Well, I finally made the trip to Pearl Paint cuz I heard wonders about their prices. Eh. S'okay. It's not any better or worse than The Art Store or Utrecht. (All the art people know what I'm talking about. The rest of you could probably care less. Or maybe not. I mean, a lot of people I know like to do art stuff. Or wish they could do art stuff.) Anyway, there are only two Pearl Paint stores, one in LA (Pico and La Cienega) and on in Huntington Beach. Well, for those of you that understand LA driving, Pico and La Cienega are really crappy streets. They're large and busy-as-heck. (That's the reason for my previous I-hate-LA-driving rant.)

I'm really starting to get the hang of traditional animation. I would really like to show it to my two faithful readers, but it would require too much time and effort, not to mention a faster online connection. I don't even have them on video tape. I should do that. I do have to say, there's a reason why I like 3D more than traditional. In-betweening sucks. For those of you non-animation-savvy folks, that means that the head animator draws all the major poses, and then the runty assistant has to draw all the frames in between the key poses. So, for example, the head animator draws the person standing, then sitting, and the in-betweener has to draw the person's knees bending, bending, bending, until he gets to the sitting position. Yeah, it's a sucky thing to do. Now, if I had an assistant, then I wouldn't have to do all that. :) Wouldn't that be funny. "Teacher, can you get all of us students a couple of assistants each?"

But I do have to say, what I like about traditional (meaning pencil on paper) is that if you want your character to squish or twist or whatnot, you can just draw him that way. With 3D, you have to set it up so that he can do all that. And that requires tons of work. It means that before you can animate a single frame, you have to think about every single move your guy is going to make, and then set him up so that he can do that. (That's why those Pixar people can churn out "outtakes" and mini-movies with the regular characters after the main movie is done. The characters are already set up, you just have to move them around and then render.)

I've probably bored y'all. Eh. It's my journal. But please come back! All two o'ya!