There's a Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow ...

... Shining at the end of every day!

Over the last few posts I have made, I realized that I haven't talked about my Drawing Fundamentals or Animation courses in detail. First: Drawing Fundamentals!

Those who don't draw act like it's something magical when an artist can reproduce something on paper -- that it's just some latent talent we're born with. Nope! Any artist who's picked up a pencil knows that every piece comes from an understanding of all the artistic principles and tooooons and toooons of practice.  I was an art minor during my undergraduate degree. I had the opportunity of learning from three artists who were all very skilled in his craft. That doesn't mean I'm anywhere near done learning! There's still a lot of things I have left to refine (clearly). So this Drawing Fundamentals course is becoming the beginning of that. By the end of next year, I hope to look back to this post and see significant improvement.

One of our first assignments was focusing on shapes, lines, and getting a grasp on the tools we were given. 

The next was a focus on One Point, Two Point, and Three Point perspective! This needs a looooooot of work, as does my environments in general.

Currently, we're working on artistic compositions. This is a peek at some of my notes. 

Now I finally know the names of the compositions I spam. LOL

 SO, ANIMATION.

Last week, I made the choice to specialize in Animation during my time at FIEA! The times I was able to animate were definitely the highlight of my undergraduate. It's the field that I have the most passion learning about (not that I don't like 2D & 3D art! I just like animation more, LOL).

Currently in class, we have been working on the fundamentals of animation, some of the history behind it, and the principles.

this is our first assignment: a bouncing ball.

this is our second! more bouncing balls, WITH DIFFERENT WEIGHTS.

Aaaand this is what I'm currently working on: a generic walk cycle. This is currently still in progress because I have to get rid of this character's limp. ORZ

As a late birthday present, my parents gave me this doozy:

It's a book regarded as the "Bible of Animation" to many. As far as I know, it's ranked consistently high by people in how helpful and informative it is. Also, Disney. I love Disney. I already have Tony White's "How to Make Animated Films" to help me out in learning the basics a little while back. It looks like I have two great teaching aids at my disposal. ♥

Currently, the animation course is moving at a leisurely pace. It's calm enough so I can focus on the basics, fine tune things, get feedback, and correct my mistakes before the due date arrives. Later in the semester is when I'll be diving deep into animation as the assignments get more complicated. It'll be then when you spy a lot more posts detailing it. 

That's all for my progress in these two classes thus far. Until next time!