I saw a great walk today. It was a guy about to cross the street. He was all shoulders back and forth, bordering on camp. Why do people walk like that, from the shoulders? I don’t know.
Over the last few days i’ve been immersing myself in books about action analysis, storyboarding, visual storytelling, cinematography, editing and more. This is partly to load up for the next round of animation practice, and partly as penance for buying all these damn books in the first place then not sitting down to actually read them. I’d guess between Monday and Wednesday i read easily over a thousand pages of stuff between dead tree versions and electronic books. It’s all rattling around in here somewhere.
I guess the point is not so much to absorb what’s in the books in detail, just to read them and know what’s in them. That way i can go back and re-find the useful bits if i have to.
I’ve got The Illusion of Life here in the bookshelf too but from having skimmed it before i don’t feel like i want to tackle something too circumspect yet. It’s on a heap of “must read” lists for animators and no doubt there’s a lot of wisdom in there. Maybe i’ll even give it another bash this weekend.
I’m going to see if i can knock over both volumes of Drawn To Life over this long weekend. I should probably get going on that – 750 pages of small type and handwriting with diagrams is no walk in the park.
I’m not sure when i’ll get back to doing actual animating. Maybe next week. Maybe i’ll keep working away from the computer since we’re just coming up to the traditional season of bunuru (February + March). It’s the hottest part of the year and the worst possible time to be stuck in front of a big heat-spewing box adjusting the angles of bones back and forth.
