11 Second Club December Entry and Demo Reel

Hey! Sorry (again...) for it being a while since I've posted something, but I've been busy doing a lot of animating in Flash. One of the pieces I did recently was for the 11 Second Club competition this past December. After several attempts throughout 2012, this is the first ever piece that I actually finished on time!! That in itself was accomplishment enough for me!

But then I got the "icing on the cake" when I found out this morning that my entry ranked in the top 5 best animations for that month! I was just hoping to be in the top 50%! I'm sorry the video quality isn't very good, though. I'm not sure how other people made there's look so clear. I followed the rules about having my entry be 560x316... I'm not very good with rendering out good videos....

But yeah, this was a lot of fun to do!!

http://www.11secondclub.com/competitions/december12/entry/HGg1qc

Also, here's a link to my most current animation reel. Hope you like it!
Dante Buford Character Animation Reel 2012 from Dante Buford on Vimeo.
I hope to accomplish a lot this year in the field of animation, so wish me luck! I'll keep you posted on my progress.

Some Animation Key Frames

Here are some key frames from an 11 Second Club animation I'm working on completing from the June challenge. They're in order from top to bottom. There are a couple of frames where his mouth or arm is missing (especially on the second page), but I'm working on animating the arm and lip sync on a separate layer later. I exported these from Flash, and though they look light from far away (I don't understand why....), they look fine up close. I have most of the inbetweens done for this character, though there are two other characters he's interacting with that I haven't finished all the roughs for yet. But they just make subtle movements, so I hope to finish them quickly.

And I used the grid in Flash to make sure I was lining up the poses evenly enough, but I kinda liked the look of it for some reason, and kept it in. I hope it's not too distracting.

Hopefully I'll be able to finish this along with all the other animations I have roughed out soon, so I can have a new character animation reel!

Happy Mother's Day!

Here's a little gift I made for my mom, which actually didn't turn out quite how I planned. I knew I was going to draw her a card featuring a cartoon version of her favorite dog, Boo, but I didn't quite know how I was going to present it.

So as I was going to print it out this morning, I realized that I didn't have any card stock, or any other sturdy paper to print it out on. I knew that if I printed out on just basic printer paper, it would be hard to take care of, and I wanted it to last for a while. I had no choice but to print it out on the regular paper, but then I decided to get a little creative. I found an old sketchbook of mine, and cut out a piece of cardboard from the  back of it, took some glue, and wrapped it around the cardboard. So then at least it was on something that was sturdy enough.

But then I noticed that it just laid flat, and I wanted my mom to be able to look at it without having to lift it up too look at it. Also, I accidentally did a sloppy job of gluing the bottom part of it, and I didn't want her to see that! lol So then I noticed that I had this old desk calendar from 2010 next to my computer, and noticed how it was propped up a piece of folded, white cardboard. Since I obviously had no use for the calendar, I cut out the back part of it, and then glued that to the back of the card to prop it up! PRESTO! LOL

Ugghhh..... Doing this reminded me of when I was a little kid, and would do paper craft projects like this as gifts, but obviously not nearly as crappy! At least the card drawing came out pretty okay. Wish I would have also had money to buy my mom a steak dinner from Sizzler, or something, but since I'm low on funds, this is the best I could do for now. LOL She absolutely loved it, at least! And I loved that it made her really happy!

Happy Pug... with Mario's Hat!

I was drawing a happy pug giving a thumbs up, and for some reason, it just seemed to make sense to me to give him a Mario hat. His design is partly inspired by Spunky from Rocko's Modern Life (mostly by the way he's sitting). lol

I Wonder what he's Listening to.

I saw some headphones, and felt compelled to draw a pug wearing them.

Shinobi Pug

I've been re-watching Naruto episodes online lately... lol

Lazy Sunday Morning Pug

A sketch I did last night before going to sleep. Although I ended up staying awake longer working on it than I intended, because I was having fun drawing it. So I woke up this morning feeling exactly like this. lol