Pasithea

I love school. Every class I come home charged up with new ideas and things to try. Last night we got tutorials on doing a basic walk with an articulated model and Strata Clay.

Strata Clay is _SO_ cool! I really really really wanna try it. It looks like it uses a lot of material though and I think I need a macro adaptor lense for my camera before I can really start doing stuff like that.

Definetely gonna need the macro adaptor soon anyhow, honestly. I wanna do some extreme closeups in stop motion and I think I'll wanna use it for my animation stand so that camera moves seem to travel much larger distances than they otherwise might.

In other news, my animation stand arrives tonight! I can hardly wait! Its been an incredibly long and slow journey but that makes it kind of neat, in and of itself. In this world of instant transmission of thoughts and ideas, the slow boat is actually kind of an interesting novelty to me.


So. Tonight, I'm back to working on the cat. I need some moulde release and a couple other little things before I can move on with Wirehead. During class last night, I sculpted a whole new body and boots (with a lot of thanks to Stacey for heating up the clay for me so it'd be easier to work!!!) I still need to detail and fire them. I don't know when I'll do that. Probably Saturday afternoon, I'm thinking.

I also have MORE comic book work to do! OY! The guy with the movie called and asked if he could get some more work from me. (two covers) I thought about it and said I'd do it, since I have a vested interest in his movie doing well. Anyhow, he's put a lot of time and effort and money into his project, so I'd feel weasely if I left him swinging in the wind. Besides. Two covers is only two hours work at my current rate of production and probably less than that because they're variations on the same image.

I'm babbling. This getting up at 6 and getting to work at 7 thing is making me loopy!

Well.

I guess I'm a little let down. A deadbeat e-bay seller is a deadbeat e-bay seller all around, I guess. I thought I'd outsmart by having it picked up. Que sera sera.

• So... Let me start by saying that the thing is usable, its just going to take a bit of work.


• It is minus one bolt that holds the platten in place. That's no biggie. 50 cent part.


• Its minus the handles on two of the cranks. Again, not a big deal. Maybe another $2 or $3.


• It is minus the assembly that makes the crank do the z-axis spin... One of the main moves I got the stand for. Grrr. This I don't think I can replace easily especially without the old assembly to see just how it worked. Still. I can turn it on the base without the gear and it will work out okay for 90% of the stuff I wanted to do, so it's not a devistating loss, just a disappointment.


• It is minus one of the rollers on the Z-Axis spin which is needed for stabilization. I think I can manufacture a replacement for a couple of bucks.


• From the edge, the glass has a green hue IE not optically pure glass. GRRR. I'm only planning to use it for line work so this is livable for now but annoying.


• Finally, the part that really ticks me off. It has no pegs. It just has rivets in the pegbars were snap-style pegs could be mounted. I'm waiting for a return e-mail on a price for these but I'm pretty grumpy. This is something I asked about. I can manufacture pegs for not a lot of money but it IS a lot of work, or I may be able to buy pegs inexpensively, depending. It does however mean I can't really do anything with it for at least another week.


• There's also some oxidization on the slider bars which I should clean and oil before I start using it a lot. I expected this for older equipment.

Okay. So.. Unhappy, but not a total loss. Theorhetically it costs me less than $20 to get it into usable condition and I got it for $50 less than he was going to take someone for on ebay. There are some unexpected goodies too.

• All of the gears are nice and sharp and other than the grease being old and gummy, they're in great shape. There are no skips or stalls or anything that would REALLY mess up shooting,


• The base is hollow. One panel is open and there are two odd slots on each of the adjacent sides... At a 45 degree angle to the opening and the bed. All I have to do is put a pair of crossbars through these slots and lay a mirror on that and I have an assembly I can rotoscope with, or do really interesting backlighting with without heating up my animation.


• All of the articulations have little analog counters on them that increment when you turn them, meaning I can get some really nicely precise and smooth animation out of it.


• It's more compact and lighter than I thought it was, so it will fit nicely where I was going to put it.


• The way the frame is designed, I can set up a camera mount pretty easily and have it stay just where I want it.

So... All in all... I did alright, just not spectactular.