Week 7: 1-Leg

View the final, revised animation here.

I started this session out by doing a test jump with our new character: 1-Leg. It was simple, and fairly successful, I thought. It was basically a copying exercise, which I think is an important skill to have: See it, break it down, and re-create it. No need to reinvent the wheel...yet.

I saved that for the day my assignment was due. Just kidding. But really, balancing a social life with fulltime work and full/part-time school is not the easiest. I often find myself saying things like: "Sorry to have to eat and run!" And I often hear things like: "Wow, so you really DO exist!" which I take to mean my noted absence was beginning to affect my actual existence? Am I still here? Pinch, pinch. Whew. Glad they weren't right...

On the contrary, I feel like I exist on a different level than I did before. I exist MORE, if that's possible. Honestly. I still wear glasses to read and work on the computer and watch movies, but I have been given new eyes.

But enough about the medical miracles learning animation can produce, and back to Mr. 1-Leg. Since I had already done a basic jump, I decided to totally disregard Doug Dooley's advice from a few weeks ago to keep it simple and tempted fate by animating the Pixar intro with 1-Leg instead of Luxo, Jr. and KENSHI:ANIMATOR instead of PIXAR:ANIMATION STUDIOS. They both had an "I" in the name; that was the clincher.

I felt justified disregarding Dooley, though, because I had already done the simple jump. And besides, it would give me a chance to get into more complex timing and a bit of storytelling and character. AND I would be able to really regard my newly acquired Irish Animatin' Advice from Gavin Moran (see last post) by watching my budding animation realtime AMAP (as much as possible).

It took all day. And i ended up going 20 or 30 frames over my limit. Charles, my mentor, applauded my restraint, saying that if he goes over, he usually goes whole hog over ("Well, I've already gone over, so I'm going to take as many frames as I need!") That's the kind of thinking that causes teenage pregnancy. So, of course, in my revision, I went ahead and made my animation good and pregnant and added 20 additional frames - you can get away with murder in the name of timing...

So yeah, Charles' only comments in his critique was only measly little arc that hung too high on one of the jumps and how the timing of the thing would be improved by adding more frames.

I felt like I had made a personal comeback, like Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, only I didn't fall from as high as she did. That's the nice thing about being an amateur - when you trip, it's not supposed to be quite as devastating (but you cry, anyway. Makes for more drama.)

I even added a twist at the end of my piece. A catapulting "I" of "KENSHI" that will just not be kept down. It's a symbol of my indomitable spirit. The weight of spectacular animation potential will not crush me. I will fight back and rise above. Even if I have to simplify the hell out of the Pixar intro that I'm making a parody of (nice segue, kenshi).

I did find that for time's sake, I had to really pare the action down. Not that the original was oh, so complex. I had significantly less time to do it though, and really wanted to capture the same feel. The answer? Simplify, simplify, simplify, but keep your eye single to the vision.

Worked like a charm. You should try it. Maybe I'll try it with life. Maybe then I won't have so much extraneous junk lying around getting in the way of meaning and purpose.

Simplify AMAP. Watch your animation and live your life in realtime AMAP. Stop using the acronym AMAP AMAP...