A few updates about what I got up to!
Week number two for animation and drawing! Sadly, I wasn't able to get as much as I wanted done this week because I got down with a nasty cold. I'm still recovering from it, so the amount of stuff I get done in the following week might not be a lot either and this blog post might be a little less coherent. I do however have some stuff to show!
First off, though, I would like to talk about something new I decided to try out!
Usually, one day during the week, my brother and I go to Costco to get some cheap lunch and head into the city to have a look around some stores. This time, I brought my gear with me and decided to hang out at the library for a while. It was really nice! The library I went to was astoundingly quiet, contrary to what I thought would be the case. I expected at least some loud noise, but it was practically dead silent. It wasn't my first pick, as I tried the city library first. There wasn't enough space for my things there though, so my brother and I went to the state library instead. There was a really nice double story area in there that had a great atmosphere and was a stark contrast to the rest of the library. Once I got to the study area, I was able to focus on drawing and animating for a whole two hours without any distractions. I was honestly super proud of myself for it! Even though I use my laptop at home instead of my PC, there's still a bit of a chance that I get distracted and get off task. Not at the library, though! Super nice and quiet, really relaxing, it was amazing! And I implore anybody that has access to such a place to use it for studying or whatever activity.
Let's peek a gander at what I got done this week!
The trickiest animation that I made out of these three was the brick falling off of the shelf. When I was animating it, I had to constantly re-adjust the landing animation because of the angle that I made the brick fall at. Making it fall flat makes a very different bounce compared to if it's on angle, and that's what took up most of my time animating. Something that I also started but didn't get through far enough to show is a head turn with some anticipation. This is sort of where I'm starting to hit some snags with what I'm doing, with both animation and drawing. This is also something that happened when I was still in college.
I have a habit of quitting on something when it doesn't look exactly like what my lofty expectations that are in my head. I am trying to knock this habit, but it's a very difficult one to get rid of. It's also sort of hard for me to focus in general when I'm at home, which is why I went to the library. I don't particularly know if it's some sort of undiagnosed ADHD or something, but it's something I'm going to power through whenever I can. It does make me wish that I had the structure of classes still. I'm not particularly good at teaching myself things. Sure, I can look up tutorials and whatnot to try something out, but actually having the volition to get through something via my own planning is something I have trouble with. I think this is certainly something that I need to deal with for animation. I have the lessons for drawing, but I don't really have that much structure for animation, only those somewhat vague exercises. If anybody has any free (or..."free") classes that they can recommend for 3D animation, that would be very much appreciated.
Lastly, some drawing!
(Top image: using emotional language to dictate what lines can look like (calm, angry, sad, etc.). Bottom image: goblet drawing using already learnt techniques.)
It was fun being able to actually draw something instead of drawing a bunch of lines! However, something that I think is a bit of a problem with the course I've got is that some of the videos that are in the playlist are a little bit out of order than what they should be. For example, the video that I followed this week referenced some measuring techniques that I wasn't familiar with, but the video for the measuring techniques show up later down the line. While I am considering switching to another course that I've found that gets in to the meat of what I want to learn (drawing figures and humans!), I'm still willing to give this one a chance just so I can get some of the fundamental ideas in my head first.
I reckon I'm still making decent progress on everything I'm doing so far. I'm hoping that I can keep the willpower to continue doing it all and to continue making these blog posts. Writing these blog posts help me to see the progress that I'm making, even if it is fallen upon deaf ears. I don't mind that at all. Fingers crossed that I can get more stuff done for next week's post!
Thank you and good-bye for today!