How I Spent My Holiday Making a Toon

I've been remiss in my blogging this holiday season. Of course, everyone takes a little time off, but it's why I haven't been blogging that I'd like to explain.

I've been training as an animation artist, and the past week or so I've been preparing a major push on a project -- a competition entry for the 10 Second Club. This is a monthly competition for animators: you take 10 seconds of soundtrack dialogue and create an animated scene to fit it. It's a good way to keep your skills up and stay interested.

If you go to the site and have a look at past entries, you'll see there's a lot of 3-D computer animation. That's to be expected; with videogames exploding and computer power becoming cheaper, 3-D's a popular trend. Me, I was trained in 2-D, so my stuff is Flash- and tradition oriented. And there are quite a few 2-D entries out there.

I had an entry in July. As you can guess, I was shocked by my score of zero. Then I had a look at the other entries, and I realized that scores could go into negative numbers. Some of the commentary can be pretty tough (particularly on the negative numbers) but the point of this competition is to learn how to do your craft better.

If you have time during the New Year's weekend, check out this site. Even if you're not in the animation industry, the variety of interpretations of one single soundtrack can be quite an entertainment.