Starting to feel motivated instead of feeling like I am being dragged by my fingernails!

I am going to be learning more about Final Cut Pro this class (it started last night and tonight is the second night of the class). I am pretty excited about what is to come in this class seeing as this is going to be a film based class and my classmates are all pretty interesting and creative individuals. Our first homework assignment was to write a story about something so that it is described in detail... I used a story that was about myself and realized how much time I dont devote to myself and how much time I spend working solely on work and school. I am starting to feel more motivated to create things for myself and not just do them because I have to for my job or for homework. I am going to start designing anytime I can so I can have some artwork that expresses me and some things about myself... people ask me to see my work all the time and I just recently noticed that the only things I have to show them are my school work. I want to have work that I have done from the heart that I came up with the idea for.... Today is the beginning of a new me as a graphic designer. :) I am pretty excited. I am going to make my new goal to post at least one new piece a week so that I can keep an updated portfolio going at all times. I want to push myself... and I know I can do it.

Questions lead to new ideas and thoughts on what I can create....

I was on youtube this time... web surfing for some Cinema 4D shorts so I could see what other people have created with the program. I came across Nedy's Dream. In the first few seconds I had questions for my professor. There are so many things that the program is capable of that, unless I sit for hours and play with all the buttons, I would never know about. After watching him float into the planet then (as it would appear) enter into the inside of the planet and it is purple with stuff floating around him. Until this moment I was unaware that you could edit the inside of an object's material. 

After getting a tutorial from my professor (I asked him to show me how to do this) I realized that it is as simple as applying a material and applying to the bottom vs the top of the object. Something that I never had the need to know till now. Things like this excite me when it comes to learning this program. I watch shorts when I have spare time because when I see things happen that I am confused about I write them down and want to come to school and get the tutorial the next day. When I first started using this program I was very intimidated by it and felt like it was going to be impossible to learn. Now that I have played with it and am feeling a little more confident I am constantly wanting to learn more and play more in the program. I have become very interested (and although still intimidated a little) in seeing just how far I can go in this program.

Thanks to my professor Mr. Williams for carrying me through the animation part of this program and keeping my head up when I felt like giving up on it. :)

Incase you would like to view this video that I was talking about above the link is below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gVAt2bFcGE

Old to new in animated movies...

I was online looking up classic animated movies and I was noticing the major difference in old time movies versus the newer animated movies. Some older ones like Fantasia and Pinocchio were made in 1940 (by Disney) and then there was Jungle Book in 1967 and The Little Mermaid in 1989. All of these were very cartoonish and the characters were all drawn... The newer movies such as Shrek in 2001 (by Dreamworks) and Cars in 2006 (by Disney/Pixar) have computer animated characters and although they are still cartoonish they have a more realistic look to them and the way they move is more smooth in the flow. In 2008 movies such as Wall-E (which was made by Pixar) and Kung Fu Panda (Dreamworks) were put out and you can see that animation has come a long way since the beginning "drawn" characters vs. the newer computer animated characters. 

There is more facial expression in the faces now, more action in the characters movements, more detail in buildings/structures, and it is a little easier for them to animate them with computers then sit and use cell based animation and such like they did when animation first came into play. I catch myself watching animated movies now and just wondering if I could ever be that good. The main reason I was looking up classics was because I wanted to have some movies to picture in my head so I could see for myself how far animation has come. Its funny how things like the Flinstones and Tom & Jerry became things like Simpsons and Family Guy. I like to look at things side by side and compare them visually and notice wow we really have come a long way with animation in movies and cartoons and such.

CORALINE BLEW MY MIND!

Watching this movie left me staring wide eyed the entire time. It never lost my attention for a second and it kept me wondering what was the next amazing thing that was going to happen. I watched nightmare before christmas and saw the "clay-mation" that was in it and thought it was alright, but then I saw the same technique used yet again in Coraline and I realized how much more could be done. This type of animation is absolutely amazing to me and just thinking about how long it had to have taken makes me wonder how long I will have to work with animation stuff before I could come even close to being that great. I had to use this movie to blog about because I think it is now my favorite movie of all time. This puts drive and determination to any animators out there who want to be something special.

Article I read that was published April of 09

So I was reading a post from back in April of this year (2009) and I was very shocked at the fact that a lot of the companies named in this article use the program Cinema 4D. The article mentions that Comedy Central, The Weather Channel, MTV, VH1 and many others "count Cinema 4D as a key part of their creative toolkits. I never realized how many companies really used this program and this was a small eye opener, which led to an awakening for me. 

Now when I watch television, or go watch a movie that is solely animation, I am entirely in awe. The thoughts going through my head while others are laughing at funny parts, and crying at the sad ones, is "Oh my god...how long could this have had to take?" or "I wanna be able to do that one day!". It is amazing the stuff that can be done in this program and although I fell that I have already learned a lot, I realize that there is soooo much more to learn. I continue to be fascinated by this program!

Here is the link to the article I mentioned above...

http://news.creativecow.net/story/861749