An Animated Valentine's

Last night, I had a romantic Valentine's dinner with a lightbox and a couple of erasable colored pencils. Let me tell you, it wasn't nearly as sad as you think it was. Hah.

I went with a friend to the El Grupo Animation and Story Workshop in Burbank for the first time. Traffic was incredibly painful on the way there, but it was well worth the trip. When we got there, we were welcomed by the ever-smiling Alex Topete and a handful of students from other schools. Unlike all of them who are already working on an actual film, I'm not trained animator yet, so I had to start from the beginning and animate a bouncing ball. I was so excited to finally do some squashing and stretching!

The next step was to add a tail to this little bouncing ball. I wasn't really sure I was doing it right and sure enough, I had to do at least four revisions to get it to work.

The hardest part was figuring out what the tail should do when the ball hits the ground and squashes. Turns out it curves down and points to the right. It was astonishing how changing the curve in a single frame made the animation a lot smoother.

My friend and I definitely enjoyed our night (and forgot about being single just for a second. haha). I think we're coming back on Sunday to do more animation! Hooray!