Fiddling

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I haven't eaten or slept. Not because I've made 18 hours of fantastic animation but because I'm obsessed with making any animation. My cats' litter is unscooped, my laundry is undone, I am unwashed, dishes are stacked in the sink, work undone thus far today and it's now 6:50 pm. I'm acting like a heroine addict on a bender even more than ususual. This is bad. After this little report I'm getting caught up on those vital life things straight away.

I just couldn't resist taking a couple faux Loc-Line doll armatures this afternoon and slipping in some small lengths of dowel inbetween the links in an attempt to make more proper bones and joints for the new and improved stand-in practice puppet. It looked promising as the thing moved more like a person while I fiddled with it, until I started to animate it. Then I saw that I couldn't tell where the joints were nor could I get the much of it to stay put. It was pretty foolish scene too because I was walking 10 steps back and forth back and forthback and forth (that's me in the far background) and therefore I couldn't use the onion skin feature well. The knock-off Loc-line I used couldn't hold a position well enough and the overhead rig wasn't anchored above the puppet's head so it didn't have enough lead room. The feet were loose gooses and these factors combined make it an unworkable test. But even with all this going on and even with not being able to control the figure's movements it was still fun.

I've now got to build a more serious, controllable armature. I can't imagine going so far as to machine ball joints like my friends. That's just too much to add to this Monumental Table of Tasks on the project for my likes. I don't mind baking the whole wheat bread for Rana's kitchen table or fabricating microscopically small reading glasses out of gold micro wire for the Reading Mouse, etc., details forever--but creating perfectly round steel ball joints? and safely soldiering an armature out of metal?!--Well maybe, when I typed that description it suddenly didn't sound so bad! A proper working, reliable armature is after all of utmost importance to good animation performance.