My new class is 2D Ani­ma­tion.  I’ve learned some basics before, but this takes it a lit­tle fur­ther and the final project will be a short sequence of a char­ac­ter called Trip­ping Tim (model sheets in con­cepts) who saves his grand­mother by slip­ping on a banana peel.  My last assign­ment was a bounc­ing ball.  I know the quality’s poor.

Feel­ing so shut off from the art com­mu­nity has been eat­ing away at me for sev­eral months now.  There are so many things that I want to do.  I want to go full time in school, but I can never find the means to do so.  I want to get out there and get expo­sure (which could also bring in money to help pay for full time), but at the same time I worry that I’m sim­ply not that good enough.  That’s what pre­vented me from enter­ing work in a juried art show a cou­ple months ago.  I feel like I have very lit­tle to show for myself.  Ian says that I should just do it, and he’s right.  I won’t know if I’m good enough if I don’t put my work out there.  I’ve come up with sort of a loose plan of things I need, and will try my hard­est, to do.

• Enter the Emerg­ing Artists con­test for Visual Over­ture.  I have one month before the dead­line to get my sub­mis­sions together, and if I’m of the win­ners, I’ll get fea­tured in the magazine.
• Enter other juried shows as they come up.  No spe­cific ones, yet.
• Join the NWAA.  I’m putting it off until after the first two, but it’s worth a shot.
• Children’s book?  Ian’s idea.  I know I can do the illus­tra­tions, but I don’t know about writ­ing it.  I told him if he writes it, I’ll illus­trate it.  I still wouldn’t know what to do with it after that, but I guess I can fig­ure that out.
• ACM Sig­graph 2011 in Van­cou­ver.  Sig­graph is a huge con­ven­tion for com­puter graph­ics, and every­one in the indus­try goes there, includ­ing the big names in fea­ture ani­ma­tion.  It’s a great oppor­tu­nity to meet other peo­ple in the field and see how it’s going to change.

After read­ing a bit of the book I have for my cur­rent class, I feel like work­ing on my comic again.  I think I know what’s wrong with it, and I have a bet­ter idea to fix it.  The biggest prob­lem is with the con­flict.  It’s there, but there isn’t enough of it, and there needs to be a cen­tral point of con­flict that the char­ac­ters have in com­mon.  Right now, they all have goals, but noth­ing that really uni­fies them.  I think I’m look­ing in the wrong place for the con­flict.  Before, Dierdre’s main quest was find­ing her father, but there’s another char­ac­ter in the story that played a much minor role who would fit bet­ter.  I’m just not sure how to go about it yet.