Well, today was the first day of the art class. I guess this post will be more like an actual blog entry (like the kind you would find on an actual blog), and the next two weeks will probably be full of these. I’ll scan the stuff I drew during the classes, even if they’re not particularly well-drawn or interesting.
Anyway, the email they sent said to come at 8:30, so I woke up at like 7:15, ate breakfast and all that stuff, and took the subway to the nearest stop (to my surprise, it was only one stop away). Got to the station at about 8:05, and thought “Oh wow, I still have 25 minutes,” and began looking for the building I was supposed to go to. It actually took 20 minutes to get there, because I managed to get lost, even though I had a map with me.
(Prepare a huge wall of text in the full blog post. Anyway, if you don’t feel like reading the post, at least watch the video in the middle. It’s super awesome.)
After finding the building, I went inside and there was this long line of people waiting. They were all teenagers, around my age, some slightly younger. After waiting awhile and getting some papers, everyone went to the auditorium (we got these tote bags as we entered) for an orientation, which started at around 9 o’clock and lasted for about half an hour. The speaker just went over policies and where we were supposed to go and all that stuff. Then the different classes split up and were escorted to their appropriate buildings by the staff. Waiting for the elevator must have took about five minutes.
After the animation design class got to the appropriate room on the 11th floor, the instructor introduced herself and the course. Apparently she doesn’t actually know anything about flash animation, but has done a few comic books and storyboards and can help with our drawing process. The animation part would come later, with our afternoon instructor. After introducing herself to us, we all had to introduce ourselves to each other. Yeah, it seems like every teacher loves the “introduce yourselves” game. Oh well, it wasn’t actually boring; I wouldn’t have known that almost everyone in the class was from outside of New York. Then she went over the supplies and course syllabus and all that technical stuff, and then we started drawing.
We started off by doing a sort of word association game, where she would say some words and we had to find a way to represent it with cultural symbols (within 30 seconds or some time limit). The only thing I could think of for “fake” was “SAKUYA PAD” but I didn’t really want to draw that, so I just made something up. I would’ve drawn Yuyuko for “death penalty,” but nobody would have understood it, and I’d have to explain. And now I wonder why I didn’t think of Cirno for “chilly” until just now. Oh well, I probably wouldn’t have drawn it anyway.
Next up, we had to draw a character. Since I already came in with that Unnamed Character printout, I drew Headphones Character. We all went around and looked at each others’ characters (some of the people are really good artists), and later the instructor revealed that we’d have homework to do for the art class (nooooo). Today’s assignment, which you will see later, is to draw one of our characters’ home environments. Anyway, after that, we were dismissed for lunch, and I wandered around for half an hour before finding a street I recognized. Then I bought lunch, ate it, and went to the other building we were supposed to go to. Our room in that building had computers! We were allowed to use them until the other students came back from lunch.
The after-lunch instructor was a lady who has done a bunch of different animations for different websites, TV shows, and music videos. She introduced the course and what we would be doing in her part of the class, and then we did some more drawing activities. We all started out with blank pieces of paper and drew random scribbles on them and passed them to the left after 2 seconds, and in the end, we had to make up a story based on the random scribbles. We did this another time, but instead of random scribbles, we had to try to make it look like an action was being done. The stories were incredibly random, and somewhat humorous.
Afterwords, we had to draw characters that showed some sort of emotion based only on their physical characteristics, and here’s what I drew. Some random happy person and an evil person, based on the happy person. After we went over everyone’s characters, we had a 15-minute break. She suggested for some people to look up “Muto” on YouTube for a cool animation. It’s basically a bunch of wall-paintings put in sequence to make a really trippy and awesome animation. The video is below:
After break was over, she introduced us to the basics of flash, which were, unfortunately, things I already knew. We spent time getting used to the way flash worked, and I made an Unnamed Character walking animation. Unfortunately, it was saved as an Adobe Flash CS3 file, and since I use Macromedia Flash 8 at home, I can’t post the swf here. Anyway, she gave us a homework assignment where we had to draw a character in different views or something.
And here are the homework assignments. Yeah, I guess that’s it for today. Tomorrow’s post will probably be a lot less detailed, because it took me way too long to write all this. If there’s a day where I just don’t feel like writing about the class (or if I have a daily flash idea I really want to work on), I’ll probably just post the pictures and a short description of each.
this is different……
Unnamed character in 3D!
I generally hate doing animation. My best attempt at frame by frame animation was probably from this, a dance some of you may recognize. The character I drew is an original character I made for one of my stories. I’ve attempted to do other animations, but I haven’t really made anything substantial. Maybe I’ll try it again sometime.
Funny how I thought of Yuyuko the moment I read death penalty as well. It’s as if fate itself brought this topic to you.
I like blog posts, lol.
I heard you quit Mabinogi from Aria and Reimu today.
When I watch Thefre’s dance, I think of Windows 98.
When I look at KirbyM’s blog I think of how much I miss having access to an art class. ;_;
Word association is a ridiculously fun game…
Any ways sounds interesting…
i shat bricks @_@
Awesome!
can you make other views like that on create swf? like side view view above back view and all the rest?
If you want to show people flash stuff you make there you can send the fla to me and I can send you the swf. (I have CS3)
I thought about Aya in a cardboard box and Meiling with a knife in her head for poverty and pain.
That video, is uber scary.
God I hate that ‘getting to know yourselves’ game, mostly because I don’t have anything to say about myself lol
I’m a bit more surprised that you didn’t put a frog in that Ice Cube.
idk why i thought of that as opposed to Cirno.
Whoa, 3D Unnamed character! :O
@thegame: I don’t know if Create.swf it self is advanced enough to keep track of the direction each character is facing.
But if it did, and lets say Marisa would turn around to show her back. For each item layered on her, her outfit, hat and her broom and such, would have to be drawn from each different view she could be shown in.
So KirbyM would have to drawn every outfit and item from each different view, so any character made in Create.swf could change directions and behave as if there were in three dimensions. :O
But I guess some one wanted to work with KirbyM and produce a Touhou flash where a touhou girl wanted to perform actions and turn to a different direction (besides just facing left and right) I guess its possible to draw them by hand, facing different directions…..
I’ve seen that video before!
Hooray!
Also, nice job, Ki!
I read all the entry (except the vid ’cause I can’t watch any now) and I like it and would read again if you post something that big.
Love also your drawings ^^ especially the different angles of Un.Chara.
@Pingy: In the “Mou Ikkai” flash made by KirbyM, there was a back view of the Touhou girls =D
of course you cant have a back view…. that’s where all the gears and zippers are.
@Lantis: Yes, but that was just three characters, and create.swf currently has 69 different characters. It’s not a matter of “could he do it”, but “could he do it for all of them” …
Also, yay, congrats on the art class and stuff. :3
Cool. I have deep respect for anyone with artistic talent because I have none at all =P
Keep up the great work KirbyM!
@MarisaMuffin: Anything can be possible (°3°) I think that if KirbyM wants to do it, it’ll be done =D
(Lol 69) xDD
Sry o_oU
That video was… odd.
Nice animation, Thefre.
@Thefre: I think our flash teacher said we’d be focusing on frame-by-frame animation in the course, and less so on tweens and stuff. I find it easier to make frame-by-frame animations like as that gif (nice animation, by the way) if there’s something you can trace from. Although it can take a long time, it generally looks a lot nicer when you have a source. But if you’re just doing frame-by-frame animation without specifically trying to mimic something else, it can be a lot harder. I remember I did it with this old flash, and her hair just ended up shorter because I was only paying attention to the frame directly before.
@ukki: Yeah, I stopped playing Mabi like a month or two ago. I don’t really know why, but it suddenly got boring for me. I went on once in the past month, though. The newer music books aren’t out yet, gosh darn it.
@thegame: (I just lost) Well, I could make the characters face different directions, but then I’d have to draw all their clothes and hairstyles again, facing those directions, and it’d simply take a really long time. Not to mention that for a lot of the older characters (in terms of the order I added them to create.swf), it’d be hard to draw new hair/clothes that fit the older style, since I’d say my art and line quality have changed a lot since then.
speaking of animation … http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/nm3931214
ahh~ you draw so well
@KirbyM: Yeah, I often get bored with mumorpogers the minute grinding starts to happen more than “interesting things” (e.g. missions, etc). And now, I don’t play mumorpogers. |3
I guess no one noticed that this is video post number 100.
Not even KirbyM :V
I want to study in an art class too… :(