Hey look, I actually sat down and worked for a few hours! And I’ll spare you my customary apology for only cranking out 9 frames in that time; until I get the hang of this stuff–sometime in the Roaring 2020s–this pursuit will be more entertaining for me than it will for you.

As I mentioned before, I’m doing a very short animation in which Mary Rae sees a spider, hauls off and smashes it. This here is the seeing part, and it’s pretty much the same as the Kerkel clip from last week. However, I’ve also explored moving different parts at different speeds, such as her ponytail. In fact, when I come back to this, I’m going to give her ponytail a few more frames of drag; right now it settles too quickly, I think.

This is almost a repeat, but there are a few new pups in here from this morning’s run. For tomorrow’s homework, I scanned all the dogs in my sketchbook that I wasn’t totally ashamed to show off, and arranged them as you see here.

After several homeworks that I put a lot of work into, I think this will warrant a collective yawn from the rest of the class, but hey, I’m shy about asking any species to pose for me.

The problem with trying to make artwork on my computer is that I’m always distracted by innumerable shiny objects also available on my computer. Today I was trying out the new beta of Photoshop CS6. I haven’t discovered any new tools for animation, but I like the interface so far.

This week’s homework assignment is to draw another species. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to go to the zoo or something, but if not there’s always these post-run sketches of off-leash pooches in Central Park. They move a bit too quickly for me to really study them, though.

Getting started on some more animation practice; Mary Rae sees a bug on the table and smashes it. Today I sketched a few thumbnail poses, and also plotted the timing on a stripped-down exposure sheet on the right side of my page. Boring spreadsheets may seem antithetical to spontaneous-looking animation, but it really just serves the necessary purpose of timing your character’s actions; how you choose to excute those actions is what brings the character to life.

The timing for this animation actually comes from Eric Goldberg’s “Character Animation Crash Course.” I’ll make it my own by coming up with interesting breakdowns and overlapping action. So, look for that within the next couple days.