Here’s the long pose from today’s class–40 minutes, in fact.  That’s about twice as long as we usually do.

Of course, my teacher was off hanging pictures for the class art show, so I didn’t get the feedback that helps me notice my mistakes quicker. 20 minutes in, this was a disaster.

Hey, here’s Van Dork hanging on the wall as if it were actually art:

Actually, I found myself lacking inspiration yet again, so I asked my 3-year old neice for an idea. Her immediate response: “a monkey in the mirror.” Coming right up!

You know the drill; when I’m too tired to draw, I draw myself tired. As an added bonus this time, I’m drawing myself drawing myself tired. Or if you want to get technical, I’m drawing myself drawing myself drawing myself tired. No wait…

Hey look! Spurred on by my apparent love of prize-free online competitions, and possible creeping dementia, I drew several hundred pictures to create the fleeting illusion of motion.

Actually, I’ll spare you the usual self-effacing stuff. I impressed myself over the past couple of weeks by finally finding the patience to accomplish something I’ve wanted to do since I was a kid. I learned a lot, and started to grasp some concepts that seemed amorphous on the printed pages of my animation how-to books. I have a long way to go, but I’ve crossed an important threshold: I now realize that animating, mad as it is, is not superhuman task. It’s just something that will require a huge amount of practice and patience.

You can check out the contest here; as of this writing it hasn’t started yet, but maybe it will have by the time you click. And luckily, this contest doesn’t stretch for 10 weeks; I believe the voting is over in less than a week.

Edit: I’m amazed that out of 347 frames, the Posterous video player’s holding frame is the exact same drawing I posted yesterday!

Another thrilling frame from the animation I’ll submit tomorrow. Continuing a tradition I started in college, I’ll finish it up in the morning.