character design and disney fun

Hey folks!

First off-you may have noticed that I changed the background :) This is a picture of what a real 2D animation desk looks like (well, minus the magical flying papers and whatnot). So I thought it would make a good background. :)

I am back from spring break, and it was AMAZING. I got to visit Disneyland, which is where I took this picture! "I'm still geeking out about it!" (name that movie, anyone?)

And of course I took some pictures to share because you'd better believe I took advantage of being there to geek out about animation some more. And I'm not even going to talk about going to Dreamworks and Disney in this post because that was so fantastic that it deserves its very own post (maybe more than one post)! Seriously. SO. COOL. But today I am going to talk about that trip to Disneyland as it relates to animation so I can give the Dreamworks/Disney day the attention it needs. Yayyy! But first, an update on my walk cycle adventures:

I'm trying to tie down what I want my character to look like so I don't have to worry about being inconsistent all the time. I settled on a little dancer girl! Here's a page of some drawings I did trying to figure out how I want her to look.

She's a good character to practice animating with because she's not made up of super complex shapes. I still don't have a name for her, though. . . I'm kind of liking Jeanene. Suggestions are welcome! :)

Now, on to Disney! I had no clue before I came, but at Disneyland they have some really fun hands-on animation activities. They have cool "mini-classes" where you get to draw Disney characters. I took a few pictures of the room because it was so perfect (and whoever did the decor for the room knew what they were about because they stocked it with LEGIT books. I saw The Illusion of Life as well as some Van Gogh and John Singer Sargent art books. <3)

They also have a room with a bunch of zoetropes (click the link for more info), with materials and instructions to make a little animation of a Mickey balloon silhouette bouncing in and out of the frame. I tried to take a video of mine . . .

The round metal cylinders are the zoetropes.

This is part of the cement on the sidewalk in front of the animation building. It's an animation sheet from Dumbo! You can see the timing chart and the animator's notes and everything!

(These pictures are just for fun; the decorations were so awesome I couldn't leave them out. There were so many Glen Keane drawings!)

See you next time, everyone!