant as a basis for exploring the physical details about what you want to put into an animation, not as a point of finding the soul of a shot.

Ok, enough little thoughts from me, time to go figure out the roots of what appears to be a massive allergic reaction. Benadryl knocked me out six hours before my usual sleepy time yesterday. And then I was out for twelve hours! They should sell that stuff as sleeping pills. Garrh what is this from...sunscreen? Cat? Work?