Friday, November 19, 2010

Lip Sync

So, I started this with the intention of actually finishing it. It's not, but I think its a pretty good start. Again, this isn't finished, just showing you what I got so far.
Comments are very welcome!

P.S. I will be doing some body animation. I'm taking a break from this animation and working on some walks. Feel like I need to brush up on that.

Monday, November 8, 2010

Go Google Yourself

Have you ever Googled your own name to see what would come up? I have. And the first 2 results are my website. But underneath, its this other woman from New Mexico who is involved in some sort of political fraud. I thought my name was pretty unique. Kupfer isn't a very common name in the US (maybe in Germany). I guess I was wrong. Cause Ms. Elizabeth Daisy Kupfer seems like a shady person.
For all of you who don't know me, my middle name is not Daisy (thank goodness).
Just something weird I ran across while searching the interwebs.

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

A new month

So, I attempted to try and do the 11 second club for October. Didn't really finish the lipsync let alone the the animation. I'll finish the lipsync part and do some body blocking, maybe tomorrow...or maybe Wednesday. Tomorrow is election day. Gotta get out my vote and maybe visit my parents in the process.
I was animating a few minutes ago, but animating while tired doesn't really turn out good animation. I'll probably go back and fix some of the lip shapes when I open the file again. It's really a push to do this on my own. No one is paying me to produce a product and I have no deadline except the ones I set myself. I think that's why I'm not doing more...I have no personal deadline. I'll have to set up a schedule. It's funny how you forget these things. Producers are the ones that tell you when they expect things done by, and how much there is to do by whatever date. When you do it all yourself, you forget that you kinda have to act like the producer/director/writer/everything. I'm an animator. None of those other things usually concern me. And that, I think, is the issue.
This time I'm doing it right. I'll download the clip from 11 sec club, block out how long animation should take, then block out animation. And this time I'll do it in time to maybe submit.

Friday, October 22, 2010

More drawings

I've got some more of those drawings. If something is blurry, its because I'm taking pictures of them with my phone instead of scanning them in. None of them are completely done. Still got some ideas for them. Just putting them out there so you can see what I'm working on.

Why so sad?

Saw this over near Bedford Ave in BK. So much emotion....it gets to me...

When I'm right...I'm right...

I'm a good judge of character. When I first meet a person, they're whole appearance effects my views on them. Not just how they are dressed, but how they carry themselves, how they enter into conversation with others or try to exit a conversation. Starting to close a door before a conversation is completely over tells me that you have no respect for me. Your life is more important than mine, you control the flow of a conversation. I stick my foot in the door, figuratively, all the time. I don't necessarily lay down and take it. It all depends on the situation.
For instance, our new neighbors downstairs have that annoying habit of playing their music too loudly. It was louder today for some reason. Holly knocks on her way out. The music doesn't lower. After a few minutes, Holly returns and a conversation goes on about how the music is so loud that they can't hear the knocking on their door. Fed up, and trying to work on some animation, I go down to ask our friendly neighbors to turn it down. Knock on the door once. The music lowers, I figured they got the message. I walk away. Before I even get back to the steps, the music is raised to its original volume. I walk back over, knock again (loudly, because it wasn't heard clearly the first time), the volume lowers, I knock again, loudly. The clicks of the lock means someone is finally acknowledging my existence. Its the girl who doesn't smile. I ask that she turn down her music. She nods and starts to close the door before I finish. I explain that we can hear it throughout our whole apartment. Her response was that the stairs were noisy. WTF!? I go on to say that it can be a noisy place if we make it that way (with a look on my face that was probably very bitchy after I was trying to be very nice).
Really?! The stairs are noisy and you hear everyone come in...so in response to all that noise you blast your crappy dance music? Walking up stairs in my building takes less than a minute. They creak, because they are old. The building does not look new. It looks like its old. If you do a simple search of an address online, you can find out what year a building was built in. Try it. Where ever you move, you should do some research of the neighborhood and building you are moving to. Who knows, maybe your house was built on a swamp. You move in and you start sinking. The foundation cracks and you start to get flooding. Mold starts to build up. Would you have moved to that house if you had known about that swamp? Or is ignorance bliss? I hope you don't think that. Because ignorance leads to people making assumptions about things they shouldn't. There would be a lot more smarter people out there if they didn't choose to be ignorant.
Unless you move to a condo, creaky steps and floors probably exist in your abode. Get used to it, or move into a friggin' condo.
So after I got all flustered on that whole situation and I settled back down to animate, I got to know my rig a little better. Took me awhile of playing around with the controls on the face to figure out what I was doing. I haven't used Maya in awhile, so I forgot that Ctrl d was Duplicate and not what it is in MotionBuilder (deselect). I made a whole bunch of copies of controls. Silly me. I think I'm gonna try to do something for 11 second club. I really like the clip this month: Star Trek. The idea is to start with some strong facial animation, then build out some strong poses. (I always have started with the facial stuff, at least when it comes to lipsync. Its easier to focus on when you don't have body parts moving around it. I probably should try working the other way to see if I like it or if I produce better results).

Thursday, October 21, 2010

A Title Image

Yay! No more silly font. I had to put something a little more personal. And no, its not a font. I just doodled it out. Maybe I'll make a font of it. It's playful and readable. A bit too loose at the moment, the beginnings are definitely there.
I was going to work on some animations today. Somehow I got distracted. Not that difficult to do on a beautiful fall day. It wasn't sunny, but it wreaked of fall outside my window. I couldn't let it go. Went walking around my neighborhood. My new neighbors downstairs also have this annoying tendency to play their music loudly. My room has been week buffered (rug, several things hanging on my walls to disburse sound, and my loft bed that is probably absorbing most of the music when I sleep), but its really annoying when the base is loud enough to travel trough all my buffers. In the two weeks they've been here, I've asked them once to turn the music down. So have both my roommates. And my roommates cousins who are visiting from France and who are hearing most of the music because they are sleeping above the speakers. I think its too loud if my feet are vibrating when I walk through my living room. I might practice my routines for my tap class in the next few days just to show them how annoying it is. (I don't normal practice between classes, which is kinda bad, but I rarely have time. Get home from work, the last thing I want to do is start jumping around. Most times I rather just play a video game or watch whatever is on the TV.)
So the reason I didn't animate today was I was too annoyed by my neighbors and too lazy to say anything to them. I also think that the girl downstairs is a bitch. No smile when I met her. She's got that "I'm gonna play my music as loud as I want" vibe. That's what headphones are for. The guy seems nice. He smiled.
At least I got an image instead of silly blogger font.

Monday, October 18, 2010

More Drawings


The top drawing started off like most of my drawings like that. Then I saw a silhouette on the side that I had not originally planned. Turned out pretty cool. The bottom drawing is something I did over the weekend. A mixture of things I've done in the past and stuff I just started playing around with.

Friday, October 15, 2010

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Doodle Oodle

Started doodling at work when I was waiting on a file to start animation on. I think its a cell. Squirting something out of its little utters I guess. It looks funny. Thumbs up in my book.

Saturday, October 9, 2010

Some Sketches


More Ideas. The top image just started off as a bunch of swirly lines. I wanted to see how it would turn out. Wound up putting a girls face in there for fun and it didn't turn out so bad. I'll have to go back and finish it up.
The bottom image is something I just like to do sometimes. I've done pages of what the bottom right of the image looks like. I decided to changing it up a little this time. I like the randomness of the pattern. Cool doodle.

Monday, July 12, 2010

Some Photos

These photos are straight from film unedited. Some of them I'm going to do some touch up work on. Imperfections on the lense and whatnot. Overall, I think they came out pretty well.
The tree, the fire escape, the graffiti and the signs are all near me in bk. The rest are from random places around Manhattan.
I really like how the wooden pallets came out, especially the blue ones. 

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Mirror project

Project I started about a week ago. Had this in my head for awhile and it's coming out better than expected. The mirrors added more weight than I would have liked (knocked it over earlier and had to re-glue one mirror back on). I kinda like it as is. I originally wanted to add color, but I like what the lines do on the wood. I'm probably going to add some metal brackets just as a precaution. I don't want the mirrors to fall again from a higher distance to the ground...would suck very much.
Anyways, its another work in progress.

Monday, March 1, 2010

Side Projects

So, I haven't been inspired animation wise in the past couple of weeks. Tried learning Blender and failed, well, more like I realised that Blender is some programmers wet dream. Navigating in that program isn't like navigating in Maya or 3ds Max. Oh well.
Instead of working on animation, I've been drawing/painting out some other ideas. I'm not a painter, but I like mixing colors in a graphic way, and that's how I paint. Maybe when my interweb connection is up and running I'll post a few of them. There is one piece I'm more excited over than the others. Its been in my head for awhile and I just recently got the courage up to put it together. And I know exactly where to hang it...

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Website and Stuff

Was working on my website today. Ran into a problem. I'll figure it out eventually, but I feel like I made a silly mistake. Like putting down the wrong path name. Everything works, except my reel doesn't show up. I'll investigate tomorrow. Done worrying about my site for toady.
Working on a new character and story. Not sure where its going yet, but he's a wonky little guy. I'll be posting sketches of him later this week or next week. It is Valentine's weekend and all.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

2009 Reel



This is my reel with work from 2007 to the present. And as always, it continues to be a work in progress.