Learning to Animate: The Animator's Survival Kit

I got this book called The Animator's Survival Kit for Christmas this past year. I have been meaning to read it but have not had the chance since it accidentally got put into storage. Anyways, I thought that I would start reading it after I found it and was totally blown away by the first few pages! I have heard from other people and read on blogs that it was an absolute necessity but never really took it to heart. I think I will now. I feel as if I will learn more from this than the 4 years I had in college! I'm going to continue to read it but as a VERY quick exercise I decided to try my hand at a quick animation to see how it would work out. I made it into a GIF but couldn't post it so here was what the process looked like.

Update: I did another animation. This one was not nearly as jumpy as the first and that's why I'm uploading this one and not the other one.

Leah's Sketchbook

I showed my 7 year old neice, Leah, my sketchbook drawings. She loved them so much that she wanted to make some of her own. I taught her some techniques for shading and this is what she drew!

Weekly Sketchbook 1

This is some of my sketchbook that I just recently found during Val and I's excursion into our shed. Although I like people to see some of my sketches this is mainly to catalog my sketchbook as I am terrified of losing and losing all of my pictures. It has happened MANY MANY times before.

Have You Taken A Door Off Its Hinges Today?

Today was an unusually boring day. That is until Val, Leah, and I decided to get some of Val and I's stuff out of our outside storage shed. We went out to open it and, what do ya know, it wouldn't open.... of course :P. So we began a very rigid search for a solution. We tried some graphite lubricant that we had. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Next we tried some WD-40. Again, it was a big fat failure. Since none of the basics worked we decided to try some drastic measures. We looked up ways to fix the problem and saw that you could just remove the door knob. Duh! It seemed so obvious! Unfortunately, the screws were on the inside of the door. Great.... So we decided to go for the only thing that would work, taking the hinges off the door. So this is what we did! In order to properly document our process and leave notes for future knowledge seekers of door removal, Leah made a list. Here it is:

Oh! and don't forget the "hi five". It's probably the MOST important step!


I also found some of my old sketch books and thought it would be fun to post some pictures! I'll start that tomorrow. Val also found some of her old journals and plans on emailing our old hostesses in France that we lived with! How exciting is that!

Another Robot

I started another robot. This one's supposed to be more like a fighter than my last one which was a scout bot. He's only a little bit done but I thought it would be fun to post all of my progress. So here's the first!


You can see that the legs are barely started and the joints need to be built but you can get a slight idea of what's going on.

Short Animation: Part 2

Just an update of the video. I fixed some things and changed some others. I think it looks a LOT better now.

A Short Animation

I worked on a short animation for about an hour today. The rendering took FOREVER so I didn't want to fix anything with it today. It's not perfect but I think it came out pretty well. :D

In The Weeds

Today was a pretty intense day for our volunteer teaching. The kids were all TOTALLY out of control. When I was working with my kids I thought I was the only one but when I looked up the other kids seemed to be just as far as mine were in the activity book. This actually helped me focus again and realize that it wasn't just me. It also didn't help that the substitute yesterday was apparently very mean and didn't get ANY of the kids up to the point where they were supposed to be in the activity book. Every kid was behind and this made it even harder for them all to finish. Only a small handful of kids were able to finish to the point where they were supposed to be and even the ones who were were focused barely managed to finish in time. I also had the unfortunate privelege of having 3 kids that are supposed to be seperated from one another to prevent problems. Seperated, they are actually quite good but together it causes quite a few problems. However, I got through it and now it's time to relax.

Warning! Graphic Image!

Oh dear lord what is that growing out of your hand??!!?!??! Oh a second head? No, actually it's the result of my accident yesterday. If you're at all squeemish you might not want to look at this picture......

.....Ok I warned you.......

No seriously......

Last chance.....

Oh god!!! It kinda looks like a sillhouette though right? Anyways, have a good one :D

(Insert Explitive Here)!!!!!

So tonight I went over to my dad's house. He has been wanting me to go over to his house and fire up the grill. He's never used it before and we both thought it would be a great idea to make it a father son thing. It started out pretty good. We had the steaks, some potatoe salad, and some beans in a can. What could be better? So I went to start up the grill and..... nothing. The grill didn't do a thing. I looked at the propane tank and it turned out that the guy who had put in the grill and the patio that it went with had forgotten to turn off the gas when he tested it out..... nice dude. Anyways, there was no way to cook the steaks on the grill so we decided that we would cook them on the stove inside. I asked my dad, "do you have a frying pan I can use?"
He said, "Sure, let me find it."
He was having a little trouble so I started helping him look. Unfortunatelly the one that he was talking about was barely big enough to even holod the steaks in them. I was already committed to cooking the steaks and I absolutely HAD to cook them if my life depended on it. Half way through I paid dearly for my attempts at pathetic steak cooking. As I was flipping one of the steaks a HUGE splash of grease went all over my hand. There were a few explitives, needless to say. The rest of dinner went well and the steaks were actually pretty amazing but, MY GOD! My hand feels like it is going to explode!!!

The Run Cycle

Here's the run cycle now.

Oh My God I Can't Waaaiiiiitt!

I'm rendering my run cycle right now for my robot and started on another robot guy. I'll post the run cycle for those who are interested. I had to post something though while it was rendering. I'm just too impatient not to! So in the mean time, for all those Tim and Eric fans out there....

Juggling..... Sweet, Sweet Juggling

Recently, very recently.... actually yesterday me and val decided to start seriously juggling. I had done it before in the past and wanted to start doing again. While I have started traditional juggling, Val decided to take up contact juggling.

Here's some sweet juggling that Val found and showed me.


Annnddd here's some contact juggling.



We're working on it every day so once we get good I'll post some videos.

Walk Cycle

I'm taking the next step in my animation. I'm using this walk cycle in order to study things like weight. In this first walk cycle the robot seems to have a decent amount of weight to it. I don't really like that and want it to appear to seem very light weight. I want this to be some sort of scout bot so being heavy at all would not be good. This is also why there is very little armor and why there are many cameras on the front. After making a short animation using environments and such I'll start making other types of robots.

Slacking..... a lot : /

So I've been putting off rigging for a REALLY long time. However, today I took the initiative. It's not that I don't want to do it.... but it's just so much easier not to do it. Aaaaaaannnyways, I had some of it done but decided to finally finish it out. So here it is (drum role)..... the first test video of the legs.