It's Alive!!!

What do you know... I made my very first animation!
Granted, it's only six seconds long, which was the required length for the class I took. Sounds like it should have been easy, right? Wrong... It took more hours than I care to think about to create the character and the rig to move and position it. The environment took quite a long time as well. To create the frames for the movement itself took six hours! Even adding color took quite a few hours. The easiest part of this was creating the series of frames to create this little six second movie and that was because I just had to make a few choices and click a button... So the next time you go see a computer animated movie or TV show with 3D characters, remember all the time it took for a student to create a six second animation of one of the required storyboard scenes It was literally a month long process (and I'm estimating over 100 hours) worth of work that made me want to rip my hair out. Animators certainly work harder than you think, though the pay off is worth more than you can imagine. I'm incredibly proud of my little animation! I got a 100% on this video and passed the class I feared I would bomb with a final grade of 96.4%. Not too shabby...

"Submitted for your approval..."

 In all honesty, I'm rather surprised I'm doing so well in college. I hated school when I was in high school... It's not that I wasn't intelligent; I knew I had the ability to do rather well. But school bored me and I hated the social aspects of it. I would have rather had a hot poker shoved up my ass sideways than to have to go to that awful place. I never applied myself and took so many personal days that my teachers would seem surprised when I actually showed up and would tell me how nice it was to see me again. In some ways, my attending college and doing so well is very surreal... I sometimes expect Rod Serling to show up out of nowhere and start his diatribe, foreshadowing some kind of ironical gloom and doom that's about to befall me... in The Twilight Zone...

"Tuesday's Wednesday..."

This month is another drawing class... It can sometimes be difficult to be inspired on command because you know your grade depends on it. In fact, it can sometimes be downright impossible... This isn't Xanadu and my name isn't Sonny Malone. My chances that the nine muses are going to come to life and walk out of a mural painted on the side of a building are zero and even less that one of them will come inspire me to draw something good and interesting for my art class.

"Modern Day Muses"

Although, the muses did inspire me to create a funny little parody of the muses and how their inspirational styles would change based on today's day and age. I drew it several years ago and, though not meant to be fine art or even good art, for that matter, I did get a lot of good feedback on it. I suppose that's good for something...
But I suppose it's a good thing I don't have a muse. I don't know that I could open a roller skating nightclub. I'm terribly uncoordinated on skates...

The Rain, The Park and Other Things...

No, this is not a blog about the tune from the Cowsills by the same title... I just find it's a good way to describe what I'm getting at with this entry. It's also a very catchy tune, so... yeah...
Seriously... listen to it... It's an earworm...

But back to the subject at hand...

The college life...

At the beginning of this month, I had to undergo surgery to remove my gal bladder. Doesn't that sound like fun...?! If it does... you need serious help... Actually, in some ways, I was looking forward to getting it done. I had suffered for close to a year with being unable to eat a lot of foods without getting physically sick. By the end even chicken broth and crackers were turning my stomach. Thankfully, the surgery has helped somewhat. It will still be some time before I can eat everything again, but at least I can eat real food that isn't in liquid or cracker form. My stomach is certainly rejoicing...
Sadly, I was also in a lot more pain than anticipated, which caused a problem I didn't foresee. Because my college provides an accelerated program, I have one class a month, which means that all assignments are due within a week. I had considered asking for an extension during that first week due to my surgery, but I was afraid that, if I was awarded one, I would get penalized for late work anyway (as per the rules in the handbook) and that I would fall behind and never be able to catch up. However, as I found out, the college makes allowances for cases such as mine. I was able to get pulled from the course for the month with no penalty and resume the following month. I was grateful I had so much time to rest and heal. I was also grateful for the time to let my brain rest as well. As this goes on, the workload has been getting quite heavy (considering we only have four weeks, I think the workload is insane in some of the classes). I've been working so pitifully hard that a break has made major improvements in the state of my cluttered mind.

There isn't enough Xanax in the world...

Monday I have to resume class again... Granted, I've been bored out of my ever-loving mind this past month and was anxious to have something to do again. But, on the other hand, I've also enjoyed this free time to do what I want and have time for me for once. I know that, once I start class again, I'm going to be insanely busy and have no free time again. I'm really not looking forward to that... But the hard work I've been putting in has definitely been paying off. I have a 4.0 GPA, which my student liaison has been telling me is impressive. All in all, I guess the stress, anxiety and hair tearing out that I've done has been well worth it. Let's hope it continues to feel that way...