On December 17th, 2006, I asked Sonia to marry me! To my surprise, she said yes! Ha Ha! Anyway, I took her out to Pomponio Beach, just south of Half Moon Bay. I told her I wanted to take her out to lunch to make up for all the times she had to take a back seat to AM for the last six months. I'm not sure how much of this story I'm allowed to publish on this blog, so I'll give you the short version. I found a secluded spot on the beach and served sushi. To wash the sushi down we had orange cream sodas. And for the main course.......raw oysters. I shucked about 3 of them before she said she was full. Now, these were huge oysters, so it was understandable that she was full, but I really wanted her to have just one more. I talked her into it and asked her if is she wanted to try shucking the last one. She agreed, and as I handed her the oyster, the shell popped open. She looked inside and saw what she thought was a disease-ridden oyster with some sort of spongy growth all over it. "Hmmm... what is that?" I queried. Then I proceeded to poke at it with the oyster knife and then started cutting it open. At no point during my poking and prodding with the knife and with my bare hands did she question why I would be touching a diseased oyster. After making a few slices into the "oyster", up popped the ring. I pulled the ring out, got down on one knee and said some stuff I can't remember and asked her to marry me. She was completely surprised! She didn't suspect a thing the whole morning. She thought for sure that the proposal was a good 6 months to a year away. I'm good! Reeaaalll good!

So that's the short of it. By the way, all of the food I served that day was the same food we had on our first date. Ahhhhh! How romantic.

Posted by Danny Southard at 10:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by Danny Southard at 12:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by Danny Southard at 12:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

This week, we learned a little more about clarity. Much of it talked about how to clear posing and simplification of the action can really make things more clear. They also touched on overlapping ideas to make each action feels as though its connected. Lets see....actually its been a week since I've watched the lecture, so I'm a little fuzzy on the specifics. I'll check my notes later and see if I missed anything.

Well, this was the final week for my box pushing animation. It's changed slightly from the last version. Again, I'm not completely happy with it. There are some parts of it that I really like and others that I couldn't seem to figure out how to fix. Despite the problems, I'm not touching this thing again. See the final version below.

I'm really excited because AM is doing another Student Showcase this winter. They pick some of the top student's work and put together a montage to show the public what the school is capable of generating. Its a really good opportunity, because several people that made the Summer Showcase are now working at major studios. It's not a guarantee, but its a great way to get exposure. I'm not that confident about getting any of my shots accepted because there are some really amazing shots that were created since the last showcase. I've seen many shots that are better than mine, so it will be a miracle if I get in. We'll see.

Matthew Coffin, an AM classmate, wants to have a unofficial winter break session and try to create something that we could submit for the showcase. I was kind of leaning toward taking a break for the next three weeks, but I'm not sure if I can go that long without animating. Hmmm.....I'll have to give that some thought.

Posted by Danny Southard at 10:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Wow, what a week! This shot was by far the hardest to smooth out. I'm not sure how many hours I spent on it, but I don't remember doing much else this last week. After working on it all week, on Saturday I worked on it from 9am - 6pm. Toward the end, I thought I was going to go insane. I really need to break theses shots into sections so I can work on one piece at a time. Otherwise its really overwhelming. Its amazing how much work goes into 14 seconds. I guess as I get more experience it'll get easier. Maybe.

Anyway, this week the lecture was about advanced arcs. More specifically they talked about how things often move in figure-8s. I'll have to incorporate some figure-8s into my next shot in Term 3 and see if it can help spice things up.

So here is my latest version of my current shot. This week, I'm going to work on making some minor changes and smoothing out the whole shot. The final version is due on Sunday at noon. The following week (last week of term 2) will be an easy one, as all I have to do is put together another progress reel.

Posted by Danny Southard at 11:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)