I Live!

I came here to do two things: Chew bubblegum, and animate. And, at long last, after almost a month of modeling and rigging, I'm all out of bubblegum.

Bizarre John Carpenter references aside, this has been an extremely important week for my film and I. I've finished my second character - the shoplifter - and, wonderfully, he's much more poseable (which spell-check says isn't a word) than the first. And, just to test this out and finally take a break from the battle of wits that is my preproduction, I've animated the first two shots of the movie. Six whole seconds in total.

And dear god it felt good.

I've missed animation so much - although maybe that's just the sleep-deprivation talking.
I want to be an animator - not a modeller, not a rigger - and though I do kinda enjoy all this, and understand that it's entirely necessary, it's just keeping me from what I really want to do. I've been so frustrated recently - slogging away solidly every day, but never having anything new to show in rushes or even in my pilot, because all the work was technical in nature. Getting some animation done has really helped alleviate some of that and for the first time I actually feel vaguely accomplished.

There isn't a lot more I can do with just the two characters I currently have. Maybe two or three shots at most before I have to do more modelling. But I feel re-energised and ready to face the toughest challenge yet: rigging the dead guy. He needs to be able to twist and bend into very unusual positions which the other characters don't need to worry about, not to mention that his fingers need to come off. Should be fun!

I'll probably include some more detailed pictures of the shoplifter, as I did with the guard, later in the week. Yes, you heard right - this week. I'm going to make a real effort to update now, if only because my girlfriend has threatened to hurt me if I don't.
So, until then, I'll leave you with my first six seconds:

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