September 1: Sabbatical Officially Begins!

It feels like the last days of summer vacation, still a few days away from Labor Day weekend and my kids' school starting, but it is indeed the official start date of my sabbatical.

Last Thursday was the final class meeting of the Animation course at the MFA.  It was an excellent whirlwind 5-week introduction to traditional animation techniques. We used the class time to make our animations, so they were short, and there were more/other things I would have done for each had I been working on my own time, but it was also great to push through the cut-out animation (2 sessions) and also the claymation stop-motion technique.  Being able to use the camera setup was also terrific and helped me focus on the animation.  I had very little sense as I was doing it, though, what I would get as a result.  Maybe that's what experience gives you as you get used to the medium in which you're working.

Here is my cut-out animation, and I'll post the stop-motion claymation one when I have the file.

The idea is that the robots have time traveled to the 1920s.

When I was on the Cape last week, I found some great rocks that I thought I could use in my claymation animation, and so instead of working with the bots again for this, it has a sea theme.  Here are some pictures of the puppets.