Today one of the things I worked on was one of my new Oleg illustration assignments! The rough sketch is below, along with my previous Oleg illustration assignment with alterations based on Kathy’s notes. I also got just about all of the reference images ready for the RUS407 animations!

Today I almost completed my file reorganization for the RUS407 Animation file reorganization. Yesterday I got all of the props and set pieces in big new files so the animator can easily find the set piece/prop that they want and paste it into their animation file. Today I worked on making the characters super intuitive and very “drag-and-droppable”. All of the variances in characters (head shapes/body styles/mouth shapes) are cleanly housed in one file. Animators can copy over the “master character” and paste it into their document, then quickly select the head and body type they want within that character and get right to animating! I think this will save a lot of time in animating in the future, especially if someone is new to the program.

Today I worked on getting the animation files ready for the first load of animations for the RUS407 Online Class. Luckily, Lauren, the project lead for the RUS406 Animations, did a great job making loads of character options, sets pieces and props for last semester’s class that I will be able to use so I won’t have to draw a whole bunch of new things for this semester. Instead, I’m focusing on making the files a little more accessible and the characters a little more “drag-and-droppable” for this semester’s animations. I’ve taken all the props and set pieces from Lauren’s files and put them in new files that I believe will be easier for the RUS407 to access. Then I also started the process of transferring the characters to new files. So far I’ve only made progress on the “Default” Character. It’s important to me that these characters are very much”drag-and-droppable” for ease of use for the novice animator. By that, I mean I believe that all the pieces of the puppet (arms, legs, head, body, mouth and eye shapes) should be contained in one symbol for each type of character and body orientation (front view and side view) so the animator can just find the character and angle they want, copy and paste and immediately start animating. Looking forward to completing this process! I’ve included some pictures of my progress thus far. 

Not much time to type today! Happy to say that I got the general workflow plan for animating and creating the powerpoint videos hammered out today! Also got my Ai Live Trace self paced tutorial completed!

Today I took a crack at my first Russian Oleg Illustration. The characters all had to have winter clothing and the illustration needed a snowman. Overall I am pleased with the outcome and hope to get some notes on this first attempt so I can improve these illustrations in the future!

3rd day as a Design STA completed! I mainly got to crack down on some of the self-paced tutorials today. I completed my vocab flashcards (see previous post) and began to work on my Adobe Illustrator Live Trace tutorial (screencap linked in this post). Then I got the chance to talk to Kathy and Anna about the workflow for the Russian 407 Illustrations. I’m looking forward to working under that style and hopefully making some pretty and engaging illustrations!