Added a few con­cept pic­tures.  I’ve had an idea that’s been kind of both­er­ing me for a while, so I decided to go with it.  Since I feel I’m more of a hands on learner, I thought it might be a good idea for me to cre­ate a 3D short, using every­thing I’ve already learned and hope­fully learn­ing a lot more in the process.  So, I came up with a story about a lit­tle fer­ret and his Granny.  (I love fer­rets, and I think they’re very expres­sive ani­mals, so they seemed like a good choice for char­ac­ters.)  I’m forc­ing myself to do this the right way and fin­ish all of the pre­pro­duc­tion before I start mod­el­ing.  It’s hard.  :)

I’ve got sev­eral prob­lems I need to work through.  The first is which pro­gram to use, but I think I’ve fig­ured that out.  Maya is sup­posed to be bet­ter for this sort of thing, but I really know noth­ing about it.  I bought a book for it and found some tuto­ri­als, but I think it might be a while before I can take on this sort of project with it.  So, I’m using Max for the time being.  This IS sup­posed to help me learn more about the pro­gram, and it doesn’t hurt to be pro­fi­cient in both.  Another prob­lem is with Max itself.  My knowl­edge of it thus far is lim­ited, and there are a lot of scenes I have planned that I sim­ply would not know where to start.  Hope­fully the project will help me rem­edy that by the time it’s fin­ished.  (You’ll never learn if you don’t try, no?)

Flip is the name I’ve picked for the main char­ac­ter.  I’m not quite sure yet if I’m going to keep it, but I like the ring of it.  I’ve added a con­cept draw­ing of the liv­ing room and some char­ac­ter concepts.

Three new pic­tures are up in the con­cepts sec­tion.  Two of them are views of the set I’m design­ing for my own short.  The last is a model sheet for one of the char­ac­ters I cre­ated for my sto­ry­board­ing class.  His name is Joey, and he’s the vic­tim of his older brother’s bul­ly­ing.  My story focuses on poor Joey being bul­lied out of his break­fast one morning.

I’m learn­ing quite a bit in this class, and I’m glad I waited before rush­ing into the plan­ning stages of my short.  The class is teach­ing me how to plan shots and show how the cam­era will move in thumb­nails and sto­ry­boards.  Both of those skills are going to be essen­tial to me telling the story effec­tively.  The final sto­ry­boards and ani­matic (where all the stills are put together with music and vocal work) will be a nice addi­tion to my port­fo­lio, too.

One new pic­ture added to con­cepts.  Orvil the cat.  :)  He’s a heav­ily edited ver­sion of a char­ac­ter I made orig­i­nally for another class, but trashed for Anna’s bet­ter design and per­son­al­ity.  Hope­fully the class I’m tak­ing now will help me give a decent per­son­al­ity to a fairly flat character.