Charlie's Back

Charlie Daugherty has already been a major part of Moon Diary by drawing the teeth and candy in day 2, animating the ridiculous rotting ooze of the same day, drawing multiple backgrounds throughout, and being another animator for consultation in general. He's been busy being the TA for an animation class, and thus virtually animating every student's project for them. There's been a change of schedule though, and now he's back! He's starting off with some touch up work on previous animation, but is going to be animating wolves with me and soon as he's caught up to speed.

Also, I managed to get 3 day weekends for my work. Moon Diary has never had such facility for actualization! Prepare to be amazed as we animate multiple seconds in less than a week!

Sita Sings the Blues

Nina Paley recently decided to release her full feature length flash animation, which she made by herself, for free on the internet. Not just to watch, but also to appropriate, without paying fees or even asking permission.

Check it all out. It's real good.

Her work has been somewhat of an inspiration for the aesthetic of Moon Diary. She manages to create very powerful ideas using very simple animation, not trying to hide from the "flash" look and instead embracing it as a medium. I feel like I'm not as good at it, I've started dabbling more and more into realism as I learn how to, but I'm going to try and get out of that as soon as this city scene is done. I realized I've been working on this 3 minutes of animation for nearly 4 months now, and I've got to speed it up a bit. Granted, I've had a part time job most of that time, and it's been cold all the time because my roommates don't turn on the heat, but I got the first two minutes done in about 3 weeks and I've got to get back to a pace closer to that.

It's not impossible, someone out there is doing it.

Super Speed

I recorded myself drawing in the latest background over the course of 3 and a half hours, and then sped it up about a hundred times to see it all happen at once. I only recorded the drawing part, I didn't bother with the animating part since that would have been extremely repetitive and plus I wouldn't have had something big to end on. I probably spent another 3 or 4 hours animating and tweaking to get the final 5 seconds of animation. I didn't realize all that much about my process, except that I spend a lot of time tweaking and that windows take forever.

I just decided it would be a good idea to flood the entire city, so I spent two hours going back and adding as much as 20 feet of water at the base of the buildings. It's okay though, because everyone is flying any way...