Sleep Comes After Death

So for anyone who is familiar with SCAD, you should know that students there are often so busy with work, they don't have the time in a day to do what needs to be done for their classes.  That is why God invented night.  It is normal - nay - required that SCAD students work overnight at least once a quarter, if not once a week... or more.  Last quarter freaked me out a little because, while I did work all night once, I never went without sleep in a 24 hour period.  However, this quarter I am paying for it.  Already I have had to stay up working overnight 3 times in one week... twice in a row even.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining.  I enjoy the work (for the most part).  But sleep is something every SCAD student craves and rarely gets.  For me to have to lose so much sleep so soon is a little crazy, and I can only think about what the next few weeks will bring.  I suppose better time management is one option, but the reality of it is that I never should have taken 3 studio courses at the same time.  Unfortunately, I have to in order to graduate in a timely manner.  There is a reason students joke that SCAD stands for Sleep Comes After Death.
But for me it is more like a rite of passage.  If I can get through this, I can handle anything anyone can throw at me.  So far I've done well, and I will continue to do my best.  I am thinking of declaring a minor even, so that I have more classes to help me fill out the ones I have left.  Who knows, maybe I'll go for the MFA program too (which I am seriously considering), but we'll have to see what happens a year from now first.  I will, however, keep that goal in mind in case I decide I want to do it.
That being said, I wanted to let everyone know that they blog will not only be about my art and animation, as well as my development in the art world and my take on all thinks animated, but will also involve shorter posts similar to this one to help me illustrate problem solving.  This is actually a recommendation from one of my professors who urged us to use our blogs for showing how we can think and evaluate and solve the problems we run into in our art.
I should also have a walk cycle up soon, but it is a boring plain one that everyone in the world has on their demo reel already.  Just wait till you see the one I do with "attitude".

Stay tuned!

Basic 3D Animation tests

Yesterday I got to go to a talk from a Disney Interactive Director, and it was really inspiring.   He knew most of my teachers, and couldn't say enough good things about SCAD and the advantages we have here.  The day before I went to "AtlantAmation", a local film festival sponsored by SCAD, with many student films from SCAD.  While some were better than others, I was also inspired to make my own short film.  I may talk more about that later, but for now, I have several large projects looming over me.
Today, since I am knee deep in another quarter and already losing sleep over it, I will share with you 2 assignments I just completed.  These are both very simple animations using Maya, and are standard animation training exercises which you will see lots of.  The Bouncing Ball, and the Flour Sack.  The purpose of the bouncing ball is to understand some of the most basic principles of animation, those being timing, squash, and stretch.  If you look carefully, you'll see lots of bouncing ball animations online in every type of animation media out there, be it 2D or 3D.  The Flour Sack animation is designed to help develop your ability to emote through a character with no face and limited motion.  You are suppose to show a change in behavior or a reaction to an event or object through body language or pantomime.  Again, there are lots of animations out there of flour sacks.  I have a bouncing ball and a flour sack animation hand-drawn, which is posted on this site.  Just look for them.  Other than that, here are 2 new animations, this time in 3D!