Home Page Rough

So after a week of a Hula debacle (had to inbetween in vector due to a frame rate change), I am now roughing out the animation that will be a constant on the home page. It is very loose right now and will not be finalized until I get an actual track to time the action. But take a peek, and remember this is not finished, couple more elements and gags to go.

Happy Days

Glad the Bush days are finally over. A friend of mine told me a great story about the festivities today. I guess his brother works for a Senator in Washington and was fairly close to the podium at the Inauguration. When Cheney was wheeled in, in his wheelchair, someone yelled, "Look, It's Mr. Potter!". Funny stuff and I will keep the name of the perpetrator to myself for National Security sake.

Fun little ditty

I am still working on the website...this is what happens when you hit the "skip intro" button. Jim May, of course, created the track. As always, Jimmie Rocks.

Self Portrait circa 1976

Are you original?

I have seen many types of artists in my career and the most surprising type is the artist with tremendous skill but no true creative ability. They are great copiers. They can produce amazing images, perfectly executed, yet totally unoriginal. I knew an art student in college who had more ability than anyone in the class. He would bring in his assignments and they would be remarkable copies of art in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. He was remarkable, but I noticed that the teachers were surprisingly unimpressed. He later dropped out of BU and the last time I talked to him he had become a professional copying machine. Copying masters paintings for the rich, maybe even illegally who knows. All I know is here was a guy with tremendous talent and skill without one original idea. Tragic. I have known several artists like this and I always fear of becoming one myself. In animation, it is very easy to follow trends, to become a professional copying machine. The industry is a collaborative art field that feeds on artists being able to copy one another, the unfortunate result however is that there are mountains of unoriginal work out there.

This is why I love 2D!

I was rummaging through some work in my studio today, getting rid of some old work and came across a scene from "Good Wheel Hunting". I realized (as I always do) why I love 2D animation so damn much. It is that wonderful combination of a graphic image and a character pulled to the limits but still "designed", and still expressive. 3D is fine, but it cannot do this, it is never graphic and it is rarely random in terms of dimension and proportion, you just could not build a model that would successfully create this kind of effect. 2D can be so amorphous. Love that. I could go on and on, but I will let the pictures talk and shut my fat mouth.

Rollover Buttons

Button designs for the website. I think I am finally done with all the major design elements. These buttons will serve as the rollover state for the main buttons on the website. Blah-blah-blah.

Hula CU

Here is the hula up close...I have tweaked what I am going to tweak and now I am going forward. Perfection is not the goal here, nor should it ever be. Who knows what perfection looks like anyway? There is a fine line between working something to death and pushing it just right. I look for "charm", hitches and glitches, but the big question IS: Is it appealing? Then done, move on. Can I do better? With this experience under my belt, yes, but it is still done, move on. Hell hath no fury like a project over done.