Just starting to blog...

I'm towards the end of class 2 (Body Mechanics) at AnimationMentor.com, and I'm just figuring out this blogging thing. I'll be posting my animations, even though some of them are really bad. I don't know why I'm doing this, honestly. Because everyone else is, I guess. Peer pressure.

A little about me: Painting is my first love. I graduated in 1990 from Bryn Mawr College with a degree in Fine Art and English, but was never able to (never really thought I could) make a living in Art. So for the past 10 years or so, I've been a mortgage loan officer. Luckily for me, the market bottomed out, and I've been forced to find a new profession. I'd actually been thinking about animation for a long time, and had taken a few classes at a community college, where one of the instructors told me about Animation Mentor. So I quit my job, before it quit me and am now animating full time.

I am always mindful of similarities between animation and painting. The process is similar, in that there are a lot of elements to manage at once, and they're both a lot more difficult than they seem, but at first I didn't really feel the connection. The other day something happened, though. I was looking at my street through my painters eyes, noticing shape and color, then my brain clicked, and I thought, "this is boring, nothing's moving". So I think I've made the leap to concentrating on movement. Another thing I have in common with my cat.