What have I done....?

in the last week?

A lot of time spent trying to absorb as much of  Toon Boom premium in my trial period before it expires.  I'm really excited to get and do something... with bit of finished animation in it..
It looks like its a lot better for doing 2d characters and scenes than After effects.
Especially the way rigged characters are contained in their template.

Fortunately I was able to look at/use the Toon Boom 'Learn'  site- in Beta, which is way superior to their other online learning offerings that I could see. A really good resource for animation learning full stop- as they don't just have how to use the software but all about studio type production- even animation principles. So a lot to look at.
Thoughts-  the node based nature is really great I think- and a lot of stuff is exposed for people who are into that sort of scripting/programmatic stuff.
- only seemed convoluted or ass about when  I was watching the rigging tuts with the invert masked auto patched character-
mainly if you are going to have an invert mask a lot of the time with a predicable use for a snippet of node network why not include that as a pre made node?
Anyway...I'll watch that bit again.

Sad bit is instead of watching cartoons with my boys the way I used to I'm now analysing their choice of deformation/elbow style etc....breaking it down into what I've learnt or  how to do it.
Ie I was walking past and the kids were watching Camp Lakebottom- and the main character must have had every conceivable type of arm deformation style  in the space of 5 secs with different styles on each arm- curve deformation ('hose'), rigid bones /segments- sharp elbow, smooth elbow, etc..
The examples on the learn site had different views in the one template but with similar deformation/hierarchy- whereas that arm stuff is different deformations on same view-- although they did have a 'planted'/steady  foot example with 2 deformation types on the one thing.....hmmmm.

Spent a day looking at the Magic Word book again....need to sort that out and do 'final' roughs and text.

Starting to look at a new  job for Radium in 3dsmax- which means I have to get to grips with Vray.
Which will be good to know but I feel I want to spend my time on the 2d animation .....
Ah well.
Am going to the Vray roadshow in Brisbane on Wed to kickstart it all.

I was at The Big Draw again on Saturday at the State Library.....
that's me there- drawing the Witch from the magic word book.
Photos courtesy of Ozan Tortop,-
As you can see Ozan has manipulated the photos to make me look much older and portly than I actually am.
I did a few drawings below while I was on the spot- all a bit dodgy but that's what happens when put on spot and drawing before people......