Behold, my ridiculous Chindogu project! This assignment was crazy: we had one week to come up with a chindogu (aka a useless invention), make a physical prototype of it, and then make roughly a minute-long advertisement for it. I was one of the only people who chose to animate the ad, although as you can see, the animation is as minimal as possible (and pretty glitchy) because this was all done in a week. You might have to turn up the sound; the levels changed a bit when I uploaded it online.

Oh, also, my chindogu started out as an extra hand to rest your head on when you’re tired in class (my prototype was basically an inflated rubber glove that you could strap onto your shoulder), not this extremely sad product, but my professor wanted me to push it into the realm of absurdity, so there you go haha.

Here’s my awkward little 2-week Flash project. I don’t love it, but I learned how to use symbols and symbol nesting, so that’s good. Apologies for the terrible canned footstep noise that was clearly a last-minute freecrappysound.org grab. 

Friggin After Effects. This is the piece you’ve heard me complaining about for the past many weeks. Making a film in a program and simultaneously learning how to use that program for the first time can be a really frustrating experience. There are so many things I still wish I could change, and would’ve designed and animated differently at the start if I knew then what I know now about working in After Effects. That said, what really counts is that making this film was a humongous learning experience that I’m really glad I had this semester. After Effects can be a tedious and frustrating program, but it’s also an incredibly useful tool for so many different types of animated projects, and I will definitely be using it a lot in the future.

This was my final animation for Animation II. The background layers were cut out of tracing paper, shot separately on a light box, and composed in After Effects. The characters were animated in Flash and masked with tracing paper textures (next year I’m going to edit the flickering and opacity in places so it’s a little less distracting), and then composed and tweaked in After Effects as well. The sound is also sort of a placeholder—I’d like to compose an original soundscape and not have any music in it. But for a two-week mixed media experiment I’m quite happy with it!

I’m officially completely DONE with this semester! I had a really positive and constructive end-of-semester critique this afternoon and haven’t stopped smiling since. It was the perfect ending to the year and the perfect start to the summer!

Arrested Development Season 4 Trailer - Netflix - [HD]

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(Source: youtube.com)

The intrepid mother of two leads her cubs through the wilderness with great courage, elegance, and ferocity.