An Animated Card for a Sweet 16...

A few weeks ago, I got a Sweet 16 invitation from my friends Sierra & Michelle, who I knew from the Cartooning classes at Hofstra since way back when I first started there. The strangest thing about the whole thing was that I was actually invited somewhere!... but that's beside the point....

At the time, the party was roughly 2-3 weeks away, & I blew the first two still trying to decide what to get them... then it hit me. Instead of actually going through the trouble of buying a present, I thought it would be nice to actually make them something instead. But what...? At first, I thought I'd make a nice watercolor card for each of them, but then I thought "Hey, why don't I animate something for them using FLASH? That'd be easy!" WRONG! Well, I decided to do just that anyway. The idea of what the story popped into my head almost immediately & I sat down & started working.

The thing I like about Flash is that you don't need an X-sheet to time your animations (kinda) & that it's easy to go back & insert/fix/remove a frame. God bless the undo key! Now if I only had a Cintiq, then I'd be set for life.

It took me about a week to animate. For the fluid motions, it was done all straight-ahead. The only thing I hate about my animation(s) is the timing, everything goes too quick. Compared to my 'Blog Anniversary' piece I did back in March, I can see that I've definitely improved with the program, & I'm looking forward to doing my scenes for the upcoming flash film that I'll tell you about in a future post.

Since I can't post the film directly on Blogger, here's a link to it on deviantArt.com. I hope you guys enjoy(ed) it!!!

By the way, the girls loved it.

HAPPY 16TH BIRTHDAY, SIERRA & MICHELLE! I HAD A WONDERFUL TIME!