The Freedom to Create

How do you know if a snail is a boy or a girl? I'm not sure but when you meet this little snail with a flower on her head I immediately thought-she's too cute to be a boy. I love creating Amigurumi. These little characters are so much fun. You can place them in different settings in your home and each time a new story emerges. The crochet pattern can be found here .

So...You want to be an Animator?   " Why yes! Yes I do. What was the driving force for your decision? "Well let's see if I can pinpoint the exact moment. Oh! now I remember. I've always been fascinated with animation but rather than creating it I was more consumed with watching it. My father was a graphic designer and was amazed at the animation of the Smurfs cartoon. My son created stop-motion which blew my mind. My daughter is now involved with creating DIY videos. Each of them are a true inspiration for me. Recently, I applied for a position to create closed caption for videos. The application process required me to caption three different videos. Each more complex than the last. Needless to say, I didn't pass the application process. Their words "Please do not apply again". OUCH! The next morning, still stinging from their response, I had coffee in hand and thought about what I had learned. What could I do with this information. ...

Julinka is from Jumar the planet of the Green Moons.  I had created a sample character drawing awhile back. The drawing sat in my stack of papers for some time. I thought it was time to bring out the character and do something with it. I then created "Julinka". I gave her a jeweled nose and pads on her hands to imitate jewels. The background for Julinka was computer generated. I thought it would be neat to have a jeweled appearance as well. Now it's time to create a story around "Julinka from Jumar-the planet of the Green Moons".

I thought I would take some time to learn animation and this is what I came up with. This is a little short of a bunny doing his thing. It took all day long and still not quite right but I was exhausted to go any further. A while back I had searched for alternative editing programs and found Sqirlz Morph . It had been sitting in my computer downloads for sometime as I had been busy with other things and qu ite frankly, wasn't ready to learn any new technical material. Yesterday, while my daughter Jaime was at a birthday party, I opened up the program and gave it a go. I like the hands on and dive in approach rather than read tutorials. That's probably why it took me all day.  I used two illustrations that were almost identical. Then I  picked control points in each of the illustrations. It was difficult at first to find the relationship between each illustration and their corresponding control points but with a little maneuvering I began to see it. Now it was starting to...