anthea hearts animation mentor

Sahsay, Shantay

This week's assignment is a personality walk with our new improved Stewie!! I can't wait to turn him into the barbie doll I never had. I have had so much stress over this project so far, and we haven't even gotten started yet! I mean, everyone wants more creative control, right?? I am finding it just so dang hard to come up w ideas to animate. I think some students may be loving the open ended nature of these semester 2 assignments as compared to semester 1. Most of the assignments say "be creative" and are also continued over a few weeks. While this gives us more room to stretch our creative story muscles, it also requires Way more planning.

Shawn has said over and over again that PLANNING is the #1 most important part of animation. I already read ahead in the syllabus and knew that next week we would have to add arms w all their follow through glory and also add the animation to the head of the shot. This requires a more complicated plan of action. OK, here's how you plan kids.. Spend the first 4 days thinking constantly about the 5 trillion different ways you could have stewie walk from a stopped position, cry in corner, and finally decide something, anything!

I have finally decided on a beautiful, sexy Russian spy walk, a la "I'm not bad.." ps thanks jessica

Since going to my first acting class yesterday and watching tons of scenes in class get worked through, I have also realized the importance of character and story. Yes story, even in a non-dialogue 5 second piece. I decided to create a back story to the character and also come up with the all important WHAT JUST HAPPENED RIGHT BEFORE THIS SCENE, and also what is going to happen right after. I hope this will help with my character development of feeling through the animation.

Character Analysis

OLGA (Personality Walk, Starting From a Stopped Position)

Olga was a pretty young girl, always a little strange and unusual. Her tall lanky body was the source of torment growing up but soon gave way to a beautiful statuesque young woman. Upon entering the modeling world at the tender age of 13, she witnessed many questionable acts. Her personality quickly matured and hardened. At an unusually ruckus fashion party, the champagne laden hostess falsely accused Olga of stealing her precious jewels. Since this pompous designer ruled the fashion world, Olga was shut out of the modeling industry. Alone and unable to find work she was forced to turn to the dark side. She met some shady characters who promptly trained her to become a Russian spy. Olga excelled at this, using her stunning looks to gain entrée into the finest soirees, there she seduced the dignitaries and stole important Intel.

BEFORE AND AFTER

Olga walks into a black tie event with the richest men in the world attending. She spots her mark, she’s in luck, and he’s already downed 3 martinis. It is easy to lure him upstairs where she secretly drugs him and awaits for him to pass out. She then will steal his security clearance card and it’s off to her next mission.

We will see if I can succeed in having all this planning match up to the animation. Onwards to Maya.

posted by anthea @ 6:40 PM