Tuesday Musings - At A Crossroads

Last Tuesday's "Musings" was cancelled by a fairly widespread power outage, since resolved. Back to normal reporting now!

I've been working away at the web series' second season and learning new animation software (Reallusion's Cartoon Animator 4). It's been pretty intense brain work, but lots of incredible fun as well! It is a 2D platform, so some limitations that stop motion can solve, but so far I haven't had to resort to actually filming the characters in stop motion. As I build my "library" of characters from different angles and of different abilities, the process is becoming a bit more streamlined. Add to that the courses on using the software that I received as part of the incentive for entering the company's contest and I'm finally getting a bit of a grasp on what it can do, and what it might do potentially. Here's a case in point; this little video shows an intro scene using the old stop motion/motion graphics combo and then showing the exact same scene done with a rigged version of Yorick done in the new software. Mouth control and clarity make a huge difference!

A bit like night and day...although the first clip is fine, the second one is way beyond that. Yorick has much more character, and his jaw can be manipulated for different types of words. Mind you, a skull is probably the easiest thing in the world to animate - not many moving parts!

So, as the title indicates and the top picture intimates, I'm at a place where my work could go off in a variety of directions, all of them rather unknown right now. It's an exciting place to be, a crossroads...also a scary one. However, I think I'm completely demolishing that "old dogs, new tricks" thing.