Final animation- 10 second scene

Goofy, thinking he is super cool, orders a beer at a bar, only to discover that he is a total lightweight.

Inspired by true events... in my own life. o.o

My final project for animation class. I slaved at least 50 hours on this baby, and I'm still not fully happy with it, but I can't stand working on it anymore. I don't think straight up 2d animation is my calling. Too much revision! At one point I had to redraw 50 frames because I got too off model. Ugh. 

Coraline Cat Walk Cycle

My final for fundamentals of Maya...I modeled, rigged, and animated this all on my own. The only guidance I really had for rigging and animating were the videos on Lynda.com (thank god for those) I basically did everything twice before getting it right. The walk is funky, but I've never even done a 2d two legged walk sooo yea. Obviously I am going to have no idea how the timing for a quadruped works, haha. Anyway, I feel like I accomplished something. It took a lot of work.

Figure Drawing Portfolio FInal

Our figure drawing final was to put together a 20 page portfolio of our best work from the semester. So here it is. .

..20 pages is a lot o.o Especially when we had zero days to do any exaggerated drawings. Fail.

    

Goofy Jump

Hopefully youtube fixes the weirdness of this soon...but here is my most recent animation assignment. Not as proud of this, but whatever.

History Comics

 For my western civ project I decided to do a series of comics about Ancient Greece in homage to Kate Beaton's Hark! A Vagrant series. 

It was of course in doing this project did I realize how much I realize I suck at comics. Especially when it comes to type. I don't know the proper kinds to put in through photoshop and my handwriting is just dumb...so yea...I feel like it really detracts from the whole thing overall. Oh well. Hopefully I'll still do alright on this project.

Tales of Athens

Women of Athens in ancient Greece had no independent existence. They were under the wing of whatever man was the authority in her life, either her father, husband, or sometimes even their own sons (Blundell 78). Common women were often illiterate and often seen as important because of the connections their marriages established, both through their dowry and also occasionally serving a role in the transfer and ownership of land if their fathers died and had no other heirs. The only control they had was over the on-goings of their household. All they held ownership was over slaves and some moveable goods (Blundell 92). All men of the day were very against women even so much as leaving the house. Quotes from the likes of Euripides and Plato provide examples of this attitude. Euripides has been quoted to actually say “It is not nice for girls to creep through the crowd,” and “She ought not be seen even standing on the roof of her house.” (Blundell 133) Plato has said that women are “accustomed to an underground and shadowy existence” (Blundell 135). Perhaps these quotes are a little strange out of context and exaggerated in these comics, but nevertheless they serve as a strong demonstration of the rather misogynistic views of the Ancient Greeks in Athens.

Letters From Sparta

In contrast to the women of Athens, women in Sparta during the time of ancient Greece had much more independence. Women of Sparta received an education quite equal to the likes of men. Beyond that, they often did not get married until they were 18, and even then they did not move in with their husbands until much later, often at the age of 30 (Blundell 145). Women even got to take part in processions, ritual dances, and sporting competitions, frequently in the nude (Blundell 152). This incites the question of what the motivation and reasoning of Spartan men to allow this to happen, especially when another major city-state nearby took such opposing views on the matter. Another curious mannerism of the Spartans were the marriage ceremonies and rituals. It was common for women on the marriage night to have their heads shaven and dressed as men. They would meet with their husbands alone in at night and consummate, spending a few hours together before the husband would return to his barracks. This ritual would continue for an extended period of time until the woman moved in with her husband (Blundell 153). The citizens of Sparta were also openly polygamous. They conducted practices of “wife borrowing,” in which men would marry each others wives (Blundell 154). This is a particularly striking custom as it illustrates the very base and simplistic culture of the Spartans. They had no need for complicated laws and social orders in their militaristic city-state.

300 Redux

The true events that took place at the Battle of Thermopylae are quite differing from the pop-culture depictions in movies and graphic novels that most of us are familiar with. While it is common knowledge that 300 Spartans fought against an enormous population of invading Persians, it is often glossed over that anywhere from 4,000 to 7,000 other Greeks were on their side and fighting with them (Herodotus 7.202.1). It is an interesting oversight that this is ignored in modern times, and also perhaps slightly awkward for those who did fight. The Greek army was still known for being very strong, however, and part of the reason the Greeks were so successful in battle was from their military tactic of the phalanx formation—ironically a word very close that of “pharynx,” although the two were probably never mixed up. The phalanx formation was a line of men closely packed together “standing in long, parallel lines, close to each other. Every hoplite carried a large round shield…which covered his own left side and the right side of the man to his left” (Livius.org). Their spears emerged from this impenetrable line of shields, making it a very successful tactic, no doubt used in the Battle of Thermopylae. This is especially in contrast to Persian equipment, which, among other things, actually included wicker shields (Herodotus 7.61.1). It is interesting as well, that today the Persians are depicted in such an intimidating manner, when really their appearance was not far off that of the Greeks, Xerxes being no exception (Hope, 24).

Works Cited

Blundell, Sue. Women in Ancient Greece. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1995. Print.

"Greece." Livius. Articles on Ancient History. Livius.org. Web. 31 Mar. 2012. .

Herodotus. Herodotus: The Histories. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1986, 1972. Print.

Hope, Thomas. Costumes of the Greeks and Romans. New York: Dover Publications, 1962. Print.

zoo drawings

Once upon a time it was spring break and we went to the zoo and drew animals. I wanted to draw goats and bears but they were being boring so instead I drew wallabies and gorillas and cute little gerenuks and 3-legged gazelles. And then I inked, scanned, and colored some drawings in photoshop and felt proud of myself for making something nice. Except I dunno about the background. They are kind of just floating around...feh...

The end.

Artistic and Professional Goals

I have been thinking a lot lately-- especially since Stephen Silver gave his lecture at LCAD (and since Larissa has been my teacher, but she has worked with Stephen Silver so they basically have said the same things)-- about what I want to do with my life and specific goals I want to set for myself. I'm not super familiar with the entire animation process yet, but I think the way I am swinging is towards story. That's where it's always been for me really. I'm a writer. When I try to see myself in the future, I see myself writing, and that is how it has always been. But also stop motion, because the more I think about it, the more I like it, and the more I want to do it. I dunno if I'll be any good at fabricating puppets, but we'll see. Anyway, I've been thinking more and more how I can follow in the footsteps of professional entertainers and writers I most admire: Tina Fey, Doug Walker, Felicia Day. Even Jenna Marbles has been super inspirational to me these days. Mostly, I want to be in charge of my own future but also part of a production group and the production process. The most obvious thing to me feels like starting my own business or studio...or something. I've had it in the back of my mind for a long time now, but I felt like I should officially put it down on a list finally.
So here is my list of professional and artistic goals. I don't have a specific deadline in mind to achieve most of these things (although some do require me to do while I am in school). You never know, maybe I'll go travel around South America for awhile, or maybe a studio will want to hire me to work after I graduate. I wouldn't turn that down--it'd be a good opportunity to get to know how things are run. I don't mind starting at the bottom. These are just the eventually's I suppose.

-Get a story internship at Pixar (and if it can't be Pixar, then somewhere else.)
-Learn the stop motion trade
-Make a humorous and outrageous stop motion senior film--something that I could never do under another company
-Start an internet media/entertainment/youtube channel/company/studio thing
-Surround myself with competent and talented people
-Give animators the opportunity to develop their own short series
-Give filmmakers the opportunity to develop their own short series
-Develop my own short internet series. 1 animated and 1 live action. Write, produce, and star in both
-Become totally internet famous and inspire and entertain other people
-Optional: Get into the Nickelodeon Writing Fellowship. It's a long shot, but I'm still going to try.


Things to work on the get these places:
-Write often: keep at my blog, and also produce a few spec scripts. Also finish the unicorns novel
-Acting practice: Start an improv club
-Get LCAD to get a stop motion class
-Take a summer business course?
-Learn how to record and edit videos (get a video camera)
-Practice lots and lots of storyboards!! Storyboard sequences from my writings- both my blog (real life experiences) and my fictional stories. Also storyboard live action sequences that I enjoy. Storyboard anything! Just do it-- a lot.