The Thought Bucket (Tentative)

I know that this blog hasn’t been extremely cohesive, consistent, nor constant, but I had a moment today that I want to immortalize for myself, not for any of the few people I’ve managed to trick into following me.

Every 11:11, wishes are made. It’s possible, however, that this will be the only opportunity for us to witness that many ones spanning our various timepieces. If there will ever be an undecentric wish that comes true, it should be one of those made today.

I was sitting in class trying to think of what I should wish for. 11:02; Love? Not love, I don’t want my love to be prescribed like I need a cure. 11:05; Passion? Not passion, the ingredients for that are already reacting inside of me, it’s only a matter of time. 11:06; Acceptance? Close, but not from others. I wrote on a page of my cheap, spiral bound notebook, “I wish I would appreciate myself in the present.” I opened the clock on my phone and placed it beside the words I’d carefully considered, ready to internally chant the phrase as the time crawled closer second hand by second hand. I kept re-reading what I had written down, thinking about how I berate myself with reassurances of my optimism for my future, about how I passively hide parts of myself from the eyes of those around me, about how these words have been a wish picking at the back of my psyche for every 11:11, whether I knew the time or not, for years now. I got angry.

Wishes made without regards to the self are are hopes. What is a self-dedicated wish but an idealized moment of doubt? This was just going to be another drop in my stagnant cup of self-pity. There are almost seven billion people on this planet and some how I’ve let myself get away with saying that each and every one of those people are unique, inspiring, and deserving individuals except for me. I can’t believe I’ve been drinking this venom for so long. I’m done being the ultimate hypocrite.

I am a person. My thoughts are valid, my opinions are valuable, and my morals are defensible. My past can be learned from, my future is to be anticipated, and my present is my moment of truth. My appearance is mine to be shaped and my preferences are mine to enjoy. My life is the first of its kind and the last. I am a person.

I am an artist, I am an animator, I am a singer, I am a storyteller, I am a dancer, I am a philosopher, I am a writer, I am a critic, I am a creator — I am whatever else I’ve been foolishly fearful of associating with myself.

And if anyone else is reading this? All of this applies to you, and don’t even think about denying it. If you do deny it? Tell me I’m wrong, and I’ll do the same for you. We’ll go back and forth until we’ve both proven that we’re both worth fighting for.

I ended up tearing that sheet of paper out of the spiral at 11:11 on the dot, so I had eleven seconds to think of a new wish — a better wish. I wished that every doubt would turn to hope, and that no hope was ever given up.

Anyways, I’ve got an incredible animation to get back to — can’t wait to see how it turns out. After it’s done it’ll be great to get back to making some more awe-inspiring art. I’ll be sure to stop and encounter the fantastic work and lives of any other persons I happen by along the way.

So, last time — after I had finished my basic walk cycle — I had said that I was going to move on to walks with more personality, explore movements that could actually define a character. Well, I didn’t. Instead, I realized that I had never animated a quadruped and decided to give it a shot. I flipped through The Animator’s Survival Kit for a general understanding of how I should proceed, and then I spat out… thiiiis.

I should have learned to be less confident headin’ in to new subjects by now, but I haven’t. Okay, so, first note: if it isn’t apparent, the bigger circle on the right represents the rib cage, and the bigger circle on the left represents the pelvis. I didn’t connect the two just because I knew I would be able to see whether or not the motion worked once I got to this stage, and, plainly, it doesn’t work. If this is supposed to represent a single creature then it’s like the two greater portions of its body are working completely independently of each other. In faaact…

Yup, see, lookit that. That’s not a quadruped, that’s two bipeds. And from the looks of it, they don’t get along very well. Obviously since my rib cage and pelvis can’t be friends, they could never coexist in an animation. I tried again, then, as I did with my second bipedal walk cycle — paying a lot of attention to that bounce.

So while this is better than the first attempt, there’s something blatantly wrong with it at first glance. Sure, the motion between the ribcage and pelvis is more consistent, perhaps more friendly, but I animated the legs of this creature as I did in the latter of my bipedal walk cycles — contours that connect at the edges of the pelvis (and or rib cage). At first I couldn’t understand why this would give me problems or make this look worse, but then I had myself a brief study of animal anatomy and discovered what this is missing: shoulders. Although I can get away with animating bipedal legs as contour lines, quadrupedal legs have an overlap with both the rib cage and the pelvis that must be acknowledged. At this, I decided to go back to the lines that I had used in the first quadrupedal cycle, but with more care. I also reduced the size of the pelvis, since animals tend to have longer hind legs.

I am actually really, really satisfied with this. I know it’s not perfect (animals tend to have heads) but I made some revelations here that I can definitely apply to my work in the future. The primary of which developed naturally as I worked through it, an’ they’re the little circle patterns that the shoulders and hips flow through. To me, it’s one of the most organic motions I’ve been able to create up to this point. On top of that, there’s more movement to the rib cage and pelvis, but it’s more believable than the first time that I attempted this. It’s not crazy looking like the first cycle, but it’s not as stiff as the second. The thing I may be most proud of though, is that this feels like it has an element of three dimensionality to it. If I relax my eyes and let the image blur just a little bit, I can see a lively, believable crawl in space and time. When I finished this, I feel like I found the animation that the previous two were lacking.

What did I learn?

 - Again, arcs, circles, and all those other wonderful shapes are my friend. Work with ‘em.

 - Again again, a character’s body has to be unified, peoples’ torsos don’t wage war on their legs.

 - I need to start considering beyond the contour, like was the case with the quadruped’s shoulders.

Aright, maybe now I’ll go see if I can’t make some walks with pizazz.

So since I told myself I’d be making this an actual sort of journal thingy, I guess I should post this here considering I almost just wrote it down and stashed it away. Who knows, maybe this will actually help me with what this post is about. Feel free to not read any further with the knowledge that this may contain more than a pinch of emo Ben.

First, I want to offer how I view the self. Don’t worry, I’ll keep it short. Essentially, the self is an identity that is only capable of being witnessed in completion by the self. This does not mean that the self always has a complete and unobscured image of the self, but it is the sole identity with the *ability* to know the self completely. So, as is implied, every identity has its own self.

A common function amongst identities is that as one identity senses another, sense here meaning literally sense through sight, sound, smell, touch, or taste, the sensing identity forms an image of the sensed identity based on the information obtained through the senses. In essence, one identity broadcasts an image of its self, and another receives the broadcasted information. Each identity, however, incorporates, to different extents, two elements that make this transaction of image much more complicated, and they are the censor for the broadcaster and the filter for the receiver. In this analogy, the broadcaster’s censor is self-consciousness, and the receiver’s filter, to introduce self-consciousness’s partner in crime, is prejudice. And that’s dictionary definition prejudice; “any preconceived opinion or feeling, either favorable or unfavorable.”

Having a self-consciousness, then, is simply having an awareness of the image that your self is broadcasting to others. Also, a self-consciousness varies in its effectiveness based on the circumstances. For example, a man may be alone in a house and act completely without self-consciousness, thus be broadcasting the closest possible thing to their true self image, but to no one but himself. If he is alone in a room of a house, but there are others in other parts of the house, then he may act with minimal self-consciousness. No one has sight of him (which is what I consider the sense most relevant to self-consciousness and prejudice) so he may wear whatever he wants or move his body however he wants without anyone else receiving any information about his self. Any noise he makes could still be heard by the other inhabitants of the house, so he may be self-conscious of the sounds he broadcasts.  When in the same room (plain sight and earshot) with friends, he may only be a little self-conscious because he is familiar with those around him, but if he is in the same room as strangers, he may be very self-conscious. Of course, there are some people who are never self-conscious and there are some people who are always self-conscious, and the full spectrum in between.

Prejudice is the other head of this beast. It is generally understood by now that prejudice tends to be a “bad thing,” and truthfully it is one of both my most disliked words and most disliked concepts in the world. In the terms of this writing, prejudice is the formation of a part of the image of another identity’s self before receiving any information about that particular part of the image. If a man wears his hair in a mohawk, and another man gets it into his head that, “That man is dangerous,” well, that’s prejudice. Whether or not one wears his hair in a mohawk has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not he is a dangerous. This is a negative prejudice and is typically the kind of prejudice that we think of as a society, but there are positive prejudices as well, such as, “He has rough hands, he must be a hard worker.” The man in question may have just been born with rough hands, but the prejudice creates a work ethic in the receiving identity’s image of the man.

So it could be observed to happen like this; A man wants to go to his ten year high school reunion, and he would really like to wear his famous comic book super hero tee shirt. The other attendees of this reunion, however, see super hero tee shirts and decide that whoever is wearing them is immature and has not grown since their high school years. His self-consciousness means he is aware of this, so his action changes to wearing a button-down shirt and slacks. Now the other attendees will see him as a mature young adult. There is a negative prejudice that the man wants to avoid amongst a group of people, so he censors his action to something that will trigger a positive prejudice instead. So it would seem that the prejudice is the cause for the self-consciousness, and thus the forcing of the man to project an altered image of his self. However, I find this to be false, as it leaves a bad taste of, “it is everyone else’s fault, and not mine,” in my mouth.  

The hole in this situation is that the man is actually not self-conscious of the prejudice of the other attendees. That prejudice has yet to come. Ironically, the man is self-conscious of his own prejudice of the prejudices of the other attendees. If he had absolutely no preconception of whether or not the attendees would hold him to a prejudice, then there would be no reason not to wear his tee shirt. He might wear it and everyone would think him immature, sure, but he also might wear it and find that everyone else had done the same, or even that everyone else tells him how cool he is for wearing his tee shirt. Instead, he creates the images of the attendees based on the information that this is a high school reunion, and then creates prejudices for those attendees that have an effect on his actions. Unfortunately for the self-conscious, standards of society cannot be blamed for self-consciousness. The self-conscious preconceptions of the standards of society are where the cause lies.

In summation, if you are in the middle of a crowded room and are not dancing or singing at the top of your lungs, or you’re not wearing the clothes that you like, or you’re not sitting on the ground, it’s for one of two reasons; either it is not in you true self to do so, or it is because your own prejudices, and not self-consciousness, is inhibiting your actions.

And now I make this personal.

Without relating my entire history to you, I’ll say that throughout all of my life, my greatest weakness has always been and is currently my self-consciousness, and I say self-consciousness and not prejudice deliberately. My greatest strength I would like to believe, however, is my will to seek, understand, and attempt to dismiss not just my prejudices, but everyone’s. Of course it would be terribly ignorant of me to say that I have no prejudice – I just prejudged that everyone has prejudices — but I am usually able to recognize when a prejudice is summoned in me, and I try to cast it down as soon as possible, or at least ignore it until I can have some time for introspection. At that, I feel that I have an adequate understanding of how any prejudice that would lead to my self-consciousness is unfounded, as I cannot assume how any individual is going to react to anything I say or do. If I do make such an assumption, I am either forcing on to an individual with whom I have little to no experience my conception of how the “general public” would act, or confining an individual with whom I have plenty of past experience to the actions of his past. The first is unfounded because an individual cannot be assumed to have the thoughts of the “general public,” because the “general public” is simply many independent individuals with individual opinions that are averaged out, and the second is unfounded because a man can act however he decides to, regardless of what he has done in the past.

Put plainly, it would seem that I don’t care what people think of me, and I don’t. I should be able to act however I want, and the image compounded from my actions, my motives, my thoughts, my opinions, and otherwise, would be translated by each and every individual that witnesses me. If they dislike this image, then they by no means have to continue to pay me any attention. If they do like this image, then I suppose I could call that person a friend.

But regardless of all of this analytical bullshit that I just spewed out onto my computer, I am still very, very self-conscious. It seems that instead of trying to broadcast an image that will appeal to whoever receives it, I am subconsciously just trying to stop broadcasting all together, and because I believe that every single individual on this planet has something priceless and unique about them, I cannot understand why this is so.

Maybe after solidifying these thoughts, I’ll go out tomorrow and do something that surprises myself. The uncertainty of it all suggests that I’m missing something in my arguments, though.

That’s all for now.

This is the post where I bring up the fact that I am an aspiring animator! I study at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, which has a fantastic film school. Now, after my freshman year I know I have potential, but I also know that I did not do as well in the school year as I could have. To make up for this, I’ve decided to dedicate the greater part of my summer vacation to improvin’ my animation skills. What did I not expect? For animating frame-by-frame in Adobe Flash to be more of a pain in the ass than animating frame-by-frame on paper. Let it be known that I am not proficient with a tablet. Luckily, one of my goals this semester is to use the shit out of my little Bamboo Pen & Touch to prepare me for the Cintiqs at school. Oh gawd I can’t wait for those machines. Anyhow, I’ve decided to dedicate each week of break to learning or exploring some different aspect of animation, and this week it’s the infamous walk cycle! Most animators will agree, the walk is one of the most important and most easy to screw up elements of animation there is. An entire character can be defined in the way he walks! Of course, knowing that I am an expert animator and all, I fumbled with my tablet pen and set to work confident that animating a walk after a month-long hiatus from animation would be cake! Especially in Flash. Digital’s always easier than manual, right?

Uh. Alright, maybe not. After creating this abomination, I hit my books (The Animator’s Survival Kit by Richard Williams and Character Animation Crash Course! by Eric Goldberg, both fantastic references) and tried to find out how to never be responsible for something like this again.

The biggest problem with this — and it is a problem I have frequently with every art form — is that I’m too strict with myself. More easily put, I need to relax when I work. It’s taken me a long time to understand that things don’t have to be perfect, and, as is the case with animation, things are often better when they’re not! I had a fantastic drawing teacher last semester that helped me grasp this concept and its relation to drawing, and now it’s time to apply that to animation. Everything is gonna look stiff and just plain unnatural if I keep trying to over-construct things, at least with my low level of understanding in the arts and animation.

Another flaw is how mechanical this feels. He just keeps on chuggin’ at the same pace. The spacing of the arms and legs between the frames is so even that it looks like clockwork as opposed to something that is alive. On top of that, it’s just so damn bouncy.

So I tried again, trying to be a little looser with the lines and a little more thoughtful in regards to the spacing.

Okay, so this was better, but there’s still something that’s just weird about it. I mean, it is pretty fast, but this is the formula that my teacher had taught me. 8 frames on 2’s (that’s 12 frames per second), contact position, down position, passing position, up position. What’m I gonna do? At this point I was sick of animating the same thing over and over again, and so instead of trying to figure out what’s wrong, I thought I’d change up the character a little bit. Same principles, different shapes.

Well now, this I actually really liked! I liked it so much that I gave it a stupid, floppy, bunny ear! But what’s the difference between this and the last cycle? How’s this relate to that first one? Well, The first thing I noticed is that the head is as ridiculously bouncy here as it is in the first cycle I made; the difference being here it looks good. That bounce gives a lot of movement to the torso and head; enough so that the whole figure looks unified. I now realized that in the last cycle, the body and the legs seem almost independent of each other. But I already know that I can’t make a bounce that noticeable look good on a more realistically proportioned character. In conclusion? This 8 frame cycle looks really great for cartoony or cute characters because its faster pace already makes it feel more caricatured. I looked back in my books and found that Williams had a suggested formula for a walk on 32 frames on 1’s (24 frames per second), but, since I’m lazy, I decided revisit that second cycle with 16 frames on 2’s.

Hey, alright. Suddenly it looks so much more unified, more, for lack of a better term, right. So yeah, I made a really basic walk cycle for a bipedal creature that I’m actually pretty happy with. Especially so with the arm motion — I learned a lot about why it’s important to follow arcs and pay attention to spacing with those. So, in summation:

   - 8 frame walk cycle, great for cute characters. (3 steps per second)

   - 16 frame walk cycle, much more realistic pace. (2/3 steps per second)

   - Loosen up, animation, or art for that matter, is about expression, not perfection. Unless perfection is what yer expressin’.

   And, probably most importantly…

   - I should stop animating by staring at formulas! I need to experiment a bit. Well, maybe when I’m more confident. 

Also, for the record? These are kinda bad walk cycles. Like I said before, good walks define characters. These are generic and bland, but they’re a start. Now I’m off to work on some really good ones I have planned! ‘Til next time!

I finally got around to initiating my tumblr account (“tumblr” is apparently not recognized by tumblr’s own spell checking program) and I figure I should throw up a post so that the ones that followed aren’t just sudden slugs of concentrated angst to the face. At least now they’re prefaced by this, the gunshot. Of course, I realize that the only person currently following, and very likely reading, my tumblelog (also not recognized) and this entry respectively is my brother, Cameron, whose tumblelog you can see here. See what I just did there Cameron? I linked you your own page. Anyways, since I feel like I will probably be posting a lot of introspective and philosophical thoughts here, and Cameron and I tend to get into “discussions” whenever philosophy or introspection is on hand, this should be an interesting first few posts.

Cheers!