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- Black History Month, Animation Wins, and The Elusive Green Elephant
Black History Month, Animation Wins, and The Elusive Green Elephant
Progress, lessons, and art!
BRITTNEY GALLOWAY
February 05, 2025
Happy Black History Month!
It's a crazy time to be an American, but I believe in radical joy and focusing on what I love.
A banner that reads “My Short Journey: The Elusive Green Elephant”
With that out of the way, January was a productive month! I was able to complete 1+ shots a week -- which was the goal for the month.
In Blender, I learned how to control the camera focus to blur background elements in the shot and how to allow shadows through a photo or video with alpha enabled. The shadow discovery was the most exciting, as there was an element in the first three shots that I was struggling with. I'm not great at modeling organic objects in 3D and even worse at 3D animation. So this discovery helped a LOT.
While reviewing my work, I found a shot that I considered fully animated and colored, only to realize the character's perspective was off and didn't align with the shot before or after very well. I ended up needing to redo it, but I was able to keep some of the old drawings as a base. Luckily, the shot was short and didn't hurt the timeline. Here is a little clip of the re-animation.
Animation Spotlight: LAKAY
What it’s about: LAKAY by Amarise Defrance is a Haitian short released in 2024. It is a touching short about the African diaspora and connecting with your roots.
Why I like it: The style and color is very vibrant. I’ve also come to appreciate stories that attempt to create connection between the young and older generations.
Artist Spotlight: Peter Keahey
Peter is a storyboard artist. I came across one of his posts on LinkedIn about Life Lines Animation. It's an initiative to support and provide professional projects to professionals between work. Ideally, they will get to a point where they have funding and the money divided evenly amongst those who worked on a project. Check it out. Peter's website: https://www.peterkeahey.com/ Life Lines: https://www.lifelinesanimation.com/ |  |
Art Tutorial I Like
This Dédouze Grease Pencil tutorial was one of my first Blender tutorials. If you’re a 2D artist looking to get into the 3D space, this a great place to start! And remember, Blender is free! He shows you how to draw a 3D juice box and how to make it cute with candy’s and other decorations.
Any support is appreciated. If I can get 10,000 people to donate $1 each I’ll be able to focus on these projects and still take care of my family. Having said that, if I have my way, I’ll have finished building the official store on the Sleepy Gallows website.
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