*Snicker*

I look silly :D

http://www.farragut-animated.com/

(go to "cast and Crew" about halfway down)

And my shirt is awfully.... red...

"I'm gonna die!" "You're not gonna die..." "Oh yeah? What's my name?!?!?"

Yep... It was SO nice knowing you all... I shall leave my Phaser to Kasia, and my Tricorder to Mal...

Plugging

The most interesting thing about animation is the way that you can draw a series of lines and then send them off and get back a little movie with your lines all happily moving around and giving the equisite feeling of movement...

You gave something life, simply by drawing lines.

I have been working on Animated Farragut for a while now, and NeoFX (The company doing the assembling) sends me back proofs every time I finish an animation set, and it's fun to see the little characters move and dance about.

And know that I did that.

Recently, NeoFX sent me an actual cut from the show, where one of my animations was actually put into the scene, and synched with the recorded voice...

Wow... I DID that. There's my character, talking and blinking and turning his head...

It's really gratifying.

Wierd, huh? I think most people would think that sitting for hours, erasing lines and redrawing almost the exact same line would be maddening after a time...

But I don't...

I wonder what would make me, an ex-ADHD kid, capable of doing this? Fascinating, isn't it?

I wish I could show you some of my work, but I've been working under wraps, and I can't share anything just yet. But you will get to see it! I promise!

---StillAnimating

Irony

Okay, so... You all know what my degree is in, right?

I finally get to use it! Yay! I love animating! It makes me happy and Zen and all kinds of wonderful :)

And...

In an interesting twist of irony, I'm working on Starship Farragut's Animated episodes... They pulled me in after seeing my Tamerlane work.

I'm working in Filmation style!!!!

For those who didn't grow up with me; Many many years ago, when I was a young lad, I believed that Filmation had wrecked the very nature of Star Trek with their Animated Episodes. I was vocal, I was whiney... I was a pest. Yes, I was that 14-year-old snot-nosed know-it-all which would go on for hours about how Filmation was the bane of all existance...

My tone changed when I went off to college and learned why Filmation's style was so simplistic. Short production times and tiny budgets led to reusing cells and backgrounds and music. It worked for fast, cheap animation.

I also learned that it's not the vehicle that counts, the story's the thing. Filmation may have been simple, but the story was told very well.

Anyway, Farragut is trying to faithfully reproduce the Filmation Star Trek Animated Episodes (TAS) style. And they are doing an amazing job! The attention to detail is top-notch.

It'll look great on my resume! And it is still extremely Zen for me to just sit there, drawing frame after frame after frame... I am astonished that I never realized this is where I belonged before...

If you want to see what they are up to, here's their preview site:

http://www.farragut-animated.com/

--DaAnimator

(Edited when I realized this didn't paint a good light on the Farragut team, which, of course, was not the point I was trying to make when I wrote this post... I've got to learn to be more careful about blogging...)